Poster Goodness

Back in the 90's when I had a lot of empty wallspace, I always kept an eye out for awesome posters. I would buy all of the Cubs posters I could find. It was a little more difficult back then. There was no internet, no amazon, no plethora of web stores to buy what you wanted. Living in New Mexico and Colorado, there was not a lot Cubs merchandise available. Many times I would have to special order the posters from a store. I had a good variety of posters. Most of them had Ryno on them of course.

Eventually I moved out on my own, but some things were left at my parents since I did not have a lot space. My oldest sister took over my room and got rid most of my stuff. A lot of it I did not care about. Much to my horror, my posters were no more. I think I might have actually cried a little at the time. They were something that I looked at every day. My favorite team on the walls of my room. I doubt I will ever try to pick them up again unless I find a really good deal. I did manage to pick up these two poster promos on Ebay. Not quite as good as the real thing, but they are cool to have in my collection.

Snow Goose Addition

I ordered a large lot of cards from COMC when they had a sale over the holidays. I was able to fill in quite a few holes in my Mecklenburg and Sutcliffe collections. One of the "cards" I picked up was this 1992 Newsport of the Snow Goose. I was surprised that it is more like a mini poster. Much larger than I expected. It is a great addition. I hope to be able to pick up the one of Ryne Sandberg. I don't see them very often on Ebay.

I also picked up the British Petroleum card of the Meck. I had actually ordered the two variations, but received the same cards. It's not worth getting replaced for what I paid. I'll throw the extra in with my other Broncos and get the other one when I order again.

Finally Gave In

I can't speak for other Cubs fans, but I was really disappointed when the Cubs passed over Ryno to be the Manager of the Cubs. How great would it be to see him managing the team he had played so many years for. He did fantastic as a Minor League manager.

I don't think it was a conscious decision, but for some reason I kept passing on picking up his 2014 Topps Heritage card. I don't have anything against the Phillies. I have plenty of cards from when he played for that very short time as a player. But I guess it wasn't real. I always saw him as a Cub. Maybe I just couldn't see myself having a current card of Sandberg in a different uniform.

I finally gave in. I picked up this card and I love it. It's a great looking card and it reminds me that his career is still going strong. I want him to do well as a manager (as long as they aren't playing the Cubs).

Wallet Card

I just found out about the Wallet Card over at Baseball Card Breakdown. Great idea! Keep a card in your wallet and take a picture of it throughout the year. Of course, I have to grab a Ryno card.

I love the diamond kings cards so this was an easy one to pick. This was one of the greatest parts of opening Donruss packs back then. There were always lots of surprises. Sometimes you got excited and sometimes you just looked at the card and said "why?" I was extremely excited when Sandberg was the Cubs choice in 1991.

This was also the first year Donruss did the Elite Series. I don't even want to admit how many boxes I bought and opened just hoping and praying for the Signature Series card. I guess it wasn't meant to be. But now I have plenty of the Diamond Kings card and it will have the pleasure of me sitting on it for a year.

First New Card

My friendly neighborhood mailman brought my first new card of the year:

A 1985 KAS Potato Chips Disc. This is a great addition to the Sandberg collection. I was finally able to find one at a decent price on Ebay. This puts me down to only 8 more items to finish off 1985. Unfortunately, the items that are left tend to be priced out of my budget or I have never seen. But I am very patient and hopefully a good deal will pop up.

Happy New Year!

I am really excited for 2015. Football playoffs will start this weekend. I really hope the Broncos don't blow it like they did last year. I always have hope that the Cubs will have a great season. I also plan to expand my collection. I did pretty well this last year but I really want to try to fill some of the holes this year. Here is my list of goals for 2015:

#1: Focus on filling holes in my Ryne Sandberg collection. I am going to focus on 1980-1995.

#2: I have three other player collections right now: Andre Dawson, Rick Sutcliffe, and Karl Mecklenburg(Denver Broncos). Since I focused almost solely on Ryno this last year I only added a couple of cards to each of these collections. I want to really flesh them out this year.

#3: Complete my Chicago Cubs team sets for 1980-1989.

#4: Organize my collection. Almost all of my cards are in boxes. I want to get some binders and pages to put my player collections and team sets in. It will be much easier to see what I have and I like the way it looks.

#5: Create spreadsheets of my collection.

#6: Post to the blog at least three times a week.

I wish all of you the best for the new year and happy collecting!

Rookie Rage

I lived in Colorado Springs for a few years after I graduated from High School. There were quite a few really great card shops all over town back then. I didn't really collect anything specific at the time. I just really enjoyed opening packs and putting sets together up until I moved to Colorado.

Around this time I decided to start a Sandberg collection. I already had quite a few of his cards from the mid to late 80's. One of my Uncles gave me the $10 to get his 84 Topps card. Now I really wanted his 83 Topps rookie card. Only one of the shops in town had this card. I eyeballed that card for months. If I remember correctly, it was listed in Beckett for around $50 at the time.

This particular shop was also a comic shop and I always picked up my comics there as well. I had a pretty good relationship with the owners. I had done some trading with a few of the other shops in town but never this one. I had always heard through the grapevine that the person who did the trades would never give you higher than half of what Beckett listed. This was pretty normal from my experience though a couple of the shop owners were a little more generous. Well, I really wanted this card. I grabbed a few of my binders of the "good stuff" and went over there.

I waited while the owner started pulling out cards that he wanted. He grabbed the latest Beckett and started adding up what he had pulled out. I was getting pretty excited. I see the numbers on the calculator. Then he does another quick calculation and I am 50 cents short. 50 cents. He starts looking through the binder again but doesn't see anything he wants. I hear his wife saying to just give it to me. The 90 Leaf Frank Thomas that he pulled from my binder would be sold in a week. Same with the Ken Griffey Jr.

Now I know that this is his business. He is there to make money. But 50 cents? I had no cash on me. I went and dug through my car for any spare change. Of course, the one time I need some change, there isn't any. He wasn't budging and I wasn't going to push it. He put my cards back in my binder. I thanked him for his time and I left. I was pretty upset when I left. 50 cents?

I got over it pretty quick and I don't hold grudges. I just never traded at that shop again. They were my go to place for comics and they always had plenty of the newest packs of cards. And I still ended up getting my 83 Topps rookie card. It just took a little longer. I found a little shop on the other side of town one day and he had packs of 83 Topps for $10. On a whim I bought one and inside was the card I had been wanting. I finally had all of Sandberg's Topps cards from 1983 to 1991. The biggest lesson I learned from this at the time was patience. I didn't have to have them all right now.