Rambings of an old collector

 I'm taking a one week break from the faces of the team posts before I start the American League to ramble on about some things. 

-I think I can say I've finally made it in the blogging world...I got a great random act of kindness package from none other than Johnny's Trading Spot. Almost all of the blogs that I've read at some point got cards from John which I thought was so cool. I kept looking at his want list hoping that we'd be able to trade or send him something, but I haven't been able to match anything up yet. Before I find anything, he sends me this...

Unbelievably blessed! Thank you so much John for the cards and making me feel part of the blogging world family!

- Once again, if you haven't seen the movie "The Hill" you are missing out. Great movie about faith, passion and baseball. You can find it on Netflix or Amazon Prime. 

- I started looking at different posts on Facebook, videos, blogs and such that had '23 Stadium Club cards. I thought those looked pretty good. I was at my friendly Walmart and saw a blaster box and said why not? I didn't get any big hits, but I really liked the cards. Couple of weeks later, same thing. I got to looking and saw that the set was only 300 cards, so yep, I decided to put the set together. I swore I was going to stick to just Topps and I've already broken that rule by collecting '23 Heritage. Now, I'm adding Stadium Club. I need professional help. 

- There are 3 subsets from 2023 that I started to try and complete. I still need 23 All Aces and 29 Father's Day patch cards. The third subset is World Baseball Classic USA team and I am down to one card... WBC-27 Kyle Tucker. Only 3 traders on TCDB have the card and there is no match. If someone has an extra one, let me know and hopefully, we can work something out.

- Getting excited for Opening Day and my World Series Champion Texas Rangers to defend their title.

-I've had a hard time finding '24 Topps at retail stores. Found it pretty easy early on, but it's been pretty scarce ever since. 

- Went to a wedding reception in Austin, TX and had a four hour layover between wedding events. What do you do when you're a card collector and time to kill? You find a card store to visit. Found one that was actually in an industrial park. I picked up some cards on a really good deal. A few star players from the '23 Stadium Club that I needed for my new set, a '24 Evan Carter and Mike Trout, '24 Blue print Kershaw and an Ohtani. 

- Shout out to RonE, Chris Cheatle and Poison75 for calling me out on my mistakes in my Faces of the team-NL West. I should have spent a little more time in my research. Thanks for holding me accountable.

- I'm not a graded card collector, but thought I'd weigh in on SGC being bought by PSA: I can't see how this is a good thing for those that do graded cards. Removing competition is never good for the consumer.

- One of my goals this year is to complete some sets. Well, I finally completed my 1984 Topps set with a TCDB trade with hershey for #144 Brian Harper RC. Now all I need to do is put in a binder. 

- I saw the best baseball game in a really long time two weekends ago. Okay, it wasn't really baseball, it was T-ball and my 4 year old grandson. It was so much fun watching the joy these kids had playing the game. 

Well, that's it for my ramblings. I'll get back to Faces of the team - American League East for my next post.

Peace, 

Michael

Isaiah 40:31