The art of pure joy

Its a really rare occasion to have a time where worry subsides and pure complete joy overcomes you even for a brief moment. This may sound psychotic to many but one of my very few moments came from obtaining a simple baseball card.  I have been working on collecting every 2012 topps chrome/base/opening day/mini Ichiro possible for awhile now. I came to the realization I will never get every parallel for a superstar future hof but one card that I had a great desire to obtain and felt was a possibility was the SSP variation. Not technically a parallel but a variation of the same set nonetheless  It has eluded me for a very long time that I resigned to the fact I will never obtain this '12 Topps chrome Ichiro super short print(ssp) the first time topps made a variation print in their Topps chrome line. They only made 20 different ssp's of different stars and the odds of getting just ONE of them is 1 in 912 packs of topps chrome. Which means the odds of getting the Ichiro I longed for was about 1 in 18,240 packs. I searched and searched for this rare card for as long as I can remember until it finally showed up randomly on ebay one wintery thursday night in my daily search for this card. my heart stopped and I couldn't believe what I saw was this coveted card available and even better a buy it now option so the suspense could stop that second. This card is very rare though the price point is mid range, I probably have at least 50 cards worth more than this one but the sheer rarity and hunt for this card makes this by far the most valuable card in my collection. I absolutely love the design and photo. To me its the perfect most beautiful card ever. It resembles his original 01 bowman chrome card that I also own and is also one of my favorites plus costs 3x as much but still doesn't compare in my opinion. The day I stumbled across this card for purchase was sheer luck and good timing,  I would have paid three times the buy it now price just to have it and that moment it was mine was a moment of pure 100% joy. Call me crazy, everyone else does but one of the best finds and moment of excitement in awhile!

Holiday Fun

Happy holidays! Its that time of year to be thankful for friends and family and all that side squish goo.  Well the wife happened to get me something I always want which is baseball cards. My one dimensional nature makes me a very easy buy. After giving her all the fun presents she wanted during our x mas eve gift exchange I get a small pack of cards and told that was it, I was appreciative and happy as I never expect or ask for much. She than demands I put them away in my man cave room where I store all my cards. I thought that was odd but followed along. I walk into and see 3 boxes nicely gift wrapped. They were 3 hobby boxes of 2012 topps series 1,2 & Update. Pretty awesome gift.  Again, the sentimental value will far exceed any monteary value for gifts given like this. But nonetheless I got the value back in the boxes with a really nice pull of Mike Trout Black ROY card #/62 along with the SSP Prince George among other decent relics and such. Great night tearing through packs and relaxing at home.

The King of the Diamond

I was always a big fan of the diamond king inserts when I was a kid. My favorites were the 1988 Donruss set, I just thought they had a very unique design and artwork. I got this fairly rare Ichiro Diamond Kings card with game used base and bat card last week. It's serial #/25.  Im not sure what it is about game used cards but I am definitely a sucker for them especially for my favorite player Ichiro. This is one of the few non jersey game used cards I have of his as the bat.base relics are few and far between.  As his career comes to an end, maybe by the end of this next season its always good to remember that Ichiro has been the King of the Diamond and appreciate his unbelievable dominance in the 2000's. This will be recalled further Im sure when he finally does retire.

A new hope

It was a big weekend for the locals here in Seattle. The seahawks unfortunately lost a tough game to their rival 49ers, and my alma mater hired a great top tier coach Chris Petersen but most shocking news of the week was word that the Mariners somehow signed Yankee Allstar Robinson Cano. I understand alot can go wrong with type of big time deal i.e. Arod, Prince Fielder, Josh Hamilton, & Pujols to name a few but its the sparkle of hope that the Mariners finally shelled out the super big bucks for the most sought after free agent this offseason. Every year us poor Seattle folk dream big in the winter and lose hope and patience by mid-summer.  I am cautiously optimistic and already came to accept that even getting 5 years of productivity is a win in this situation is considered a good deal in this day and age. My hope is the young up and coming guys help give Cano some help. Felix will be Felix and these 2 young guns Seager & Franklin hopefully have a good offseason and contribute to a season of hope. This is one of my favorite hometown cards I own, Im sure many people have their same favorites for their respective teams as triple threads come up with some of the coolest designs.

Welcome to the beginning.

I always wanted to document the fun cards I  collect and share them with people who have the same passion and fun collecting baseball cards. I'm sure the majority of the time I'm the only one ever reading this, so then I guess it becomes a fun personal journal.   I was an avid collector 20 years ago as a kid and started back up about 3 years ago.  I realized I never really grew up and still share the same fun collecting my favorite players cards, organizing and displaying them. Locally the interest in baseball card collecting is moderate at best but seems to be strong across the nation.  When I first started getting back into the hobby 3 years back my wife bought me a cheap $5  topps rack pack at Target while shopping. I opened it up and found a blue redemption card in it, at the time I was still getting my feet wet on the state of the hobby and never seen one of these before but it stated I was due to receive a auto card which got me super excited. I did my research and realized these are actually pretty rare considering it came in a cheap rack pack. I'm not a big fan of Matt Holliday and I could have sold the redemption card at the height of its popularity after the cardinals won the world series but it has way too much sentimental value considering my wife got me the pack and it served as my first true nice card as my collection was just beginning again. So I redeemed it and received it about a month later and my collection kept growing ever since (though I still havent pulled another redemption card from retail since).