Hi, I'm Jim, and I'll be blogging here sometimes, so here's a synopsis of my card collecting through age eleven: bluntly, I had a ton of worthless shit. Box sets of 1996 Upper Deck Collector's Choice have yet to give me the return on investment that I was looking for, along with my garage sale purchased set of 1991 Donaruss. Collecting was always enjoyable. I was always able to out collect my brother, whether with my vast Jason Jacome collection, or the fact that I had at least triple the amount of cards he did always brought a huge grin to my face. But, as I matured, by matured I mean entered the 5th grade, baseball cards began to lose their luster.
I slowly became aware that my boxes upon boxes of 1995 Score were not gaining and value, and my 1999 Upper Deck Collector's Choice box set was actually losing value. With an allowance of only 5 dollars a week, I was presented a choice no 11 year old boy should ever have to make. Do I buy a pack of Fleer or do I buy some a tube of green hair gel? I chose the hair gel.
As Andy mentioned earlier, MLB Showdown will be mentioned alot, and I'll explain why. Even though I had ceased in my card collecting, I had not ceased my awful posting ability on Showdowncards.com, attempting to justify my reasoning behind why I though Ramon Hernandez was the best catcher in baseball, and my rational behind my outlandish statement that Linkin Park was the best band in history. I met Andy on these forums in 2004 or so, and behind is uncanny ability to insult me, we formed a decently strong bond. We figured out that we lived 5 minutes from each other, and began to hang out outside of the internet, eventually got jobs together, and now we're pretty good friends.
Now, as to how that ties into my card collecting is this: Andy can convince me to do pretty much anything. Maybe it's because he is a really convincing person, or maybe because I am really retarded, but it really doesn't matter. Andy had convinced to go to a few card shows with him, and I had almost done some stupid things like buy a guy's entire collection of Kevin Elster's. I'll admit that my interest in MLB Showdown had grown vastly since we starting hanging out (it had never really gone away, I just stopped collecting), but any type of baseball card made after 2000 still was not on my radar, but whenever I would see any MLB Showdown at these shows I would wrecklessly buy them, regardless of how many Jose Vidro's I already had.
We ended up going to The National (card show) last year, and I caved to buying newer cards. 2007 Allen & Ginter had just dropped, and despite knowing absolutely nothing about it, other then Andy telling me I could pull things such as George Washington hair relic cards, I bought two boxes at 100 each. I pulled absolutely nothing worthwhile, but I was reintroduced to the feeling of opening packs of cards, and I got hooked.
So, even though for the past 7 years all my cards have been sitting in my closet organized in their boxes collecting dust and losing value, I have somewhat begun collecting again, nearly finishing my Allen & Ginter set. I am (sadly) eagerly anticipating mid-July when '08 Ginter hits the shelves, and I can buy myself two boxes and pull that William Henry Harrison cut kleenex Auto that I want so desperately. Until then, I'll just be blogging about the random shit Andy convinces me to buy, like a box of Bazooka '96 or something stupid.
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