RIP Steve McNair

I never was a huge fan of Steve or anything, but he always seemed like he was a really nice guy and a pretty darn good football player. Such a sad way to go out.

(h/t News Channel 5)

Update on the Day Of Freedom

Boys and girls, while this is a day to recognize the freedoms in the country, my freedom will come in 25 days when I finish taking the bar exam. I'm studying hard and trying to kick as much legal butt as possible. I have bought 3 packs of cards in this time span: One of Topps series 2 a jumbo of OPC and a pack of 09 Goudey. Nothing in those was of note other than a few base set Braves. But I wish you all a happy 4th and look forward to picking every thing back up here in August. Until then I leave you with this which should be watched every July 4:

Finals Are Next Week

And I'm going to watch this before every one of them to get myself ready.

I really swear I'm still here

Guys sorry about the lack of posting in the last few months or so.  I'm graduating law school in the next few weeks as well as moving.  And then I'll be studying for the bar all summer and then moving again.  But I'll try to post a few things here and there, but they won't be too frequent.  Thanks to you all who still visit the blog even though I don't write anything.  Hopefully in August I'll be writing more frequently as things will have slowed down by then.

it's a Love/Hate Relationship

With this weekend being Valentine's, I hope that everyone out there has a great one.  I'm trying to stay away from the self loathing as much as possible.  But, I think what I'm going to do, on the coattails of my last post is all this weekend post things that I love and things that I strongly dislike.  I don't want to use the term hate as it has a lot of bad connotations.  Well, unless I'm talking about certain people.  So I think this is going to be Teams that I love and Teams that I strongly dislike.

Teams I love (or have a decent liking of):

Atlanta Braves

Atlanta Thrashers

Atlanta Falcons

Atlanta Hawks

Jacksonville Jaguars

Furman Paladins

Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets

Florida Gators

Duke Blue Devils

Chattanooga Lookouts

Boston Red Sox

Chicago Cubs

Colorado Avalanche

Team Zissou

Teams I Strongly Dislike:

Georgia Bulldogs

Wofford Terriors

Appalachian State Mountaineers

Citadel Bulldogs

North Carolina Tar Heels

Florida State Seminoles

Ohio State University Buckeyes

Michiagan Wolverines

New York Mets

New York Yankees

Los Angeles Dodgers (Blame this one on the old NL West)

Los Angeles Lakers

Boston Celtics

James Madison University Dukes

Tampa Bay Bucs

Carolina Panthers

Dallas Cowboys

Philadelphia Phillies

Toronto Blue Jays

New Orleans Saints

Detroit Pistons

I have a lot more dislike than love apparently.

Things That I Am Not Particularly Fond Of

Topps Sterling Cards without Autographs

The price point of Topps Triple Threads

People who get excited over pulling a serial numbered card of the player's jersey number

People who do the same thing to a 1/# or to a card that's the last one printed.

Lima Beans

People who don't care about base cards at all

Nickelback

2008 Sweet Spot

Grey or White game-used swatches

The Mets

Having box hits be scrubs

Horrible Collation

Pop Ups

Blog Bat-Around #4

This is the 4th one of these, yet the first one I have participated in.  I'd like to thank Dinged Corners for hosting this one.  The topic is about the value of cards and what we should buy and hold for the future.  First, if you're in the hobby strictly for profit, get out.  I understand if you make a living that way owning a physical card shop or an e-bay store or something of that nature and your derive most of your income from cards.  However, if you are just in it purely for investment and the return you hope you'll get, it's not worth it.  Your ROI (return on investment) is much greater elsewhere.   Secondly, there are the obvious choices: Vintage (1984 or before) cards of already established stars, autographed cards, cut signature cards, some game-used cards, prospects that pan out, etc.  Here's the problem I see with these cards.  Everyone will be or already is collecting them.  If you look on YouTube, as painful as it might be to watch some of the box breaks, most everyone just goes after the hits and chunks the base cards to the side.  While a decent amount of bloggers are set collectors, they (we) represent a small fraction of the whole of the collecting community most of which is made up of people going after the hits.  You've got to figure out what people aren't collecting right now to determine what will be more valuable in the future.  That's why I think the things to go after are complete sets of base cards that come from products that are driven by hits.  In baseball, it'd be Sweet Spot, Prime Cuts, Topps Finest, Bowman Sterling, UD Ultimate, UD Premiere and other sets along that line.  

I know that many of the high end to mid range sets often are all serial numbered or have tons of short prints.  I think that's another reason why these sets are going to be worth having.  They're in limited quantity and they're hard to put together.  They're not like Heritage or Allen and Ginter which are set collector favorites.  The price point as well as the difficulty of set completion drives set builders away from these products.  Not to mention that these products are not focused at set builder as I previously stated.  They are focused on the collectors looking for the hits.  Imagine if you could get an entire base set of Topps Sterling.  Or National Treasures football.  Even something like 2007 Sweet Spot Classic.  All are limited in their production and would be hard to complete, but having a full set of those cards would be very rare.  And worth holding on to.  It might be worthwhile to become a set builder for the future even if you're looking for the hits right now.