Happy Valentines Day!

It's Valentine's Day or as some prefer to celebrate Singles Awareness Day. But I've decided to run a little contest. E-mail me by 9 PM EST tonight (2/14/08) with a story involving collecting and your significant other or ex-significant other. It can be funny, sad, sweet or just down right strange or anything whatesoever. The 5 best will be posted later tonight and they will all get a surprise from me in the mail. One caveat, the surprise will be mailed in a regular white standard sized envelope if appropriate. So send away!

UPDATE:  I'm extending the deadline to midnight because that's when V-Day is over isn't it?  

COTW for 2/10/08: 2005 Sweet Spot Classic Dale Murphy Sweet Spot Signatures #MU

One of my collecting goals is to have autographs of all of the Braves legends. I've got my Aaron, Neikro, Pendelton, Glavine, Smoltz, Maddux, Chipper and still need a Spahn, Matthews and of course the ultimate would be if I could somehow get a Babe Ruth, even though he was with the Braves at the very end of his career. But up until last week, I didn't have a Dale Murphy. The greatest Braves player in the 80's, somehow Murphy had always eluded me. I came across this card on eBay and got it for around $10. Very cool card and a very cool auto. This is also my first Sweet Spot Signatures card and I find it to be even more impressive in person than just the picture. However, I don't know if I'll be buying an $125 tin of these any time soon when I can just get the autograph I want for 10% or less of the price. But then again, you never know.

COTW for 2/3/08: Jarrod Saltalamacchia Custom Index Card

After I graduated college, I got an internship back home and lived with my parents for a year. In that time, because there wasn't a whole lot to do in town, I started collecting cards seriously again as well as sending stuff through the mail (TTM) for players to sign. When I didn't have a card of a new prospect or an older player, I would make a custom index card (CIC) and have them sign it and they turn out looking pretty good. So for spring training in 2006, I sent a CIC to Braves star prospect catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia. This is what I got back.

Now there are probably several reasons why he did this. I know when people enter the leauge, they tell the new kids to not sign anything that is not MLBPA or MLB approved and I know that they tell them not to sign index cards because people can use their signature somehow and forge it and steal their idendtity or something along those lines. Now, while I was disappointed to not get this signed, I was actually quite happy with this return as I got a nice little handwritten note from Jarrod. So for me, this is as good as, or better, than an autograph. I did end up getting a few of his Upper Deck Star Rookie cards and he did sign them for me.

Chipper Jones: All-Star, MVP, AJC Blogger?

David O'Brien writes a great Braves blog for the AJC and I always enjoy reading his updates. He posted a blog about John Smoltz the other day and yesterday, Chipper Jones decided to get on the blog and post some comments. I really enjoyed this for a few reasons. #1 because he is talking just like a regular person and as someone who loves his team and loves that the fans love his team. #2 because the questions he answered were answered truthfully. He didn't play coy and beat around the bush or allude to things with cryptic sayings. To me, in the age where sports stars use a blog to push themselves or their agenda (I'm looking at you Curt Schilling and Gilbert Arenas), it was refreshing to see one who just wanted to shoot the bull with some fans and be excited with them about the upcoming season. And this is how he seems to be in real life as well. I finally got to meet the man at spring traning last year and he was chatty and funny and even talked about playing golf with Smoltz and Tiger and was ragging on Smoltz about his golf game. My favorite parts of Chipper's blogging are that he'll miss Shea Stadium because he owned the Mets there. Also the fact that he named one of kids Shea is hilarious. He said that resigning Tex right now looks 50/50 and that he's in a Braves uni for at least 2 more years, but he hopes to get an extension worked out before that happens. This just solidifies to me that he's one of my favorite players ever.

Tex's "O" face

It's better than the airbrushed mu-mu

More Political Cards?

Think you were getting free from what some are calling crap inserts with the candidate cards in 2008 Topps by buying 2008 Upper Deck? Not so fast my friend! Perusing eBay today I found many auctions for these. Of course Upper Deck's cards actually have a baseball theme and spoofs each politician with a famous baseball moment. This is what could be a partial checklist. The wild card features Jon Stewart and Bill O'Reilly doing their best Nolan Ryan and Robin Ventura.

Rudy Giuliani & Jeffrey Maier , 1

John Edwards & Moonlight Graham , 2

John McCain & Ted Williams , 3

Barick Obama & Jermaine Dye , 4

Mitt Romney & Carlton Fisk , 5

Fred Thompson & Babe Ruth , 6

Al Gore & Chuck Knoblauch , 8

Wild Card , 9

Super Tuesday!

Being a political science major, the only thing this time of year that gets me more excited than pitchers and catchers reporting is election results. Now I know this is fairly geeky, but I don't care. Anywho, eTopps today not only combined political candidates with cards, but they did so in the form of one of my favorite sets Allen & Ginter. Of course, I've placed an order for the whole set. Now later this week, I start my quest to collect the whole set of the 2008 Topps Presidential Candidate inserts.