Welcome - a bit about me.

Welcome to my new blog.  Hope you all enjoy it as I am sure many of you out there can relate to me.

I am a 30 year old

 reborn collector.  I have been collecting -something- as long as I can

 remember.  Around age 4 I started with boogers, but quickly decided that moving on to GI Joes and Transformers was far more rewarding.  Sometime around 1987 I got my first pack of baseball cards (why couldn't I have been smart and went Fleer basketball instead).  Good old 1987 Topps.  I had boxes full (still do if anyone needs kindling), my m

om would pick a pack up for me when I was "good" out shopping, amazing how relative that was hehe.  In 88 I moved more to Donruss where I acquired a fabled

 Gregg Jeffries card - holy crap, it was worth almost $10 in Beckett.  My collecting continued along these lines until sometime around 1990-1992 when I stared really getting serious about playing baseball, i was quite a catcher in my younger days and my coaches affectionately nick-named me Yogi after the Yankee great.  Not having a clue who that was I of course ran home to Beckett to look up his cards and was blown away.  Soon after I acquired my very

 own Yogi Berra a 1954 Topps #50,

 It was not in great shape but I was truly blown away by my mom agreeing to spend $70 on a card for me at a LCS (alot of money for my family).  It remains one of the few cards I still have from my pioneering collecting days and a personal favorite.  

Around this time I found a new more affordable personal hero from the team I selected in 1989 during the WS to be MY team to collect.  A young fellow named Mark McGwire with a penchant for hitting HUGE home runs and injuring his ankle.  From this time until my retirement from collecting sports cards in 1998, when I moved on to a game called Magic the Gathering to scratch both my competitive and collecting itches with the loss of high school athletics, I amazed a huge collection with over 95% of his cards from the time period including my all time favorite card the 1991 Topps Desert Shield Mark McGwire #270.  To say I was ecstatic when #62 was hit was a slight understatement and I had a bit of longing for my old hobby at this time.  But alas things change, I began to lose serious faith in not only the hobby but humanity when my youth pastor at my local church became one of the largest pack searchers/eBay sellers of the time period.  And I found myself drifting further and further away from these cards.

Fast forward 12 years to February of 2009 and we find myself here, walking into a LCS with no

 idea what the hobby had become, my love of baseball completely vanquished by steroids and the Carolina Panthers.  My first experience back in the card store brought make so many memories, good and bad of my grandfather, good deals, false accusations it was almost overwhelming.  But seeing as how I was there, have grown up a bit and have some disposable income I found myself drawn to a box of Topps 2008 Triple Threads the first pack contai

ned this fascinating Joe Flacco/Ray Rice Dual Crest Auto NFL Shield card and I was again officially hooked all over again.

These days I am dipping my feet into the hobby slowly.  I love to bust wax, will have some video links up soon, am active on www.sportscardforum.com and thoroughly enjoy reading some of the blogs out there these days (Sports Cards Uncensored, Cardboard Reflux, and The Sports Card File) - by the way feel free to recommend new ones to me, always looking for reading material.

I am focusing (and this blog will do so primarily as well) on football cards for the foreseeable future.  I am collecting Jonathan Stewart, Deangelo Williams and other players from the best team ever to call Charlotte, NC home :)  Over the next few days I will be beginning to show off my PC, mail days and breaks.  (If I work out all the kinks with this blog thing hehe) I hope to  eventually provide group breaks of boxes and cases - I still have my love of breaking wax, even if none of the cards are for me.

This is strictly a hobby for me, I'm not here to make my fortune.  I am here to have fun, like alot of you (especially in our current economy) I don't like my career particularly, have a loving wife and sometimes just want a mental escape.  I have a dark sense of humor at times, like silly jokes and TV shows, love movies and sports.  So if you think like me drop me a line, and if you are in the Charlotte area maybe we can grab lunch one day.

Bobby