If You Build It, They Will Come

 When I started collecting back in the day, it was exclusively baseball and football cards.  Basketball cards moved in a little bit later, especially with the 1992 season containing the Shaq and Zo rookies.  Everything else was junk.  Hockey, racing, and soccer were not readily available, and I had low interest at the time.  But Hollywood cards were complete junk to me.  That was the stuff kids collect.  Alf cards, He-Man cards, A-Team card were not worth the cardboard they were printed on. How wrong I was! The stage I'm at in life, I'd love to see more things represented on cardboard.  I'd love to see a year end set that captures the pop culture.  Ted Lasso cards, Shang-Chi cards, Adele cards, Disney World 50th cards, Succession cards, anything that capture the year 2021.  Of course, I'd love to see these in a Topps like set, so that it was available in reasonably priced blasters, but a person can dream. Regardless, since I wasn't colle...

 So my trajectory to being an insane collector of all Iowa Connections probably started off the same as many of you who started collecting in the late 80s and early 90s.  Cards were plentiful (not junk to me!), and opportunity abounded for anyone interested.  You could buy packs at the local drug store (Osco was my local one), card shops and at the local card show.   Opening a pack of cards is fun, but there had to a point to it.  For some, it was the pursuit of value.  Buying a pack for 50 cents and selling/trading your way to a dollar.  Building a collection was my way, which I suppose is value in its own too. An easy was to start was with the set builds.  You had checklists and would fill your binders with the empty spots available for those missing cards.  I wasn't much of a set builder, I had no interest in gathering the Kevin Seitzers and Flipper Andersons of the world.   I was a player collector, and my player of choice ...