If You Build It, They Will Come

Well, I finally caved.  Unable to find 2022 Topps in the wild, I purchased two blaster boxes from Target.com and the defeat was complete.  "But why?!" thinks the loyal reader, wondering why purchasing two boxes of cards at not jacked up rates from the ease of my home is defeat?   Well, part of my collecting joy is the journey, not always the destination.  I love to go to card shows and dig through boxes of cards to find that one weird card I've never thought I have.  I'd love to have found these boxes in the wild and have a fun story about it, but sometime you can't complain that you had success in the way you weren't expecting. Speaking of the boxes, I know you are all wandering if I francoly pulled the card everyone is looking for, and yes I can successfully say that I pulled the Mitch Keller base Topps card.  It was in in my third pack, and life can continue a bit longer now.   All joking aside, I did not pull the Franco RC, but did find the "Slugger R

Baseball is updated in TCDB, and is the last major update. Baseball Iowa Connections will fall under three major categories.  MLB players, minor league players and the slim slice of players who were good enough to play in the Perfect Game high school showcase, but didn't have much of a pro career. I have 1627 Iowa Connections currently in my spreadsheet, by far the largest group.  This is due to the number of years baseball has been around (pre-1900) and the fact that there are probably 200 professional baseball teams in the US alone and not even considering foreign leagues. 789 players tracked do not have a single card in TCDB.  These are minor leaguers who didn't play in an era minor league cards or the team didn't have cards made (or yet tracked in TCDB).  These also include major leaguers who didn't play enough to have a card made, many in the early years of baseball.     I developed a ranking system for the player collections to determine which players I have the b

 Listen, I'm also done talking about 2022 Topps Series One.  Everyone has posted their hits ... except me who has still yet to find a pack/box in the wild yet.  However, I keep finding Iowa Connections to this set and I can't let all 5 of my blog follower miss out on the important details. To recap, Mitch Keller is the only solid Iowa Connection in the main checklist.  4 players from the White Sox and Yankees have short print versions with Iowa Corn as the backdrop.  Now, I have discovered an Iowa Corn cameo card: Craig Kimbrel in action card during the Field of dreams game last year.  That is definately the Field of Dreams field there.  Scanning the rest of the Yankees and White Sox cards in the set, I do not see any others, but this will be something to track in Series Two. Now when adding a player, its always interesting to see how many parallels there are.  In the 80s there would be two versions: Base and Tiffany.  1991 you added Desert Storm and micro for the short term.