If You Build It, They Will Come

The player collector post 2000 has had to change their mindset from when I was a kid.  It is not unreasonable for me to say I am going to collect every Kevin Wickander card.  In TCDB he has 78 cards listed, and while I'm not near close to that goal (I have 27 cards), there is not a card in that list that should be impossible to get.  The difficult ones would be Tiffany cards, minor league cards, team issued cards, Desert Shield, and 1997 Donruss Signature cards, the rarest being 100.   Kevin Wickander is not a Hall of Famer, nor a fan favorite.  No intended shade here, just saying that he hasn't had a card made since 1997.  So I can actually collect all his cards and be done.  Kirby Puckett has not played since 1995 and continues to have cards made.  So, even if I collected every single Puckett card, by next month I will be needing more cards. Wickander's lowest serial numbered card is 100.  Tough, but not impossible.  Puckett will ...

1995 would mark the last year of Kirby's career.  Kirby suffered an eye ailment in the next spring training and never played with the Twins again.  So, from his first year in the majors (1984) to his last, the cards span 13 pages in TCDb, meaning somewhere between 1200-1300 cards for his major league career.   1996 set inclusions are not unreasonable, as he was with the team for spring training and those checklists are done pretty early, but for sake of argument we are sticking with 1995.  There are 43 total pages of Puckett cards, meaning that about 70% of his cards have come out after he retired.  One thing that jumps out when scanning through the cards I'm missing currently is that there are a lot of variations on cards that have popped up over the years.  Three types specifically come to mind. One is the Donruss variations where the Leaf Inc on the back either ends with a period... or doesn't. Second, the 1991 Upper Deck Hologram variations, and th...

 Somehow I ended up with a binder with just 1991 cards in it.  So I'm not going to make big strides here, but that's ok.  1991 was a pretty significant year for Kirby Puckett, as that was the year that the Twins won their second World Series in 5 seasons. I barely remember 1987, but 1991 is burned in my brain.  Even the fact that I slept through a bunch of Game 7, but was definitely awake for the end.  Game 6 was the Kirby Game, with a leaping catch against the plexiglass and the game-winning home run in extras to win it.   By 1991 the cards you find in the checklist are starting to become a bit more uniform.  Less unlicensed cards, less drug store cards, and more national sets and inserts.  O-Pee-Chee is becoming its own set, Topps stamped their cards with Desert Storm foil for the troops, and Upper Deck apparently ran out of foil for the backs of their cards and used 1990 and 1992 foils. So, TCDB focuses on cards for a player, but that's no...

What is a player card?  Before I get into the results of the 1989-90 binder, I wanted to ponder that question for a little bit.  I would imagine that when we look at a players checklist on TCDb, we naturally assume that the players name and photo are prominent on the card.   Basic Player Card: Name on Front, Photo of Player As you read through a players checklist, especially a player of Puckett's stature, you'll notice that you get other cards that don't quite fit that name/photo narrative. Plus, we've added Kent Hrbek to the photo as well.  Does the player have to be solo? Super Team Card: Shared photo but no name Is this a Kirby Puckett card?  I guess its a bit of a cheat because his name is kinda on the card (his jersey).  But what about this variation from 2015? Donruss card: Photo on front, nickname on front? What if it's artwork?  Not a photo. Diamond King card: Name, no photo Now let me blow your mind... 1992 Confex: No photo, no name, artw...

 This blog was started with the intention of giving back to the collecting community.  I'm a collector of all things Iowa, and I have gathered all sorts of knowledge and tidbits that relate to this collection that someday someone else might enjoy or use for their own collections.   I do have to admit though, its probably mostly for myself.  I can brain dump ideas here, and feel that all that time I spend researching Iowa Connections in the NFL playoffs is not a waste of time, its a blog post! Well, despite the stated goal of making this exclusively an Iowa Connections blog, I have to be true to myself sometimes, which means that I'm going to start a series of post about my Kirby Puckett collection.  He was my first collection, and is probably my most in depth collection. My first Kirby Puckett card was his 1989 Topps.  Looking at it now, I'm not sure this isn't the worst Kirby Puckett card there is.  Subject looks bored, the angle is off, and I'm ...

 Nothing like being a week behind already to start 2022.  Everyone online has been tweeting and posting about their 2022 collecting goals since just before the New Year, and I'm only just getting around to it now.  Just like the trade offers sitting in my TCDB account, I will get to you when I can! Goals being listed typically fall into three categories: 1. Organization 2. Acquisition 3. Growing the community I've thought about what I want my goals to be this year, but I need to be honest with myself.  I will fail at 90% of my goals not from want or effort.  I just have grand goals that just don't work with work, family, and a reasonable budget.  (What, collecting every card of every person with an Iowa Connection isn't an attainable goal?)  First, I need to list all my major goals: Organization 1. Reorganize card closet, buy appropriate boxes, and get those cards sorted! 2. Update TCDB with my Iowa Collection wants 3. Update TCDB with my trade bait (D...

 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 ...

 When I was a young kid, I along with everyone I knew depended on two sources for how much a card was worth.  How much a dealer was selling a card for was one way, but the main way was to look up that card in Beckett.  Beckett listed out the notable cards in every set and set a value for them.  You'd grab every issue and see if the cards you owned had that coveted up arrow indicating that the card had gone up from the previous issue.  How much?  You'd have to do that research on your own. I have been reliant to those numbers for years.  Almost more now, even though I know that the economics behind it is bunk.  The value of a card is not what a magazine says it is, but what you can get for it.  However, it does help out a guy who can't possible keep up with everything in the hobby just to have a baseline. Back in 1996, I came across a stack of Steve McNair rookie cards.  Fifty, I think, and the dealer offered them to me for a quarter each...