If You Build It, They Will Come

 Listen, I know this blog is dedicated to the Iowa collector in me, but I do have other collections.  Maybe not as many as Dime Box guy (http://baseballdimebox.blogspot.com/), but enough to be crazy.  So when I bring home a stack from a card show, I'll sort it by sport.  Then I break it down further, which I'll explain using Baseball.  The categories are: 1. Favorite Team : Twins 2. Iowa Players : (i.e. Michael Wacha, Bob Feller, Jeff Clement) 3. Cards to trade 4. Players I watched in the minors (Lived in Omaha so a few Omaha Royals) 5. Random players I collect : i.e. Kenny Lofton, Will Clark, Buster Posey 6. Random sets I collect: Topps Rookie Cup, Hologram sets, Ginter inserts, Diamond Kings 7. Busts Today I'm going to talk about #7, my Bust collection.  I collect RCs of busts.  When I say bust, I mean a player who came into the league super hyped, and just didn't pan out for whatever reason.  So Nathan Peterman would not count because there jus...

 I'm back from my trip to the National!  You may be thinking, "Wasn't that 2 weeks ago?  I've already consumed all the National content I need.  This is old news!"  You're not wrong, but we tacked on a trip to visit the family afterwards and I have only now reached home. Now comes the time where I finally dig through my finds, my trade bait, and everything else.  I'll categorize, sort and collate them.  I'll update my checklists, and feel that wonderful sense of satisfaction  when I add the 3 new George Kittle cards (yay!) along with 100 or so new cards made since I last update and somehow my overall percentage drops (gah!)  That's why its fun to find cards of older less popular players because there is nowhere but up to go for that %. Anyway, it was a good show this year.  I met my brother there on Thursday and stayed through Sunday morning.  It was nice to hang with him (first time since the pandemic!)  and thousands of our c...

 In part one I discussed the Iowa Connections for the Nation Sports Collectors Convention this year in Chicago.  However, the autograph guests are only part of the show.  We can't forget the dealers! This years dealers are well represented from Iowa.  They include: Hog's Collectables from Burlington Ripping Vintage Packs from Spencer Dan Even from Dubuque Aarons Sports Cards from West Des Moines Andrew Inmon from Johnston Jerry Nelson Ent. from Clear Lake Crescent Collectibles from Crescent Liberty Sports Cards from North Liberty

 New additions to the Autograph lineup at the National, and new additions to the Iowa Acquaintances.  Here's the additions: Vida Blue, Burlington Bees, 1968 / Iowa Oaks, 1970 Ok, it's only one addition out of the group, but a fun one as Vida had two minor league stops in Iowa.  Does that mean I'd need two autographs for my mythical collection. Obviously!   Name - Iowa Connection $(auto price) + $(inscription price) Vida Blue, Burlington Bees, 1968 / Iowa Oaks, 1970 $40 + $20 So added to the $750 in the previous post, we are up to $870 now.  Woo!

NSCC 2021 Iowa Connections The 2021 NSCC is alive again after coming down with COVID last year and not being able to show up to Atlantic City.  This year its back stronger than ever and visiting Chicago July 28th - Aug 1st.  It's a great place to find some of those hard to find items for your collection, and hopefully I'll be coming home with stacks of cards for my Iowa Collection. The list of autograph guests is pretty large this year, but it is severely lacking in Iowa Connections.  Out of them all, I could only find one guest that qualifies: Stan Bahnsen from Council Bluffs.  Which is great, but we just want more.   If we expand out a bit further past the Iowa Connection, to maybe an Iowa Acquaintance, an Iowa Affair (still workshopping the name), we can add few more names.  These are the players who have played for team in Iowa (a minor league team, an arena team, etc), and will be at the show: Rich Gossage - Iowa Oaks 1973  Ron Kittle - Clin...