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 ...

Football is finally updated in TCDB.  This probably my best category in the database. Football Iowa Connections will fall under four categories...mostly.  NFL players (Shonn Green, Kurt Warner), CFL players (Drew Tate, Randy Duncan), Arena players (Kurt Warner again) and college football players and coaches (Hayden Fry, Nile Kinnick) make up a majority of the collection. I have 1009 Iowa Connections currently in my spreadsheet, and of the 1009, 611 of them have at least one card tracked in TCDB.   I developed a ranking system for the player collections to determine which players I have the best (and worst) collections of. For context, of the 611 players with cards, I have at least one card of  274 players.   Other numbers of note: 164 / 274 Collections are in the Top 5 50 Collections are #1 Best #1 Collections are David Johnson, Darren Sproles and Bob Sanders I have 70% of Bruce Reimers cards, but remain in 22nd place.

 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...

 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 I post a couple of weeks ago that I was starting to play around with TCdb.  I've been a loyal Beckett user for years now, and have become more down on it lately.  For collectors like me, it seems that TCdb has gathered a pretty decent sized following and positive reviews.  But how will it work for this collection?  Here's what I found. TCdb Pros Cost You can't complain about the cost (free!).   Its like some of the other big services I use for my collecting, mainly wikipedia and [sport name]-reference.com in that they provide so much information but I just don't know how they do it well.   The Checklists The database is very comparable to Beckett.  Beckett does have some cards that TCdb doesn't have, and visa-versa.  Notable for this blog, Beckett does not list the 2017 Panini Iowa set, and TCdb doesn't have all the Iowa Hawkeye Football team sets from the late 80's, early 90's.   Rankings! After I enter in my card for...

 I'm a child of the 80s and 90s, and when you collected cards during that time, you probably had a Beckett magazine.  (Or Tuff Stuff, but really that was the Go-Bots to Beckett's Transformers).  You'd look through the articles to see what cool cards were coming out, read the back for the card shows in your area, and flip through the prices to see what cards were going up in price, and which had the dreaded down arrow.  There would always be a month where the community had collectively given up on a prospect and his cards went spiraling downward, think Ryan Leaf. Well, once I got back into collecting in my adult years, I naturally led my way back to Beckett, and have built up a pretty substantial Organize. All my wants and all my trade bait in one place.  I still didn't do pricing, because that was pretty expensive, so I'd use the free organize and then I'd use the print magazines for prices.  Because besides current year cards, most cards are generally pret...