If You Build It, They Will Come

 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...

 In one of the biggest games in the Iowa / Iowa State rivalry over the weekend, the Hawkeyes beat the Cyclones on Saturday to take the unofficial crown of Best in Iowa.  The game was a battle of two teams ranked in the top 10 and was featured on College Football Countdown as Reece and the gang came to Ames and welcomed Ashton Kutcher who rode in on a John Deere to declare his support of the Hawkeyes. The week prior Iowa State beat UNI in a close game.  UNI doesn't often get to claim Best in Iowa, but it has happened in the past.  Three times I have counted, which is pretty good considering every game is on the road for them and they are FCS.  The three times were: 1992: UNI beats ISU 27-10 (+17) at Ames, and Iowa only beats ISU 14-7 (+7) in Iowa City. 2007: UNI beats ISU 24-13 at Ames, and Iowa State beats Iowa 15-13, so the Transitive property is in effect. 2013: UNI beats ISU 28-20 (+8) at Ames, and Iowa only ISU 27-21 (+6) in Ames. In 2009 UNI lost to Iowa 17...

 Yesterday I posted the start of the season NFL Iowa Connections for players and coaches.  Today I have the practice squads and front office personnel.  Lighter amounts for both here, but there is less to start with.  At the end, I total each team's Iowa Connection score (2 points for roster/coaches and 1 point for practice and front office).  Currently (teams are welcome to add players throughout the season) our rooting interest lies with....the Buffalo Bills!   Note: Front office in  italics Update 1: Mike Daniels signed with Cincinnati and Jaleel Johnson signed with New Orleans practice squads.  All NFC teams now have an Iowa Connection. Update 2: Jaleel Johnson plucked from the Saints practice squad by the Houston Texans Update 3: Cole Banwart signed to the practice squad by the New York Giants 2 - Philadelphia : Ross Pierschbacher (Cedar Falls), Matt Leo (ISU) 2 - Denver :  Shaun Beyer / Barrington Wade (Iowa) 1 - New England :...

Here's the initial list of players with Iowa Connections in the NFL in 2021. Seven teams are starting the year at zero, which I assume they are having discussions about in the background.  Tomorrow I'll list Iowa Connections on the practice squad and we'll declare the Iowa Connection "Who to Root For".  Buffalo, Green Bay and Jacksonville are trying hard to be that team this year. Note: Coaches in  italics Iowa Hawkeyes : 37 Iowa State Cyclones : 14 Northern Iowa Panthers : 9 Drake Bulldogs : 3 Ellsworth Community College : 1 North Iowa Area Community College: 1 Des Moines : 2 Iowa City : 1 Ames : 1 Cedar Rapids: 1 6 - Buffalo : Ike Boettger /  AJ Epenesa  / Micah Hyde (Iowa), AJ Klein (ISU), Spencer Brown (UNI), Matt Haack (W. Des Moines) 5 - Green Bay : Jerry Montgomery, Jack Heflin (Iowa), Allen Lazard (ISU), Ryan Mahaffey (UNI), Dominique Dafney (W. Des Moines ) 5 - Jacksonville :  C.J. Beathard  (Iowa),  Darrell Bevell,  Brian Sc...

 With the news last week that Fanatics was going to be taking over the sports card scene in a few years, everyone jumped online with their reactions.  My reaction at the time was similar to what I was seeing from a majority of people.  Sadness over the end of an era, worry that change will make things worse, and anger that money is at the root of this all. The most positive reactions to the news was, "Let's wait and see."  I didn't see anyone posting why they thought that Fanatics was going to be good (other than a couple notes on distribution).  I saw a few happy posts that weren't pro Fanatics, rather just reveling in the old power structure in the #thehobby crashing down. You'd think all this sadness would be accompanied by a bunch of posts reminiscing about Topps, but even the scorned lover of baseball was the target of our dismay.  Complaints about distribution, cost, poor design, overuse of vintage designs, and over-reliance on the same players every ...

 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...

 Last night Major League Baseball staged a game a the Field of Dreams, located in Dyersville, Iowa.  The field is the original field used in the filming of the movie, "Field of Dreams", starring Kevin Costner.  The was slightly modified (an actual fence was installed to prevent Aaron Judge from crossing over accidently), but the spirit was there. Well, the spirit and $1000 for a ticket.  With limited seating, the ticket was hot.  MLB set up a lottery system for White Sox fans and Iowa residents, but most Iowans had to watch it as Moonlight Graham wanted, on TV between a bunch of commercials. I may sound bitter. I understand the economics of it all, but knowing the history of MLB and Iowa it is OK to be a little jaded.  After all, this is the first game that MLB has let Iowa watch in a while. To those MLB fans, the best way to watch MLB games at home is through MLB.tv.  You can watch your team live or later if your schedule demands.  However, in or...

 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...

 So while my flat rate box was a bit of a dud on the Iowa Connection side, I did ok on my Fuzzy Iowa Connections.  Fuzzy Connections (FC) are typically players who played for one of the minor league teams in Iowa.  As of today, I try to collect at least one card from each of these players. There are three levels for the FC card: 1. Have - I have a card of the player, and the card has nothing that relates to their Iowa Connection.  Here are two from this box.  Jorge Perez played in the Quad Cities in 2013 and 2015.  Gaither Bumgardner played for Burlington in 2015. 2. Good - I have a card of the player and it mentions their Iowa Connection.  As you can see on the backs of these two cards, Ryan Yarbrough played for Clinton in 2015 and Kyle Barraclough played for the Quad Cities in 2012.   Come on Topps, it sure looks like he's putting out a fire by...well we'll say hose. 3. Perfect - This is a card with the player in their Iowa Connection jerse...