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 t...

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 pl...

 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 S...

 The newly fashioned USFL had their draft February 22nd and 23rd to fill the rosters of their new 8 teams.  Now, I'm trying to not be cynical because I do want this league to survive and provide opportunities for players to reach the NFL.  Just like I wanted the XFL to make it, and the American Alliance League, and the XFL again.   To be fair though...I just want the cards.  After the draft, I count 8 Iowa Connections in the league, with the Michigan Panthers leading the way with 2.  Houston currently with zero, but each team has end of rosters, practice squads and coaching staffs to fill. Here are the 8 Iowa Connections in the league: Seth Thomas, OT, UNI (Birmingham) Derrick Willies, WR, Iowa (Tampa Bay) Kamilo Tongamoa, DT, ISU (New Orleans) Jackson Brown, G, UNI (Philadelphia) Angelo Garbutt, LB, Iowa (New Jersey) Kirby Wilson, HC, ISU (Pittsburgh) Jaquan Bailey, DT, ISU (Michigan) La'Michael Pettway, TE, ISU (Michigan) Its still early, but current...

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 ...

 I've spent the last week being inundated with pictures of everyone's hauls from their Series One breaks, and I regret to say that I have yet to see anyone post their Mitch Keller pulls, which means he must be one heck of a hard pull.  Not like that Frank Wander guy, everyone seems to have pulled him.  Must be overproduced.  I have yet to find a box, but to be fair I've only been out once since they came out so I'm not surprised.  Hopefully today will be the day.  Along with the Mitch Keller hunt, I discovered that Iowa is represented in the SP cards in the set this year.  Sometimes Bob Feller will show up as a SP, but not this year.  This year Topps has cards of its most famous children, its corn.   These are obviously taken from the White Sox / Yankees game last year, because there are the baseball players in the way of the corn.  It looks like they go for about $30 on eBay currently, with Judge being closer to $50.  Seems like a ...

 I'd like to start a new series of posts where I list the Iowa Connections within each set, but that is ridiculous, so I plan on doing one major set for each season.  Obviously Topps with baseball, but with the Panini sports its not quite as obvious.  You need a larger checklist, and preferably one that comes out during the season.  I'd pick Prizm for both, but we won't get Prizm in football until after the season is over.  I'll probably go back and do Score for football since it is a reasonable get and has a decent checklist.   For the NBA, I'm going with Hoops.  These are the Iowa Connections in 2021-22 Hoops: #51 Monte Morris : Iowa State #78 Harrison Barnes : Ames #108 Tyrese Haliburton - Iowa State #193 Doug McDermott - Ames #245 Joe Wieskamp - Iowa #250 Luka Garza - Iowa Notable exceptions include Nick Nurse (UNI), Talen Horton Tucker (Iowa State) and Tyler Cook (Iowa).  

 Try as I might to stay on top of everything, sometimes information slips through the cracks.  I'm working on my Iowa Connections football list, and finished working through coaching staffs of the various Iowa Colleges and Community Colleges.  You might think that is way too much work, and I wouldn't disagree with you. I don't dig through every staff for every year it exists, but rather rely on Wikipedia to highlight the more important names on each staff.  Yesterday, I found one that I hadn't know before, which was exciting because it was a name I knew and better yet, a former NFL player with a bunch of cards to collect. The coach was Timm Rosenbach. I still love the 1989 Pro Set Rookie Cards Timm Rosenbach played college ball at Washington State, and was drafted by the Phoenix Cardinals in 1989 where he played until 1992.  A year in the CFL and a year with the Saints after that and his career was done.  Why he is relevant to this blog is his one season wi...

 This week is the official start of the 2022 MLB season with the drop of Topps Series One.  There is 330 cards in the base set, probably a bunch of SPs and SSPs that will become apparent soon.  Its always exciting to get the new Topps set because it always holds so much promise.  Rookie cards of players you haven't seen on cardboard yet, players on new teams, etc.  However, this year the common refrain online has been complaints about the weak checklist for Series One.  The complaint is that there is only one player to chase.  From what I can tell looking at the base checklist, I agree with this sentiment. THERE IS ONLY ONE IOWA CONNECTION AND HIS NAME IS MITCH KELLER! Now I know I've only seen the base and clear checklists, and perhaps Bob Feller (a often seen Topps staple) will be in an insert set or as a SP.  I doubt that we see any others until Series Two. The best Iowa Connections options for Series 2 are: Michael Wacha Nick Allgeyer Erik Swa...

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.