If You Build It, They Will Come

 I made a post recently about one of my non-Iowa collections.  It was my Minnesota Vikings Schedule collection, where I try to find a card with a photo from each game of the season.  It's probably never going to be a complete collection for reasons, but fun to collect non the less. I've been mildly working on that collection since Covid, and it took until today for me to have the most obvious of epiphanies.  "I can also collect the Iowa teams schedules!"   Probably I didn't think about this is because it is much harder to collect.  I'll use Iowa Hawkeyes Football for reference.  Each year there are about 0-4 players drafted which make up a majority of the college cards.  Each set does not use college uniforms, mostly early release sets or the SAGE types.  So the pool I have to pull from is much smaller. Who cares!  I'm going to see what I have! I'll start with Iowa Hawkeyes football, and rummage through my duplicates.  Let's se...

Little late getting this out, but we are still in the first round.   In determining who to root for in the 2022-23 NBA Playoffs, we need to review who the Iowa Connections are for the playoff teams.  Congrats to Milwaukee!  You are this blog's choice to win it all! 1 - Denver - Ryan Bowen, Coach (Fort Madison) 1 - Minnesota - Luka Garza (Iowa) 2 - Sacramento - Keegan Murray (Iowa), Harrison Barnes (Ames) 1 - Golden State - Klint Carlson, Coach (Waverly) 0 - Los Angeles Lakers 1 - Memphis - Brad Jones, Coach (Iowa Wolves) 0 - Los Angeles Clippers 2 - Phoenix - Al McCoy, Announcer (Williams), Kevin Young, Coach (Iowa Energy) 3 - Milwaukee - Mike Dunlap, Coach (Iowa), A.J. Green (Northern Iowa), Lindell Wigginton (Iowa State) 0 - Miami 0 - Boston 2 - Atlanta - Paul Jesperson, Coach (Northern Iowa), Kyle Korver, Front Office (Pella) 2 - Philadelphia - Dave Joerger, Coach (Cedar Rapids), Georges Niang (Iowa State) 0 - Brooklyn 1 - Cleveland - Josh Broghamer, Coach (Iowa C...

 What wonders a collector's brain can come up with when left with boxes of commons and nothing but time.  That's what happened to me during the years of Covid home work time and boxes of commons that I went through over and over again. I grew up rooting for the Vikings since my dad grew up in Minnesota, and my brother started collecting Buffalo Bills because Thurman Thomas was awesome when we were kids.  We still collect these teams today, maybe a little less so, but still have decent collections.   Decent collections lead to lots of duplicates.  Decent collections lead to look at weird things like other players on cards.  Even on other team cards.  This Mike Singletary card seems to have him tackling Darrin Nelson, do I add this card to the Darrin Nelson collection? Then one day, you look at a card and think, "I wonder what game this was?"  Then the trouble question crosses your mind.  "I wonder if I can a card with a photo from EVERY g...

 Its been a few weeks now, but 2023 Topps Series I is out and its time to find the Iowa Connections.  Connections include players born in Iowa, played semi-pro ball in Iowa, played for a club team in Iowa, or played in the Field of Dreams game.  #95 Jonah Bride - Waterloo Bucks #97 Brandon Hughes - Field of Dreams Game #128 Alec Bohm - Iowa Select Black #T88-92 Ryne Sandberg - Iowa Cubs Manager BSA-AP A.J. Puk - Cedar Rapids BSA-DD Dane Dunning - Waterloo Bucks #97 SSP Brandon Hughes - Field of Dreams Game #120 SSP Patrick Wisdom - Field of Dreams Game #54 SSP Marcus Stroman - Field of Dreams Game #183 SSP Seiya Suzuki - Field of Dreams Game #308 SSP Christopher Morel - Field of Dreams Game #33 SSP Kyle Farmer - Field of Dreams Game

 I sat down today ready to dive into 2022-23 Bowman University.  I wanted to review last years set, look into the numbers and see if I could guess who might be on the checklist this year.  But the more I dug, the more I realized it just isn't feasible.   This is what I'm thinking.  Since the checklists are comprised of college students not being represented by a single entity, each player has to make their own deal with Topps.  I think that some NIL groups make it easier to get a team as a whole, but don't quote me on that.  Regardless, it does shape how Topps can build their checklist. Last years set was interesting to review as it had future NBA players such as Chet Holmgren, Keegan Murray and Walker Kessler, but missed out on 4 of the top 6 draft picks (Paulo Banchero, Jabari Smith, Jaden Ivey and Bennedict Mathurin).   I don't know the reasons, so I can only speculate.  Topps was not owned by Fanatics at the time, thus was not t...

So, this may be the first in a few posts, but let me tell you where my brain started. We can assume that there are certain players that are collected more than others.  You are more likely to run into a Aaron Judge or Ronald Acuna collector than a Ryan Jeffers or John Means collector.  Fair?  I also run the assumption that I will find more Yankees collectors than Padres, but this one I a bit more dubious on.  While Yankees have the most fans, I imagine the confines of living in New York hurt collecting at scale, much less so than a collector in Missouri collecting Royals. If I dig into the numbers on TCDB, will I see a larger number of wants for specific teams, players, sets, or other things?  Will it be statistically significant?  Will this be to hard to do manually? Well, I started this idea with grand hopes, only to find that I need to invest some time into learning how to code a bot to scour the website for the data rather than me digging into myself, b...

How many times have you heard someone call a player a bust?  Darko Milicic, what a bust of a pick for Detroit!  Ben Simmons is a bust!  What defines a player as a bust, and why do I care? I like to collect RCs for famous busts.  Think Greg Oden, and all his wonderful RCs.  They were so beloved in 2006 and now are considered trash by many.  I, a kind soul, welcome them to my home where they will be cared for and loved.  Well...as long as they come cheap.  My collection is only made up of card that I have rescued from dime and quarter boxes.  Would I grab a Oden RC Auto from a dollar box?  Probably, but  that's pushing it.  

 I hadn't taken full account of the number of cards in my collection until today.  As I write this, I have 12,341 unique Iowa Connection cards in my collection.  That is insane!  Of course, this number is more insane.  The number of Iowa Connection cards I need are.... Well, take a moment and think what your guess would be.  I'll put it at the end of the post.  I'll take a guess here myself.  Now, my best collection is Kurt Warner, where I have about 8% of his cards.  Towards the middle is Harvey Kuenn at 3.5%.  Some 90's players I have a significant chunk of including Kevin Tapani at 35.9%.  Many pre 1970's players and minor leaguers I have 0% of.  Hockey, Wrestling and other collections are wastelands right now.  So, I'll be a bit conservative and say that I own 2% of all the Iowa Connection cards.   That would make my guess 605,000 wants.  We'll see if I'm closer or if your guess is closer at the end...

I collect cards with Iowa Connections, and just recently I was looking for more connections and came across the Wikipedia page for the Iowa Cornets.  The Cornets was a team in the Women's Basketball League (WBL) that played from 1978 to 1980 before disbanding.  The WBL lasted only one season after Iowa left before folding play. The Iowa team was built with a cast of characters made for a Netflix mini-series.  Owned by the creator of the modern trampoline, George Nissen purchased the team for $50,000 in 1978.  The team had players of all sorts of skills and historical significance.  Tanya Crevier (South Dakota HOF) had a crazy handle of the ball and still travels today to show off her basketball skills.  Denise Long was the first woman to ever be drafted by an NBA team. Rhonda Penquite is an Oral Roberts HOFer.  Mary Schrad was paralyzed in a sledding accident in high school and was told she may never walk again, but still became a professional basketb...

 My last baseball collection update!  This is the category with the most change, as I added 1085 cards since my last update.  This category overall is new, managers and coaches from the Iowa minor league teams located in the Quad Cities, Waterloo, Burlington, Clinton, Cedar Rapids, Dubuque and Des Moines (Iowa).   Ryne Sandberg was the biggest addition with 136 new cards, followed by Brian Harper with 124.  About every third trade I am offered on TCDB includes Donruss variations of someone on this list, so it will be nice to knock those out this year so I don't have to worry about them again.   That's all the updates!  Perhaps one more to cover the collection overall.  Thanks for following along.  It took me three months to update everything, so I don't think I'll be doing this annually, but maybe just a subgroup each year.  We shall see. Player ICDB Rank Have Total ICDB 2022 Have Total Minor Team Ryne Sandberg 239 136 10365 Io...