Trading with a 9-year-old

A couple of weeks ago, my 9-year-old nephew proudly showed me a pack of 2009 Topps Updates and Highlights that had been purchased by Grandma (my Mom).  I’ve tried to teach my Mom over the years, but she’s a bit of a stubborn learner.  She has improved though, but that’s a different story.

So my nephew pulls out an Endy Chavez card and confidently declares him as a good player.  When I inquired, he told me the reason was due to his homerun count of 167.  I nodded my head, and then slyly pointed out a different player, Jason Bay.  I also pointed him towards the Turkey Red insert that always tweaks my eye.  He enjoyed that card too.

I remembered back to my younger years of sorting cards by team, brand, and player as I watched him lay out his dozen cards in front of the both of us.  I peaked at a Matt LaPorta rookie and told him that was the best card.  To my surprise, he asked if I wanted it.

Now I’m a good fair uncle, so I didn’t take it, but I decided to trade with him.  After all, I didn’t have a LaPorta card at that point.  A great coincidence was still sitting in the glove compartment to my car.  I ran out and grabbed the still-sealed three-pack of Kansas City Chiefs cards that they give away at the game.  The pack included a Derrick Johnson, Larry Johnson and Dwayne Bowe.  The set was a subset of Panini.  He loved it and took the deal.

Looking back, it seems very fair to me.  I checked the BV of the LaPorta card to be $2, so I know he isn’t missing too much.  And a part of the story untold yet is that I plan to gift him a book of Chiefs and Kansas City Royals players (our local teams).  I like seeing him interested in the hobby.

Free Online Football Card Price Guide

This week, a new site launched a Free Football Card Price Guide.  This site takes prices from other sites, averages them together, and produces a street value price for the card.

So far, I’ve seen cards added daily, and the sets are all filling up nicely.  They are already a slight rival to Beckett.com.  Being free, I don’t see why they won’t start stealing customers by the hundreds.

The single negative to this new site is that it’s only football cards.  Oh well, I guess you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

The NFL **Yaawwwnnnn** Pro Bowl is On

OK, so maybe it’s a little bit more interesting because there is still meaningful football left to be played next week.  But that doesn’t really make missing the Indianapolis Colts and New Orleans Saints players justifiable.  Come on guys, those were the two best teams.  The teams playing in the Super Bowl with all of these outstanding athletes having to dress in street clothes is unacceptable.

I did not want to see a pro bowl without Peyton Manning at quarterback until at least 2015.  Where’s Drew Brees?  Where’s Reggie Wayne and Dallas Clark?  I don’t like it.  The only good coming out of it is the showing of Aaron Rodgers and Matt Schaub.

Maybe the NFL should play the Pro Bowl in May or June, when excitement is low.  And then they should put flags on the players and make tackling illegal.

No one hits anyway.  At least without Sean Taylor (R.I.P.) they don’t.

Oh well.  I’m going to just sit here and surf the internet while the Pro Bowl ensues in the background.

Kurt Warner Leaves on Top

You can’t compare him to Warren Moon.  Nor can you compare his retirement to Joe Montana.  The only person possibly comparable when it comes to retirement is Brett Favre.  Mr. Favre needs to follow the christian-man’s footsteps into the sunset.

Kurt Warner led a good career with a Super Bowl win with the St. Louis Rams, and an appearance last year with the Arizona Cardinals.  After coming out of the Arena Football League, Warner won 2 MVPs, and finished his career with the most passing yards alltime in the Super Bowl.

After taking the Cardinals back to the playoffs this season, Warner has decided it’s time to move on.  Bravo I say.

Brett?  Now it’s your turn.

Upper Deck Announces National Packtime Day

Upper Deck is giving back.  On March 6th, they will give out free packs of cards that are distributed across the country to sports cards shops.

The packs are produced exclusively through Upper Deck with a partnerships with the Major League Baseball Players Association for 10-card packs of National Packtime.  The set is said to include the likes of Derek Jeter, Albert Pujols, David Ortiz, Buster Posey, and Tyler Flowers.  The last two being expected star rookies.

UD has also mentioned a very rare Derek Jeter card that can only be pulled at very long odds.

In the article, they mentioned how past events such as this have been a big success, bringing a lot of people to the sports card stores along with excitement surrounding sports cards that may have lacked before.

If you would like more information, you can read it here on Upper Deck.

Michigan Man wants to Unload Collection

So there’s this dude on Craigslist who is selling 1.2 million sports cards.  He’s breaking them down into lots of 10,000 for $65.  You can also give him a call to order 1000 or all of them.

I don’t have the money to put into any of this right now, but it seems like a fair shake.  Often there are sells like this on eBay where someone is supposedly selling off their entire collection in chunks.  Sometimes these aren’t very legit.

This one looks decent though.  If anyone has some insight, I’d love to hear it.  From my experience, any time you can find bulk cards for less than 1 cent, it’s a good deal.

The cards are said to be 85 percent baseball, and the players listed seem to be from the 80s and early 90s.

Figured I’d give the guy a plug and help boost the industry.  Good luck.

Visit your Local Sports Cards Shop

People enjoy collecting for a wide variety of reasons.  Some have team collections, some have only specific player collections.  There’s even some that are different and choose just to collect certain positions, cards with weird attributes, or just through-the-mail autos.

It usually all comes back to the sports card values.  Everyone likes to put a dollar figure on their most valued card.

It’s also our job to keep these values high.  We can do this by spending money on the hobby.  Sports card shops need our business.  I’ve seen at least 3 go out of business in the city I live in.

So this is basically a plea to you all to go out and shop at your local card shop.  If you don’t know where that is, here is a simple sports cards shop finder from Miller Sports Cards.

Another One Bites the Dust

And so it goes on.  We’ve heard the story before.  Superstar thinks he’s above the laws and rules, does something stupid, in comes the law or authority.  And then he’s forgotten.  For what stupid reason did Gilbert Arenas feel the need to keep guns in his locker?  For the simple fact that NO ONE else does it, he should have known better.

It seems that there have been a lot of players who have hurt their careers because of stupid choices.  It trickles down, if even in the smallest sense, to the sports cards collectors.  Let’s take a look at a list of some big stars who have let their fans down.

• Michael Vick – his football cards were fed to their owner’s dogs.
• Roger Clemens – Steroids
• Mark McGwire – Steroids
• Barry Bonds – Steroids
• Tiger Woods – Cheated on his wife.  If you think that’s ok, don’t ever get married!
• Larry Johnson – Woman beater, career could have been…
• Plaxico Burress – Dummy with a gun, another career that could have been…

This is just a short look into the sports world.  Do people in the real world actually behave like this?  Maybe I should look into starting an Accountant Cards collection.

Mark McGwire Comes Out of the Closet

No big deal eh?  My brother did it too.  Oh wait, we’re talking about steroids?  Nevermind…

I talked with my girlfriend and her brother about Mark McGwire’s announcement that he had used steroids during his record breaking year, and weirdly enough, it just didn’t seem like that big of deal to me.

It’s kind of like, been there, done that.

We know they all cheated, and we know our passionate sports fandom of the 90s is tainted forever.  The day Roger Clemens choked in the courthouse was the day that I started caring a lot less about baseball.  I watched as my idol, the greatest pitcher ever (in my former eyes) stood up in front of our appointed government officials and lied his butt off.

Yes I do know that is unproven, but I don’t believe him.  As much as I want to think that every time I stared at the Rocket mowing down hitters, he was doing it without performance enhancing drugs.

I can’t do it though.  Zack Greinke is my new favorite player.  I can deal with some social anxiety.

I think that Mark McGwire baseball cards will suffer some pain from this happening.  Sure, there will still be some die-hards that keep on collecting the former St. Louis Cardinalsfirst baseman, but from personal experience, after putting my large Roger Clemens collection to the side and forgetting about it, I’m not so sure there will be nearly as many sports card collectors pursuing the latest admitted cheater’s cards.