Hey all - I just wanted to take a moment to share some thoughts.
Last August, I took my 7-year-old boy to a White Sox/Indians game, and I asked him how he liked it. Being a Twins fan, he turned and said, "It was good, but I didn't know any of the players." I thought in my head, "I have a way to fix that." That ended up leading me back to the hobby (I'd collected like many boys in the 1989-1997 span). I put together the 2018 Topps set from about August through October, and I was almost instantly hooked back in. Later in November, I picked up a couple packs of 2018 Topps Fire, and I had picked up a pack with three inserts, one numbered, which was pretty fun to look through. However, I didn't know what to do with them. Should I put them in with the 1997 and earlier team binders? Should I start a new binder? Are they worth anything? I hadn't bought a Beckett in over 20 years!
After some brief internet searching, I found TCDB. Instantly, it was everything I wished I knew I wanted back in the mid 1990s: forums, pictures of almost all cards, a community of collectors that were more about the hobby and less about the dollar sign, people willing to trade across state/country lines.
Around Christmastime, I turned to my younger brother and said, "It'd be fun to put together the rest of the 1997 Score Series 1 set I started awhile ago. He simply said, "Good...luck!" with a doubtful look upon his face. He gave me the four binders he had and said, "I don't care what you do with them." Of course, I started cataloguing them here. Around Eastertime, I got him to help me rip three boxes of '94 Upper Deck Fun Packs and build the set with me.
Today marked the completion of my first 100 trades, and coincidentally, I am also at exactly 100 "points" for the website. I've checked the RCOTD often, not always. I've looked at the lists people put together and chuckle after learning about the '94 Collectors Choice Lenny Dykstra back and wonder how I missed that as a fifth grader. I've finally understood what FF Billy Ripken means in the Beckett magazine, and why that holds such value when his career has been more successful on MLB Network than it was on the field. I've taken a huge pile of cards that I don't really want, sent them around the USA and Canada, and received cards that I actually wanted. I've visited trading card stores in the Chicago, San Francisco, San Jose, and Minneapolis areas. I've turned down loose cards that were $0.50 because it was simply "too much" and bought loose cards for $0.10 because I knew someone I've traded with would want them. I've been to the mailbox so frequently that I can only imagine what my postal worker is thinking. I've gone to a random person's house to pick up about 800 "cards in a box" for $5 only to find a Babe Ruth Sporting News reprint, Randy Johnson RC, and two Barry Bonds cards valued around $13 alone. I've taken my neighbor's cards and started consolidating those 1500 or so cards into 8 Brooks Robinson cards because he didn't care about all those others he had. I've watched hours of unboxing/ripping packs of cards on YouTube because I'll still never buy a pack of cards over $20, but I'm happy to watch someone else do so. I've traded 100 times, earned 100 points, and brought life back to my collection which was once just a box I moved from house to house as I grew older.
It's a fun hobby. True, t can be a bit pricey. However, there are fewer things in life I enjoy more than pulling that favorite player card, a mystical insert no one else has uploaded yet, or a double of a sought rookie card (one for me, one for trading!). Thanks to everyone I've traded with, everyone I will be trading with in the future, to the people who put so much work into the site, and for those who enjoy the hobby as much as I do.
All my best,
~Brandon
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