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Sunday, August 30, 2015

Chronological? Alphabetical? - No...Autobiographical...

  One of my favorite flicks High Fidelity features a scene where a down in the dumps Rob Gordon (played by John Cusack) is reorganizing his record collection. His friend/employee Dick (Todd Louiso) stops by and finds the mess.

  He proceeds to ask Rob how he is organizing things...chronoligical...not alphabetical... Rob finally chimes in that he is reorganizing it autobiographically...Dick replies no f***ing way.

  Rob's record collection looks like most baseball card collections I have seen. Stacks, piles, boxes, and more stacks. Inspiration strikes at odd times. I was up last night working on a little project and thought it would be fun to create an autobiographical set for myself. So, without further ado...

1979 - My Rookie Year - I consider this the iconic card of available 1979 issues (sorry Mr. Gretzky). Ozzie went on to a HOF career with the Cardinals and was a fan favorite that I enjoyed seeing play in the 1980s.

 
1980 - I was introduced to baseball at an early age. Some of my fondest memories involve baseball diamonds. The Yankees were the team my dad followed and so I began to root for them to. We made many treks to the old Kingdome in Seattle to root for the away team.


1981 - I couldn't afford a Rickey Henderson rookie card as a kid, but I was able to trade for a couple of copies of his second year card. The Man of Steal played for my Yankees for a while and even after he left for Oakland (and a few other teams) I still enjoyed watching him play.


1982 - One of my absolute favorite non-Yankees players was Cal Ripken who graced a number of different cards in 1982. His Donruss issue is my favorite one. I just never cared for the guy alone on a field photo Fleer used or the limelight sharing issue that Topps passed out.


 1983 - I discovered Star Wars right around the age of four and begged and pleaded every birthday and holiday for the plastic recreations from the screen. I was always more of a Han Solo guy than Luke...he seemed to whine too much.






1984 - My favorite player for a long was Donnie Baseball. I traded for and hoarded any cards of his I could find. Of his three rookie cards his Topps issue is my favorite.





1985 - I started paying attention to football around the age of six. My dad seemed really into it, so I would sit and watch with him every Sunday. This was the face of the franchise my dad adored...I rooted alongside him until my conversion.





1986 - One day my dad came home with these huge boxes of cards from the thrift store. Inside were rows and rows of 1986 Topps cards. I had a ton of these beauties. When Cecil Fielder became a huge power source upon his return from Japan, the price of his rookies soared. This was probably the first card I had that I realized was worth something. I had around twenty five copies of this card and made some great trades.





1987 - My baseball card collecting really took off this year. I remember walking down to the IGA near my house every Saturday with my allowance and buying as many packs as I could afford. When  I received a twenty dollar bill for my birthday, I took it over to Bi-Mart and cleaned out the rack packs. This was one of the cards I was always after.


1988 - One of the first players I remember seeing play and one of the first minor league team sets I remember having. Bob Hamelin had a short career with the Royals, but made a big impression on me with his play for the Eugene Emeralds. It was a lot of fun watching him hit and seeing him do the splits to make plays at first.





1989 - One Friday, my dad came home with a couple of boxes of cards from the baseball card store in town. It was a new product that put the Donruss, Fleer, and Topps I had known to shame. I remember opening those foil packs and being so excited about every card I pulled. I was a convert at that point and pretty much spent most of my money on Upper Deck products. Upper Deck's iconic issue and iconic card.





1990 - My dad was pretty good about including me as he chased his Topps Yankees team sets, but also realized I was interested in more than just the few cards of guys in pinstripes every year. One of the first sets he ordered for me was the 1990 Topps Traded Football issue. When it arrived, I remember diligently going through and placing each card in a binder for safe keeping. One of the best cards in the set was this one.





1991 - I spent may hours watching the show and playing with the figures. When I started seeing the cards come out, I went into collector mode and found ways to acquire them. I never completed the set, but this card depicts one of my favorite characters.





1992 - An iconic card of my short career as a basketball fan. I had acquired a number of these awesome cards over the year. Unfortunately, the memory that sticks out the most has to be the time that one was stolen from me at school during an after school card trading club event.





Stay tuned to this blog channel for more fun soon! I will be posting part two of my autobiographical set in the next few days.

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