My Collecting Roots and a Thank You

Collecting cards has been a part of my life as long as I can remember.  Instead of asking for the hottest toy at Christmas, my list was filled with the latest Topps and Donruss products.  I was such a weird kid that one of my favorite games to play as a small child involved my Mom covering up the name on a card and I would guess the player based on the picture.  Needless to say the collecting bug hit me early.

Once I was able to drive and get a job the collection took on life of its own.  All my money went towards   busting packs of cards and obtaining Starting Lineup figures.  This is was in the late 90's so the chase was on for autos and jersey cards.  I still remember the first auto I pulled out of pack (Cris Carter).  At the time I about crapped myself thinking I had pulled a Randy Moss auto, but it was still pretty cool.  Looking back on this time period of my life it was easy to see why the girls weren't lining up to be with me, but I could care less.  I kept this routine through most of college too with some of the card budget being allocated towards beer.  

Fast forward to after college and I'm now a collecting madman.  I have a "real job", single and hardly any bills.  You will see soon on the blog that I have a crazy amount of cards from 2005-2010 to showoff.  A brief look into a typical day would have been work, buy some cards on Ebay, drink beer with friends....repeat.  

Routines tend to change as you get older.  Usually the first thing to change them is a girl.....For some reason I was able to meet a girl who actually found me somewhat tolerable.  Long story short she is now my wife.

Now on to present day.  I'm thankful to say that my very understanding wife allows me still to indulge in my favorite hobby.  She laughs at my friends and I when we are opening packs of cards on our dining room table.  I guess from her point of view I could be into something really expensive or dangerous.  Collecting pieces of cardboard is pretty innocent when you think about it.  Sometimes I may get the occasional "you get a lot of mail" comment, but that can usually be forgotten with a box of Godiva.  

My wife has also been very supportive with me fooling around with the blog.  I think she sees how much enjoyment I'm getting out of it so she doesn't get to upset when I spend some evenings typing away on the computer or putting together trade packages.  She accepts it as my way to unwind and get away and take some time for myself.  

So in conclusion this was just a little way for me to paint a better picture of myself to my new found blogging friends and a special thank you to my lovely wife for dealing with me.  Maybe I should start a PC for my daughter below.  She is already pumped for baseball.  This is her and I right before my fantasy baseball draft last weekend.  Have a good weekend everybody.  Lets go Bucs!