What is up with the name you might ask? Glad you asked actually, the focus of this blog is going to be on my two favorite hobbies, collecting Baseball/Football Cards and collecting Wrestling figures. Yes I know, a 31 year old man looking at pictures of men and playing with toys isn't cool, but then again, I have never been cool and don't need to be since my wife must like nerds since she married me and my kids aren't old enough to hate me yet, key word YET!
At this moment my collections are pretty small because I have sold off most of my collections over time because I thought I was out of my collecting phases, but every year or so I decide that I want to get back into these frustrating yet fulfilling hobbies.
While shopping for my son's Christmas gifts last year I was at a Toys R Us store in Gurnee, IL and found a Texas Tornado wrestling figure on the shelf. I got all giddy like a school girl since Mr. Kerry Von Erich was my idol growing up, only to get an even bigger toy boner when I looked at the back of the box and seen that they also had a WCCW Era Kerry Von Erich figure and one of his brother Kevin Von Erich. While I didn't find those figures on that day, that sent me into a dark madness of trying to find these figures. I was consumed with going to every possible retailer on my lunch hours to find them, but to no avail. That's where the awesomeness of my wife comes in, because on Christmas morning when she's opening her $400 camera and $200 North Face jacket, I tear open my gifts from her and see that she was able to find not one, or two, but all three of those figures for me. I couldn't have been happier.
Cards on the other hand I have had a love hate relationship with for a long time. There's nothing worse than seeing that the fuckin sweet card you had as a kid that "High Booked" at $12 is now worthless and you can't even get someone to take it for $0.01 on Ebay. So then I decided I would get into the graded card business and make tons of money...haha, as you can imagine that didn't happen. For every $100 I would waste on old packs of cards hoping to pull that PSA 10, I would be lucky to make $5 off of selling the whole lot. So now I have decided I am going to collect for the hell of it again. I want it to be fun again. Granted, if I pull a big time card and can turn a profit, hell this is America, Land of Capitalism, I will sell the shit out of it.
What I hope to accomplish with this blog is to have more focus and add more fun to my hobbies that I seem to pick and and throw away every year. Holy shitballs this has gotten long winded, so before I pack it in for the day, here are my ground rules that I am setting forth.
- I am giving myself a budget of $50 a month to spend on cards and toys. I may up it to $100 if I can find the extra cash.
- My collecting focus has to stay on point. Right now I am focusing on 1980's rookie cards, Lenny Dykstra cards, Ron Santo Cards, Chicago Cubs Cards, Chicago Bears Cards, and vintage cards meaning anything before 1980 which is when I was born. Seems like a lot of shit and it is, but at least this keeps me from wasting all of my budget on new shit that I never pull anything from anyway.
- My figure collecting will vary as I like to buy both older and newer wrestlers. My only rule on that is either I or my son actually has to like the guy, no buying a figure just for the hell of it. And dammit my belief is that toys were made to be played with.
That is it for now. I hope this turns into something I stick with.
