Greg Holst was kind enough to sign two TTM autos (both of which were his official hockey rookie cards) that I recently sent to him so I figured I would do a post as a tribute to his. Greg Holst, who was born in Montreal, started out playing for the University of New Brunswick. [...]

With Veteran’s Day today, I think we should take a moment to honor the men and women who have served with honor and respect. Many have died or are wounded and they are should be treated with the highest esteem. A solider is a better role model (in my eyes), than a football or basketball player. We should be asking soldiers for the autographs and not celebrities. I mean how can you not look up to a solider? They are sacrificing their lives to protect us. Now no matter what your stance is on this war or any war (I’m not a big fan of killing people), I will honor a solider because I know that I could never make that ultimate sacrifice. I could never do the job that they do; so they have my respect.

When the words New York Rangers and Stanley Cup are referred to in the same phrase, the name Mark Messier will almost certainly spring to mind for a good number of hockey devotees. Messier was clearly etched into NHL lore the day he predicted the Rangers would win it all. Essentially it was hockey’s version of Babe Ruth’s famous called shot. He will have his place eternally among the best of the best hockey greats.

Can you believe all the hype surrounding Stephen Strasburg? I’ve never seen anything like it. It reminds me of Todd Van Poppel, the considerably oversold flamethrower drafted by the Oakland A’s in 1991. Van Poppel was described as the next Nolan Ryan, with a fastball that peaked at around 103 mph. As a junior baseball [...]

Think about different things to write about and I figured I’d go for sharing one among many nuggets of wisdom in hopes it will help some of y’all newer collectors. It may seem obvious but don’t automatically buy the least expensive item in a group of cards or memorabilia you are looking at to buy [...]

With Bowman fever still raging strong throughout the hobby topps added just a little bit more fuel to the fire by today announcing information on 2010 Bowman Chrome baseball.

I went ahead and made the trek down to one of the largest card shows in Southern California Sunday and came away with the following goodies:

Against my better judgment I bought a couple of dutch auction lots of baseball cards on Ebay recently. They arrived in the mail yesterday. The total cost including shipping? $32.
I’m not sure what I was expecting out of it exactly. Part of me expected (or hoped) that I would get a lot littered with the [...]

2009 Donruss Americana has some great past celebrities, but is sorely lacking big name modern day icons. All in all it is still a unique enough product that the lack of big names isn’t a deal breaker. Many of the subjects don’t have any other trading cards, so if this type of set is your [...]

I recently broke a couple of boxes of 2008 and 2009 Topps Mayo football, one of my favorite sports card products of the last five years. That inspired me to do some digging around to learn more about the original Mayo football card set on which the Topps sets are based. Was actually pretty interesting to find out how this set came about, and even more interesting, to find out more about the subjects featured on it.