About Me

I started collecting baseball cards in 1969 when I was still living in Michigan. The Detroit Tigers (my team from the moment I was born) had won the World Series the previous season and the players of that era had been burned into my memory as heroes for life. My collecting habits took a turn for the worse when in late 1973, I moved to Scotland with my mother. I was only allowed to bring a few hundred of the many thousands of cards I'd accumulated to that point.

On returning to the US for the first time in 1988, I became aware that baseball cards were being sold as singles and that the hobby had become pretty big. The "nostalgia/later life disposable income" thing was coming into play, and my interest was piqued. On my next Stateside vacation in 1990, I decided that I was going to make a start to getting back into collecting cards. My first goal was to start buying up as many Tigers cards as I could from that 1960s/70s era that I grew up in. This particular vacation happened to take me through Cooperstown, New York - home of The National Baseball Hall Of Fame and many overpriced trading card dealers (not that I was aware of this at the time!!). As well as Tigers cards, I found myself purchasing complete Topps sets from 1986 to 1990, then boxing them up and shipping them back to the UK at an extortionate cost. (Side note....... don't ask me for investment tips!). I was on the road to what was to become what is now a 30+ year obsession.

Being a follower of a distinctly American collecting hobby while living in Scotland had its challenges. Email was only just beginning to make its mark, while home computing and the World Wide Web was still very much in its infancy. When I found myself allocated an email address for my work, I used it to tap into US based card dealers such as Solomon Cramer who ran monthly auctions. You'd receive a daily update of high bids on each auction lot and submitted your own bids accordingly. I was lucky enough to be on the winning end of quite a few of those at the time. Hobby magazines such as Beckett, Baseball Cards, and Tuff Stuff gave me a much better idea of card values which meant that I was no longer overpaying to the extent that I used to. Because condition of older cards wasn't that much of a concern to me, I was able to add many great cards to the collection for bargain basement prices. To this day, I still try to pay as little as I can for the cards I buy.

As the 90s progressed, I found myself returning to the States on vacation regularly. Each visit allowed me the opportunity to visit card shops and pick up individual items as well as buy hobby boxes of new products. It was about this time that I moved on from the Tigers collection to set building. My first objective was to build the sets that I collected as a kid - 1969 to 1973. This of course meant that more and more cards were being purchased on each visit. Fortunately, the airlines didn't weigh carry-on baggage at the time. I can attest to the fact though that it can be difficult to make it look like a bag containing several 1000s of cards weighs a "normal" amount, I got pretty good at it.

My collecting life really took off in 1997 when I discovered a US based online collecting group called OBC (Old Baseball Cards). This was a small group dedicated to vintage (pre-1980) card collecting, and helping each other out. Each month, members would post up Wantlists which would be perused by everyone else. If you had a double (or "dupe") of a card that someone needed, you stuck it in an envelope and sent it out. Others would do the same for you. Thank yous would be publicly posted so that everyone knew what cardboard was going where and from who. The group worked very much on a "What Goes Round, Comes Round" basis - the more you contributed, the more you were likely to get back in return. It was a system based on trust and it worked extremely well. OBC not only boosted my card collection and knowledge. It also introduced me to many many hobbyists who have become great friends over the years.

OBC soon filled those 1969-73 sets, and members encouraged me to open up my collecting to a wider range of cards. I decided to start working on all sets going back to 1960 (the year of my birth) and right up to 1980 (the end of the acknowledged "vintage" era). OBC contributions, purchases from online auction sites and dealers, and continuing Stateside visits - particularly to the National Sports Collectors Convention in 1999 and in 2011 - saw the collection grow and grow to the point that I had completed a full Topps run of sets from 1960 to 1980..... with the exception of a single card (DAMN YOU, 1963 Topps #537 PETE ROSE!!!!!). In order to feed my monster, I started working on sets from 1957 to 1959 and from the first half of the 1980s. I soon knocked off the 1980s stuff, but continue to chip away at those late 1950s sets (only 16 to go on 1959!!)......*******UPDATE******* I completed the 1959 Topps Set at the 2022 National Sports Collectors Convention, or rather shortly after it having discovered a "gremlin" once I got home to Scotland!

In recent years, the hobby has become more difficult to pursue financially. While the cost of the cards themselves have risen, the cost of shipping from the US has skyrocketed. Because of this, I've stepped back considerably from the involvement that I had 10 years ago. There has been a definite rise in interest in the hobby among UK based collectors over the past 5 years. This has encouraged me to get back into collecting with a bit more enthusiasm. I've become involved with a range of Facebook groups and have made it a bit of a mission to encourage the "fun" element of the hobby, to trade for cards you like without getting too hung up on "value", and even to bring some of that OBC "What goes round......" attitude by sending out cards to people who need them without expecting anything in return. The green shoots of my work are starting to show slowly. I sincerely hope that its an approach to the hobby that becomes more widespread here.

If you've had a look at my wantlists and think you might have something I'd be interested in, please drop me a line. You'll find my contact details here!