Let's See Where it goes this time..

 

     Here we go again. Hello my name is Brian, but for this Blog and for Social accounts we will just go with Bubba. I have started and stopped and started this Blog multiple times and always fail to keep it going. I feel that usually I am over ambitious and bite off more than I can handle. So we are simply going to try and publish one article per month for 2023 and see what happens. 

    A little bit about me: I am a high school teacher and coach during the day and a cardboard crack addict by night. I am married and have two amazing children, that I constantly try and share my love of cards with, and they continue to be mildly interested. My kids are both very active in sports, so I am constantly at practice or games. I have been into trading cards almost my entire life and like so many stopped collecting when life events forced changes, and started up again when life settled down. It was always a childhood dream to own a card store and make a living off of this wonderful hobby. Like many of you I jumped back in with both feet about 2 years ago when not much else was going on. I currently have an eBay store Bubba and Bear's Collectibles and this is the closest to a physical card store that I can currently get. I do enjoy having the store, but again keeping up with listings and shipping and pricing is tough at times. The store is currently empty but new items will be arriving soon. Okay, enough about me, lets get into the whole point of this thing. 

    I want to use this space to discuss my different card collecting adventures, this is my sounding board and my journal to track where I have been and where I am going. I know the cool thing is to have a YouTube channel and talk about everything, but again that requires video, editing, uploading, and even more time that I do not feel that I have (it also requires skills that I do not currently posses). So you will all get to read about it here and hopefully I produce something meaningful to someone else, and if not, I have a great public journal for myself.

 First Adventure for 2023, Build a Parallel set and be more active on Social media.

    I LOVE parallel sets, I want to build something that is a little more unique, but also doesn't break the bank. I am not talking about Bowman Chrome Red all numbered to 5 or less. I am talking about Topps Update Chrome Purple or another set like that. I am trying to build non-numbered parallel sets of Topps Chrome Products. I also decided that parallel insert sets of Topps and Topps Chrome products are also fairly reasonable. 

    I want to be true to what I believe and have always believed, Collect what you Love. This does not mean that I don't like to make money, but at the end of day this is my hobby and it should bring me joy. It has taken me the past two years, to decide that I needed to enjoy the journey more and worry about the next big thing less. I hope that you enjoy the hobby and look forward to the small things as much as you look forward to the big ones. I am getting better at this myself. I am using Twitter and Facebook at the moment to get larger quantities of these cards before I start to pick up the last remaining singles that I need. If you follow me on Twitter please leave a comment here and let me know what you think. I am always looking for feedback and friends in the hobby. 

 I will update this article with photos and progress monitoring as often as possible. The next Adventure starts in April, please come back and check in to see how things are going. 

Thanks for Reading, 

Yours Truly Bubba

 

January Recap - Benny Montgomery and Card Shows

     January 2022 turned out to be a rather exciting month as usual, you know the whole new resolution phase of things. I decided in January to start writing on this blog again and I am very excited to get back to putting thoughts and recaps into this blog started so long ago. Still working on when to sit and write and what kind of release schedule I can realistically come up with. I am hoping for 1-2 post a month on a consistent bases to get started. Now lets get into the recap. 

    January 2022 saw the biggest eBay sale I have ever done. I was fortunate enough to help out a great friend by listing and selling a card that he happened to get in a break. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    We listed the card for $3500 o.b.o. knowing that one had already sold for $2000 and another for $2900. The goal was to get in the middle of that range. We received multiple overs the first 24 hours that the listing was live and many followers. We eventually received and offer for $2400 and decided to accept it. This just goes to show you why so many people are paying money for breaks. Where else can you turn $80 into over $2000. Now speaking from experience here, this is not the typical result and you should not expect this to happen, but as they say "a broken clock is right twice a day". I am thankful to have a great friend that trusted me enough to sell this card for him. I am also thankful to eBay for making the transaction possible. 

    The next adventure started in January, but will actually take place next week in Las Vegas. I will be attending my first card show as a vendor. I am both excited and nervous about this, but it is definitely the next progression for my card collecting journey. I will have a 6 foot table to work from, in a location that I hope will be easy to manage. I did not want to be in a prime area given my first show and I wanted to have a wall behind me so that I have maybe some space to work. I have ordered some business cards that will hopefully arrive in time for the show and I have a banner to proudly display so people know who is selling the cards. My hope is to sell some cards, get some exposure, and most importantly learn new things. I will be recapping this experience in 2 weeks, wish me luck. 

    The last adventure of January was to take my 11 year old daughter and quasi business partner to her first ever card show. January 29th there was a decent size show in Van Nuys, CA, and it was crowded, crowded, crowded. They were able to pack in almost 300 tables and it was a bit tight navigating all of the vendors. I wanted to check out what these people were selling and how they set up their booth. After attending the show I think I am definitely on the right track for this upcoming show in regards to what I have to sell and how I plan on setting up. I hope to be the vendor that is selling stuff that others do not have. It is not much fun looking at the same Tom Brady, Michael Jordan, Lebron, Kobe, Patrick Maholmes, and Joe Burrow cards over and over again. I am excited to have something different for my booth and I hope that people will enjoy coming by to see what I have. Once we left the show I made it a point to stop by the world famous Burbank Sportscard Store where we picked up a couple of things before we headed home. 

I thoroughly enjoyed the experience with my daughter and I cannot wait for more adventures in 2022. 

Until next time, Thanks for Reading, 

 

Bubba

2022 Adventures and Life Updates

 Well hello again. 

     Life has a funny way of opening opportunities that it had previously closed. I have enjoyed writing since I was a kid. The idea of telling a story in a way that captivates and audience or the thrill of sharing exciting news with others. There are so many forms of writing and ways to enjoy it. I started this Blog eight years ago as a way to track and share my love of card collecting with my son Ryker who would be born soon after this Blog was created. I was about to have a son and hoped that he would love the card collecting hobby as much as I did. Well, my son is almost 9 years old and enjoys the opposite of most of the things that I enjoy. (go figure) That is not to say that he is not into the hobby, he just enjoys different aspects of it and that is an adaptation that I was not expecting. Lets have a quick recap of the past and lay out a plan for the future. 

• 2013 - Attempted to complete the Emerald parallel set of Topps Series 1 baseball. Completion is around 60% as of today and no longer being pursued.
• 2014 - Being a father of two children, a husband to an amazing wife, and job responsibilities did not allow me much time to collect or write. 
• 2015 - 2018 - These years all seem like a blur now. Work and Family dominated everything.
• 2019 - The death of my father in law demanded some changes in order to keep the family business running.
• 2020 - The Pandemic - like so many others this allowed me time to re-learn about the hobby that I love so much and it gave me reason to seize the moment. No more excuses, Get busy living or get busy dying. I created an eBay storefront and started my journey in entrepreneurship.
  
• 2021 -  Living the Dream - When my career (teaching high school) started back to in person learning time management became an issue once again. This issue did not stop the dream this time, but it did slow it down. PSA shutting down also helped slow things down as well.

 I know this is a lot of life boiled down to a few bullet points, and maybe I will write in more detail about some of those life events in the future, but for now I want to focus on the present. The present, such an interesting thing. I have always wanted time to move faster especially when I was younger. I couldn't wait to advance a grade level, drive a car, get a job, or graduate high school. In college it was more of the same and as a young adult more of the same. Now on the precipice of turning 41 years old I would give anything to slow things down. My children are 11 and 8 (almost 9) and I am closer to 50 than I am 30. The perspective of my life is changing so much and I am not sure that I am as prepared as I once thought I would be. 

This COVID Pandemic has allowed me to embrace the unknown and not be so afraid of the outcome. I am more confident in my abilities to learn new things and adapt to the future than ever before. The desire to enjoy experiences with my children and my wife is stronger than ever. The acute awareness of life's fragility is a motivator rather than something to be feared. So with that, I and my family are off to new hobby and life adventures.

I will be documenting our new adventures here in this blog, that I hope to update weekly. I will be attending my first card show as a vendor in February, I am planning on opening 3 cases of Topps Heritage Baseball, and I will be letting you all read about it here. I am excited for these adventures and a little bit nervous at the same time. I hope that my writing inspires others to pursue their dreams and to overcome the obstacles that we place on ourselves. I hope to learn and teach through this process. I would love any feedback that you the readers may have. If nothing else I will have written down a piece of my life that my children will always be able to share. 

Until next week, 

Bubba

     

Hopes and Dreams

The sports card market is one that is increasingly tricky to navigate. There is an overwhelming
amount of information available to anyone that is willing to put in the time. I have tried to put that time in over that last few weeks. I have found that at the moment my Magic the Gathering card collection is much larger and more valuable than my sports card collection is. I have started listing items for sale all over the web in hopes of making enough money to of course buy more cards.

I have started this entire process with my children, I have mentioned both of them in previous posts. My daughter Rylee and I recently opened a few blaster boxes of 2019-20 Optic Basketball. I thought the opening was pretty normal with no amazing cards to note. It was a fun time spent with my daughter and seemed to really enjoy it.

Then I started looking on eBay for a particular card that we opened and I was shocked to see asking prices in the hundreds of dollars. Had I really missed an amazing card? What I found out was that certain parallel cards carried big dollars, as long as it was the right player. Here is the card that we opened that day.

I know that Giannis is big, but I had no idea that this card could be worth hundreds of dollars. I have sent it off for grading via BGS and I am hopeful that it will come back as a 10. Maybe it will and maybe it won't, but the hopes and dreams of a father and daughter cannot wait to find out.

Thanks as always for Reading,

Bubba

The Fever is Back

So after about a 7 year absence from the sports card collecting world, I AM BACK!!

I have started collecting again with my kids and I have renewed my goal of opening my own card store in the future. Since I was a young boy I dreamed of opening a card store of my own. It is a dream that has never really left me, just been put on hold numerous times. I have been watching YouTube videos and reading countless articles about the hobby and I am motivated to work on this project. I am not sure if it will ever come to fruition or if it will fade away as the world we live in changes. Nonetheless, I am once again working towards this goal. One of the more exciting things about it has been that my kids are starting to get into card collecting and I am trying to include them in this project.

It seems that one of the first steps is establishing an online presence of some sort due to the technology available today, and also in part due to the issues we are seeing as a result of COVID-19.

I currently have an eBay store with no items for sale, but a store nonetheless. I have also started selling cards on COMC under the user name BubbaHuns. I am excited to see how this service works and how I can continue to increase my overall sales volume. One of the next steps is deciding on a name for the eventual store. I have several ideas and I will look for feedback when the time comes. 

One thing that I am very interested in are parallel sets. There are so many card variations these days, I really want to focus on building, collecting, and selling parallel cards. I hope to write several articles on this topic in the next few months. If anyone actually reads this blog and has any instight into the parallel set world please send me a message or hit me up on Twitter @BrianHuens. Well that is it for now, more things to come.

Thanks as always for reading

Bubba

Rykers Hockey Pulls

Well the box opening went really well in my opinion. We pulled some great cards and my son was so excited to open the packs and see what cards he was going to get. It was everything that I had hoped it would be. The only problem now is that he has the bug and wants to get more cards.

 I fondly remember every Saturday getting my allowance and walking to the Wal-Mart and buying the latest and greatest cards that were available. I usually had between $5-$10 and it was more than enough to get a few packs.

Here are the highlights from our box of cards.

Ryker Wants Hockey

    It is funny when you let your children pick things. In this journey or card collecting I wanted to share the joy and love with my children. So I decided that they should be the ones to pick something that they like or may be interested in. My daughter picked Basketball which is something that I used to collect and still enjoy. Ryker decided that he liked Hockey and I was shocked since I do not have a single hockey card in my collection. I even asked him multiple times are you sure you want hockey and he said yes every time. So I purchased a box of Upper Deck Hockey cards and it should be arriving today. I am excited to open a product that I am not very familiar with. I am also looking forward to opening the cards with my son for the first time. I am not expecting to pull anything crazy, but I am looking forward to cracking the packs and spending that quality time with my son. Who know where this will lead. He may not be interested in it at all and this could be a one and done or he could really enjoy it and this could be the start of our hockey collection. Time will tell what happens, but I am very much looking forward to the journey.

  Thanks as always

   

    Bubba