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Marv Levy  – Legendary Coach of the Buffalo Bills turned 95 year young today.  Happy Birthday Coach, may the Bills finally bring home that trophy for you!  Marv was one of the best at turning a phrase.  Here are some of my favorite quotes from Hall of Famer over the years. “The age factor means nothing to me. I’m old enough to know my limitations and I’m young enough to exceed them.” – Marv Levy “Where else would you rather be than right here, right now?” – Marv Levy “All the buildup and hype, everything else, is foam. The game is the beer.” – Marv Levy “Great football coaches have the vision to see, the faith to believe, the courage to do – and 25 great players.” – Marv Levy Hall of Famer.Legendary coach.Forever Buffalo Bill. HAPPY 95th BIRTHDAY, MARV LEVY! 🥳 pic.twitter.com/tRZJXUE0a3 — Buffalo Bills (@BuffaloBills) August 3, 2020

Optic Project: Part 1

Optic Project: The Beginning and the Brady Holo I’ve always been a bit of a collector.  I like to complete the base sets because what is the point of spending all that money for one or two big “hits” and throwing away all of the other cards.  While being stuck and home and trying to catalog my entire card collection, I became very aware that I had some strong collections of base sets for Optic Football. Donruss Optic is my favorite set of the season.  I can get hobby boxes on the internet and retail cards at Target and Walmart so it’s easily available. The Optic technology makes for a great looking card.  It has a set size of 200 which makes collecting the base set something that’s doable.  100 base veterans, 50 base rookies, and 50 base Rated Rookies.  Along with the base cards there are many parallels, each more difficult to find.  Pink, Purple, Red & Yellow, Bronze, Aqua, Red, Blue, Purple, Green Gold.  Some are numbered from 299 all the way down to Gold Vinyl 1 of 1.  Some of them are ridiculous like White Sparkle, Green Velocity, and Black Pandora.  Any given card can have about […]

2019 Donruss Optic Josh Allen Rainbow

Card #12 of 2019 Donruss Optic Football Josh Allen – Buffalo Bills Base Holo Aqua /299 (Currently Own 80/299, 106/299, 210/299) Orange /199 (Currently Own 53/199, 123/199, 154/199) Blue /150 (Currently Own 50/150, 53/150, 131/150) Red /99 (Currently Own 93/99) Orange Scope /79 (Currently Own 51/79) Purple /50 (Currently Own 12/50) Purple Stars FOTL /25 (Currently Own 23/25) Gold /10 (Currently Own 1/10) Missing (And Searching For!) White Sparkle, Black Pandora /25, Green /5, Gold Vinyl /1 Let’s Go Buffalo!

Sleeper Pick

Sleeper Pick

Tonight is the 2nd round of the 2020 NFL draft.   As a Bills fan last night’s draft was not as entertaining as past years have been.  The Bills traded their first-round pick (among other picks) for Stefon Diggs from the Minnesota Vikings.  So I’d like to think they got the best WR in the draft.  As a television production professional, I watched every moment of the draft and was proud and quietly frankly impressed with what my colleagues and friends were able to broadcast to the world.  Job well done!   Tonight gets a little better for the Bills fans.  They have the 54th overall pick.  22 in the second round.  Don’t worry there will be plenty of good players available.  Thirty-five 2nd round picks have been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of fame.  Some of the names you know, Brett Favre, Mike Singletary, Michael Strahan, Fred Biletnikoff, Dan Deirdorf, Howie Long and Thurman Thomas.  And as any good member of the #BillsMafia knows Billy Shaw drafted in 1961 and a member of the 64-45 AFL Champions and the Buffalo Bills Wall of Fame!  I’m a bit biased but I think Thurman Thomas is the greatest 2nd round pick in the history […]

All My Cards – April 2020

I’ve been a collector my whole life. When I was little my brother and I had just about every G.I. Joe made from 1983-1990. We had Masters of the Universe figures, Marvel figures, and Wrestling figures. I always have been a sports fan. I played organized and unorganized sports all growing up. Love watching football with my family and friends. Let’s Go Buffalo! And now I even work in sports. It seems only natural that I would have stacks of football cards. I still remember my brother having three of the 1987 Topps Randall Cunningham, and I never being able to pull one. Made me so mad. I was away from #TheHobby for while through high school and college but once I became a productive member of society (read as tax payer), I jumped in again. Spent a few years 2001-2003 buying more cards and collectibles before I was laid off, went back to school, and made a career change. It took me a while to get back to collecting. But by 2015 I was back and I was all in. I started out with the Topps set. I was saddened to see it was the last of their NFL […]

Back at it!

There is a whole lot going on in the world right now with the entire country shutting down to prevent a pandemic. I’m one of the lucky ones my employer is still paying me, for now. But with that said I’ve got some extra time on my hands and I’ve decided to get back to blogging about my collection. I am hoping it will be a bit of escapism and keep my mind sharp and focused on the positive. There isn’t going to be any real focus other than I’m going to keep it related to collecting, the hobby, and Buffalo Bills. #BillsMafia! Organization is going to be my focus on some of the first few posts. Then I’ll move into more on my collection. I’ve had stacks of boxes and stacks of cards and half-full binders all over my bonus room since I moved into my house 6 years ago. (For those of you wondering…a bonus room is an extra room someplace in the house that is neither a bedroom or a living space. Think kids play room, storage, man cave.) I mentioned binders, this was my first card project during the pandemic shelter in place orders. BEFORE AFTER […]

Chasing Rainbows

A complete “set” of all the different parallels of an individual card. That is the goal. I never thought I be chasing rainbows, but a couple of these I just fell into. And then the closer I got the more I liked the idea. The first one that I’m working on started by finding a couple cheap printing plates on Ebay. I’ve got alerts set up and hope to find all of the missing pieces to my rainbows. 2016 Phoenix Tyrod Taylor Collected: 2016 Panini Phoenix Tyrod Taylor #11 2016 Panini Phoenix Tyrod Taylor #11 (Red) 2016 Panini Phoenix Tyrod Taylor #11 (Pink) 2016 Panini Phoenix Tyrod Taylor #11 94/99 (Orange) 2016 Panini Phoenix Tyrod Taylor #11 5/25 (Yellow) 2016 Panini Phoenix Tyrod Taylor #11 1/1 (Magenta Printing Plate) 2016 Panini Phoenix Tyrod Taylor #11 1/1 (Cyan Printing Plate) In Transit: 2016 Panini Phoenix Tyrod Taylor #11 5/10 (Green) Missing: 2016 Panini Phoenix Tyrod Taylor #11 1/1 (Blue) 2016 Panini Phoenix Tyrod Taylor #11 1/1 (Black Printing Plate) 2016 Panini Phoenix Tyrod Taylor #11 1/1 (Yellow Printing Plate) 2015 Topps Triple Threads Jim Kelly Collected: 2015 Topps Triple Threads Jim Kelly #84 2015 Topps Triple Threads Jim Kelly #84 195/232 […]

Eddie’s Sports Treasures – Knoxville, Tennessee

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I also ventured out to another Knoxville sports card shop.  Eddie’s Sports Treasures in Knoxville, Tennessee didn’t disappoint.  It was about a 15-20 minute drive from downtown Knoxville and was set in a very strip-mall-like atmosphere.  But once I walked in, I was pretty happy with the place.  It was big and loaded with all kinds of sports memorabilia.  Owner Eddie Barkley had authentic jerseys, signed helmets, signed photos, and a great selection of cards.  He also had a bunch of officially licensed products like t-shirts, hats, etc… Eddie’s Sports Treasures has a pretty strong online presence as well!  You can visit his website at eddiessportstreasures.com.  He’s also on Facebook here and Twitter @sportstreasures VIBE (4 out of 5) While it doesn’t look like much from the outside. The inside is something else. Eddie was helping another customer when I walked in.  It was like two in the afternoon so this was already a good sign.  I looked around the immense inventory, marveling at a bunch of the stuff.  He then took two calls before we had a few moments to chat about the business of cardboard. (And he took another call while […]

Webb’s Cards and Collectibles – Knoxville Tennessee

VIBE (3 out of 5) Webb’s Cards and Collectibles is a small store but very organized. It felt a little cramped as card boxes were packed to the ceiling. Each set was organized on the shelves by year, each card was in number order. If you needed a card to complete your collection this is the place to come. Especially if you need baseball from the past 40-50 years. I chatted with the owner, Bill, while his grand kids were running around the store. This was pretty cool to see two little boys playing around the store. Both boys were well behaved and energetic and put a smile on my face. INVENTORY (3 out of 5) I’m a football guy and I like to be able to buy packs and boxes not just singles. I would have given a higher score here had there been any wax boxes at all. There were some factory sets, a couple of random hobby boxes, but nothing 2017. There was an entire display case full of Peyton Manning, since it was in Knoxville, Tennessee. Most of the single cards in cases were pretty recent (last 4 years) but there were a few older cards […]