Baseball Cards

I have been an avid baseball card collector since I was about 12 years old. Luckily, my love of collecting is shared by my other love, Haize. I think she mostly enjoys the thrill of the chase - she loves opening packs of cards to see what valuable items might be inside. The hobby has really changed a lot over the years. I remember back when I could take a $1 bill down to 7-11 and buy two packs of 1987 Topps cards. These days packs can run anywhere from about $2.00 to $100.00! Instead of getting excited about pulling your favorite players, now the excitement comes from finding a memorabilia, autograph, or short-print card.

The purpose of me writing all this is to mention that this past week I found a helpful tool on www.beckett.com where I can enter in the cards we own and it will tell me what each one is worth and then what the entire collection is worth. I have been entering in cards since Thursday and have yet to even make a dent. One of the side benefits has been going back through the card boxes and finding things I had completely forgotten about. It is almost like being able to open the packs all over again! Even though I consider the value of my collection to be part of my net worth, I realize that it will never be something that I can use as part of my retirement plan. As a matter of fact, I probably have too much invested emotionally to ever be able to part with the majority of the collection. If I ever had to, I would probably end up with some kind of anxiety disorder!

Saturday was busy for the whole family. Haize, Mia, and Emma all took part in a two-family garage sale with the neighbors, the Hydes. They had good day and exceed their expectations in sales. To make things even better, as we were cleaning up, some people showed up and took away the last few big items that we had so we didn't even have to make a trip to Deseret Industries to drop it off!

I participated in the opening day of the Salt Lake County Corporate Games. Our 5k team (which I definitely wasn't a part of) finished 3rd in our division and got us off to a great start. Nicole Goeckeritz and I set up and manned the team showcase tent for about three hours before going to play softball. Traditionally, the company team hasn't been very good, but we played out of our freaking minds! We won both games we played and are now only two wins away from winning the softball portion of the tournament! I have to admit that it is a lot funner to play softball when you are winning!

This past week was bittersweet in that Emma has made the decision to go back to Puerto Rico for a year. Unfortunately, she wasn't able to find a job teaching elementary school for this upcoming year. Her plan is to spend a year teaching again at the University of Puerto Rico while she completes everything necessary to receive a teaching licence. That should make getting a job here in Utah a lot easier next year. While we will undoubtedly miss her, it is nice to know that she is just a free jetBlue flight away. I think it was a lot tougher when we had no idea when we would be seeing each other again because we had to wait for cheap flights. Just another blessing from Haize's job...