Favorite player of yore...

Well, my mother-in-law couldn't think of anything to buy me for my birthday, so she just sent birthday cash instead, which, is never a bad idea for a card collector.

So I spent some time diving around eBay, looking for something nice to pick up and settled on an autograph of one of my favorite players of all time (oh, and it has a jersey piece too):

Tony Gwynn

 I received it in the mail yesterday and was terribly pleased with the quick shipping from the seller (not to mention the free shipping). This card of Gwynn will be one of the few non-Hidalgo or Vazquez cards that will be in my PC. And, to make things even better, my mother-in-law happened to be a huge Gwynn fan growing up as well and even did a little card collecting of him when she was younger. Small world, huh?

I know she still doesn't collect cards, but I have a decent amount of Gwynn base cards laying around, so I may go ahead and get those together and give them to her as part of a gift (maybe for like Christmas or something), to help bring back the memories from her youth and the enjoyment she had collecting his cards.

You may be asking yourself, "Now, how come you never mentioned Gwynn being one of your favorites and why did you wait so long to pick up an auto of him?". Well, this isn't the first auto of Gwynn's I have owned (nor is it the best). The previous auto I once had in my possession was foolishly sold with the rest of my earlier collection to purchase random boxes and an XBOX (yeah, I know, gambling and video games, who would have thought, huh?). I had my reasons though: I was having a string of good luck with pulls from boxes and someone had recently stolen my XBOX (the original, not the 360, it was quite some time ago) and some of my games, so I needed entertainment at the apartment (no cable, no internet, so it was kind of the dark ages there).

Why have a waited so long since then? Outside of a few choice cards (a Beltran Super I won for a guy who couldn't afford it, the Hidalgo Red Crusade and the Hidalgo 98 Donruss Signature Series Century auto being the three), I had never spent more than about $15 on any one card. Maybe i'm cheap, maybe i'm selective, I don't know.

The good thing is, it is one more thing knocked off of my 2010 Goals list, meaning I can now aim for slightly more expensive autos (Mike Piazza and Nolan Ryan, as a matter of fact).

When disaster strikes....

It strikes hard.

Had quite an eventful latish night last night.

I was headed home from Frankfurt, travelling on the autobahn. Due to the rain and construction area, I was going around 80kph, when I came around a blind curve. Much to my dismay, there was an eighteen wheeler that had slowed down to 40kph. This meant I had to attempt to slow down to half my speed in a short distance, without hitting the truck. So, instead, I hit the guardrail. As I attempted to slow down, my car fishtailed in the rain and I lost control of it. I struck the guard rail a total of three teams, causing quite a bit of damage to the car, as seen in the following pictures:

 That fifth and final picture is the bumper and grill from my Jeep Liberty, that was salvaged from the road.

The car is now located two hours away. I had to finish my drive home at 1130 at night, in a rented car, in the rain. Needless to say, I was scared shitless on that part if the drive home, but I made it out of the whole ordeal with no injuries, so I am definitely blessed.

Luckily, my insurance should cover the rental car (quite expensive out here) and most of the damages (not sure if I have a deductible or not, so maybe I should bone up there, huh?).

This means I will be tapping into my card money, which caused me to miss out on a few auctions I REALLY wanted, but I was lucky enough to get something sweet as a belated birthday gift, so I guess it makes up for that:

May have overpaid, but I don't really care, as it was my birthday money and I really wanted a Gwynn auto (knock that off of my 2010 goals list :D).

Anyways, I am off of work until June 1st (thank you pre-deployment leave), so I plan on getting myself back on track with a bunch of posts and comments on other blogs.

Thanks for checking me out guys!!