[JohnBrownsElbow]

Hello everyone. My name is Casey White. I've been a very longtime lurker at Net54, meaning as far back as Leon not being in charge, but have just in the past week finally decided to take the plunge into collecting baseball cards again and finally joining in the conversation on this wonderful forum.

I first started collecting baseball cards as a seven year old in 1981 chasing Fernando Valenzuela rookie cards before reading "The Glory of Their Times" in 1983 or so and being drawn more toward the historical side of baseball. Spent most of the last half of the 1980s collecting higher grade 1950s-1960s star players with my dad but sold my collection when I entered high school. I've been following baseball closely for most of the last 20+ years, collected vintage baseball photos and books from 1997 to around 2000, but resisted the urge to start collecting cards again until now.

I've decided to try conquering "The Monster" myself. I'm on a limited budget but my plan for now is to buy one "common" a week and one Hall of Famer or Southern Leaguer a month. I'm sure there'll be some weeks/months I buy more and some I buy less but I'm guessing I'll stick close to that average. I've been collecting modern literature in signed first editions (mainly Charles Bukowski) and vinyl records for the last few years but have lost interest in both collections for a while now. I've stuck both collections in the closet for now but in a few months I'll probably start liquidating those once I'm sure that this collecting of baseball cards is going to stick with me. Funds from those should help me get my first Cobb, Mathewson, Johnson, and/or Young when the time comes.

I'll try to stick to cards with decent eye appeal--no big missing pieces, no major creases especially through the player's face. Rounded corners are fine. I'm OK with a little paper loss or writing on the reverse. I want cards that I am comfortable with taking out of the holder and touching with my bare hands. In fact, I'm semi-tempted to just store my collection raw in an old cigar box. Not going to do that for now though.

I'm not going to specifically look for graded cards but for now I'm not going to bust out any cards I get that are already in slabs. (As a matter of fact, I'm waiting on my first graded card, an SGC 20 Sam Crawford batting that I bought on the BST boards here, to come in now.) I have a feeling I'll eventually bust any graded cards out though, just going to give myself some time to make sure I want to stick with this before costing myself any extra money by losing the slabs.

Not going to focus on different back types for now, though I'm betting that'll change somewhat as I move forward with this collection. My eventual goal is to get to 518 fronts. No Wagner, Plank, Magie, Demmitt St. Louis, Doyle NY, or O'Hara St. Louis for me. But to start with, I'm going to focus on getting one front pose of each player. If I counted right there are 389 different players in the set, minus Wagner and Plank, that's 387 different players I'm aiming toward.

Anyways, I got my first two T206s in the mail this morning:

Mike Donlin (with bat) -- Sweet Caporal 350 Factory 30
Jimmy Lavender -- Piedmont 350 Factory 25

I'm in love with these two little pieces of history, haven't been able to keep my hands off them all morning. I look forward to adding to my collection and talking about it with all of you!

Current Monster number: 2