What player, team, or sport do you collect and why?

[DaClyde]

I'm not a vintage collector by any means, and am mostly just a member for the educational benefits. This forum can be like spending a day in a room full of baseball card museum curators (that's meant as a good thing).

I'm mainly a player collector now, though I dabble in non-US baseball cards for the enjoyment I get from the research and sharing what I find with the more mainstream audience found on most trading board. While vintage is being covered, aside from Gary Engel, no one seems to be making much of an effort to document modern baseball card issues in Mexico, Taiwan, Korea and Venezuela. Bit by bit, I'm trying to catalog as many of those sets as possible and include them in the Inventory Manager system over at SportsCardForum so everyone has access.

As far as players go, my main focus is Hensley Meulens. Yes, Hensley 'Bam Bam' Meulens, current hitting coach for the Giants. After years of collecting more conventional players like Dave Winfield and Matt Williams, I decided to go for something more interesting. Meulens, while a highly touted prospect for the Yankees, never quite panned out due to lack of patience at the plate (though he could have put up far better numbers than Adam Dunn did this year, he likely would have been a Rob Deer/Pete Incaviglia-type hitter). He ended up being the only player to play in all four winter leagues at the time, and over his career played professionally in eight different countries and had cards issued in four, and speaks 5 different languanges. He has coached in a further two more winter leagues (receving a card in one of them), as well as for three different minor league teams and now the Giants. I like collecting a player for which there is no competition, but also several very obscure and rare cards from Japan and the minor leagues. It's much more of a challenge and keeps my attention better than simply accumulating the endless mainstream cards of a star player (though my Winfield collection is an on-going pursuit, but it is only a matter of money, not hunting).