Paying It Forward

The message boards over on Sportscollectors.net are an interesting place. Like any community, there are some bad apples, but for the most part the cream rises to the top. I'm over there several times a week (if not more) trying to improve my Cubs autograph collection which is a 1000x better because of it.

Last year, and maybe the year before, a thread was started with the intention of Paying it Forward. Go through the want lists of fellow members and send something with no expectation of a personal return. I don't think this is any big revelation for the blogosphere as this seems to be the norm around here. Jeff from 2 by 3 Heroes may be single handedly keeping the Post Office in business with his PWEs.

But earlier last week, I was contacted by SCN member littleking83 about my quest to complete the 1991 Topps Desert Shield Cubs team set. I've seen him around the boards as he is attempting to not only own a complete set of all 792 Desert Shield cards, but to get them all signed as well! Talk about ambition!

I guess in the process of meeting his goal, he's picked up a few extra unsigned cards because he asked if my want list was up to date. When I said it was, these two beauties showed up in the mail yesterday. Just in time for Veteran's Day! 

I've been meaning to pick up a nicely centered Shawn Boskie for a while. According to SCN, he is pretty good about signing his TTM, so this one might go right back out in the mail, along with an ATCRCS card.

Ryne Sandberg has three cards in this set, the base, a record breaker and this All-Star card. I've been putting off picking up any of them since they tend to go for double digits when available for sale. The RB and AS cards aren't completely unreasonable (compared to the base card and the Maddux tends to be) but it would still eat up my card budget pretty quickly.

I've been inspired so I will be spending my Sunday looking through some want lists both here on the blogosphere and on SCN. And my card budget for the next little while will be going towards postage instead.

This brings my total from this set up to 21 cards out of the 32 (not including the Keith Comstock error).

Thanks Larry (AKA littleking83)!!!