I have been collecting players from USC since the early 2000s. I was living in Orange County, CA and players like Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart were helping to drive the football card market. I was hitting up the LCS at least once a week and cracking just about every new product that came out. My goal was to add as many former Trojan player cards to my collection, base, inserts, parallels, hits - they were all on my radar.
While I was looking at any and all former players, I tended to gravitate toward certain players. It is pretty easy for me to explain why I was going for certain players. For example, I was going after as many Tony Boselli cards because he lived across the hall from me during my junior year. Ronnie Lott was a natural as I met him a couple times and he was a 49er great. Pat Harlow played when I was in school and he was cool when I ran into him a couple times. Ryan Kalil was an All-American and entered the draft as the top center in the country.
There is one player I went after pretty hard and I really can't remember or figure out why. Anthony McCoy was a tight end at USC and didn't play his freshman year. In his final 3 years, he played in 36 games and made 46 catches and scored 3 touchdowns. He was far from being a star. He was drafted in the 6th round. As a pro, Pete Carroll gave him a shot in Seattle and he played from 2010-2012 and then split the 2015 season between the Seahawks and Redskins. He played in a total of 34 games in his career and made 31 catches and scored 3 touchdowns. Not a spectacular career my any means and I have no personal connection to him.
Despite not understanding my drive to collect him, I have amassed a pretty solid collection of his cards. With this new addition, I now have 189 different cards including 12 1/1 cards. There are 75 cards I still don't have and 61 of those are 1/1s.
This card was sitting on my watch list on eBay for literally years. The price started out around $40 and one day I decided to throw down a $10 offer that was accepted. I doubt many of the 1/1s will surface but I am thinking about chasing down the 14 non-1/1s just for the heck of it.
Is there anyone or anything you collect that you aren't sure why?
At this point in time, a good chunk of my want list falls under the category of "why?" It's one of my goals for this year - figure out the sets that I really want to finish and remove the rest from my want list!
ReplyDeleteGreat question. Not sure why I collect Cal or Stanford guys. I went to SJSU. ;)
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