a beautiful mine

another reason i was charged up to create this website was to have a place to capture our interesting, if random and totally meaningless, card collecting milestones. one of which recently passed: 01/30/22 – the one year anniversary of me joining tcdb. (if you are new here, check out our introduction page)

for about forever I’ve had this one binder of mostly junk wax baseball cards following me from house to house. that was it. the rest of my childhood collection fell to the wayside over the years, but this one binder persisted because of a handful of barry bonds rookie cards. including two of his 1986 topps traded xrc cards.

could be worth billions, right? spoiler alert: no.

anywho, in early january of 2021 i decided that my obsession with giannis now required physical artifacts and what if the billions of dollars in bonds rookies could be turned into one giannis rookie: lolololol. cute story bro.

early on i stumbled around the internet trying to find good ways to value cards, catalog what i had, and maybe find some good people to help me figure out my newest time waster. at first, i wasn’t smitten with tcdb and went to find something better. boy was i wrong because 2021 was the year of tcdb. holy macaroni did i spend way to much time on there. still do.

while the depth of functionality on the site continues to amaze me to this day, it’s the community that had me hooked. the little i know about #thehobby all starts here. these folks have been kind, welcoming, and just the right kind of internet crusty about the hobby they, and now my family, obsess over. i was hooked almost immediately.

this is already long winded so i’m going to shift to the data and return to the fine folks of the site at a later date. i will also fill in with additional stories around how some of these cards came to find themselves in my possession. special shouts to mah baby nichol (point guard), as well as aubrey (shooting guard) and brea (rotation). without you, this wouldn’t have been nearly as fun. <check out the squad if you haven’t already>

the number one reason i keep coming back to the site is the community. as you can see below, i was able to complete 502 transactions in my first year and as part of all this activity not only did i use the <redacted> out of the us postal service, but i also had my fair share of overseas activity.

without this user base being full of active traders, i’m not even sure i would have stuck with the hobby for this long. thank you tcdb. even if not all of the transactions were perfect, each of them brought me something new to learn and helped me eke out another day on the ledger. kudos to each and every one of you that i crossed paths with this year.

total transactions

transactions	cards sent	cards received	total exchanged
502	5,769	6,485	12,254

total different partners: 297

countries (7): australia, canada, france, germany, israel, lithuania, united states

this next list of players is my current list of favorite players on the site. i have worked to keep this list 10 athletes deep and reasonabley diverse across the major sports. this list is fluid and at one time had robin yount, paul molitor, and shohei ohtani on in. this version of my 10 favorite players to collect is really quite fun.

at some point i may expand on each of these players with their own page. it’ll be fun to explain why each ended up on the list.

below you will find who i am battling for ultimate supremacy and where i stand with each battle.

giannis antetokounmpo

rank	member	cards
1	airpete	576
2	👉 tullyelly 🤛	427
3	boco78	212

edgar bennett

rank	member	cards
1	kyle clark	690
2	agj8619	251
3	mopack626	188
4	gbpjimbo	187
5	👉 tullyelly 🤛	175
6	peycowboy	153

tyrese halliburton

rank	member	cards
1	rustypetty	38
2	bmac6702	32
3	bigz62554	28
4	👉 tullyelly 🤛	26
5	deany22	23

jrue holiday

rank	member	cards
1	boco78	216
2	benfica751	135
3	daboss1	114
4	muzas	87
5	volasas	84
6	👉 tullyelly 🤛	79
7	jolson	68

brook lopez

rank	member	cards
1	boco78	254
2	benfica751	154
3	daboss1	99
4	muzas	90
5	👉 tullyelly 🤛	87
6	volasas	85

khris middleton

rank	member	cards
1	jmiller4	501
2	boco78	106
3	👉 tullyelly 🤛	93
4	airpete	77

deion sanders

rank	member	cards
1	primetime21	2,573
2	flash g	1,865
3	tyrantsasupremebeing	795
4	sfurukawa	789
5	👉 tullyelly 🤛	533
6	jrberus	421

sterling sharpe

rank	member	cards
1	kyle clark	627
2	dkasp13	304
3	fscgrad777	253
4	agj8619	233
5	mopack626	223
6	grandpas	220
7	gbpjimbo	206
8	49ants	182
9	hockeydude	169
9	👉 tullyelly 🤛	169
11	brian’s ballcards	158

charlie ward

rank	member	cards
1	billy kingsley	100
2	boco78	98
3	muzas	71
4	benfica751	69 (nice)
5	thunder21	62
6	👉 tullyelly 🤛	57
6	kollectornet	57

rickie weeks

rank	member	cards
1	4mknudsen	1,092
2	wibdgrs	356
3	curl92000	306
4	cynicalbuddah	212
5	ntlwhlr	183
6	👉 tullyelly 🤛	165
7	alasiewicz	143

the following teams and my place on the top members list is a bit more troubling at scale. looks like i’ve got a ton of work ahead of myself and keeping track of these year over year will be particularly interesting. time to grind.

florida state seminoles

rank	member	cards
1	bobbyl	369
2	wvcabo	307
3	noles814	269
110	👉 tullyelly 🤛	43

green bay packers

rank	member	cards
1	kyle clark	28,984
2	jradke4	11,554
3	mopack626	8,984
158	👉 tullyelly 🤛	954

milwaukee brewers

rank	member	cards
1	wibdgrs	15,797
2	curl92000	15,762
3	ntlwhlr	15,746
433	👉 tullyelly 🤛	1,442

milwaukee bucks

rank	member	cards
1	boco78	4,988
2	billy kingsley	3,141
3	benfica751	2,696
21	👉 tullyelly 🤛	1,200

and now we get a bonus Sam Merrill section? why? because i’m #1 on the site and that is hilarious to me for some reason. i acquired 4 of the 5 this week alone (one of which is an auto!). must be destiny.

sam merrill

rank	member	cards
1	👉 tullyelly 🤛	5
2	bigz62554	4
2	rustypetty	4
2	bmac6702	4

i appreciate anyone that made it this far. you are the most special of them all.

one love,

james

ps…. did you know that the theme song to mad men was originally released on an aceyalone album? shouts to rjd2. check out deadringer while yer at it.