Wanted: Team Collectors

From time to time I mention the group of team collectors I'm a part of.  And with school back in session, it's time to set up our table at the recruitment fair and tell everybody how cool our club is!

But seriously, we have quite a few empty teams that we would love to fill, if for no other reason than to clear out the thousands of cards that are taking up space in our closets that don't have a good home.

The concept is pretty simple: we're a group of team collectors.  As we accumulate cards of other teams, we ship the cards off to the respective team collector, and they do likewise.  It's technically a trading group, but that's a bit too formal.  It's a great bunch of guys (and gals) who chat about life, sports, and cardboard - usually in that order.

Aside from exchanging cards of our teams, we also have group breaks every few months.  It's usually newer products coming out, occasionally with some older stuff sprinkled in.  We split the cost, stream the break live over Google Hangout where everybody can chat, and nobody makes a dime off of it.  It's a cost effective way to get all the new cards of our teams, and a chance at some nice hits, for usually between $15-30 per break depending on whether we're just doing a few boxes or a full case of product.

Once a year, we even try to get together for an annual convention for those who can make it.

Without making this sound like a damn infomercial, being a part of this group has really been one of the most rewarding parts of collecting.  The group has been around over 10 years, forming on the old Beckett message boards.  I joined about 5 years ago after I learned about the group on a message board.  I didn't really know anybody, and didn't even really consider myself a team collector at the time.  I had around 4,000 Pirate cards but mostly just focused on autographs.  Now I have close to 16,000 different Bucco cards, thanks in part to the Team Collectors generosity.

So here's an open invitation.  If you think it might sound cool, come check out our forum.   You can be as active or inactive in the group as you like.  If you wanted to join, chat, and participate in the occasional break that would be totally fine.  Want to be more active?  That's great too.   And we'd love to have you.  It's amazing how hard it is to find collectors for some teams - even big market teams like the Mets seem to be nonexistent.  So don't worry about whether you have enough cards to send out, or if you're noncommittal - if the concept sounds intriguing, at least come check it out.

If anyone is interested in learning more, please either email me or leave a comment with the forum username you register with.  The forum gets dozens of spam-bot registrations every day that our admin purges every so often, so I can pass along your user name to make sure you don't get purged.