A Triumphant Return?

I'm back!  I guess.  I have barely been up here in northern California for a month and I've already had some incredible ups and downs in my personal and professional lives.  Maybe semi-regular crad blogging will signal a preliminary return to normalcy?  An awesome thing I should mention though - I just got back from a metal show at Slim's in San Francisco where I met James Hetfield of Metallica and shook his hand.  Very cool!  He was in a rush to get into a black SUV with tinted windows, so my friend Jake and I had no time to get a photograph with him.  Still, it was pretty awesome nonetheless.

For this, my first blog post after moving back to the SF Bay Area (boo), I have decided to post a holy grail card I very recently acquired:

2011 Panini Playoff National Treasures, Aaron Rodgers Super Bowl MVP on-leather autograph, #'d 15/27.  YEA!

Well, now I can stop collecting.  I (mostly) kid, though.  As we collectors are wont to do, I'll inevitably find something else of interest to collect.  Next up, an Aaron Rodgers rookie auto?  Also, the Dodgers are playing poorly.  At least Matt Kemp still finds a way to be awesome.

Metallica!

It's My Burfday! Here's a Holy Grail card!

Happy baseball birthdays to Tom Glavine and Hyun-Jin Ryu!  Also, happy birthday to Jim Lovell, Elton John, Tatjana Patitz, Anders Fridén (\m/), Bob Sura, Wladimir Klitschko, Lee Pace, Danica Patrick, Arnošt of Pardubice, first Archbishop of Prague (only included him because his name contains "Arno"), and many, many others!

I thought I would wait until today, my birthday, to post a recently acquired baseball card of most epic proportions:

1998 Donruss Signature, Significant Signatures #R3 Sandy Koufax autograph, #'d 0905/2000.

"Yurp," believe what you are seeing ladies and gentlemen!  Gaze upon madness.  Gaze upon prismatic card-stock perfection.  Indeed, I obtained a "Holy Grail" card of mine.  It is quite possibly a "Holy Grail" for many other collectors too.  No, I did not purchase this Sandy Koufax auto for my birthday.  I received a substantially large tax refund this year because I apparently overpaid thousands in taxes last year.  This card represents my big refund splurge.

I bought it a few weeks ago, in fact, at All Star Cards in Santee, CA.  They are one of my favorite card stores in California, so check them out if you happen to be in the San Diego area.  My girlfriend and I were in the card shop when I noticed an Albert Pujols signature card.  I said, "Man, I should just buy that instead of a risky box of cards."  However, I then looked behind the Pujols autograph on the shelf and saw the beauty you see above.  It was an epiphany of sorts, and love at first sight.  The awesome father-daughter team at All Star Cards even knocked several dollars off the asking price.  The black ink of the "K" and "O" in "Koufax" is imperfect, but to me the card is perfection in cardboard form.

I got my Koufax!

(Sweet trade post from Brad to come soon.)