Rolling past 900!

Over the past few weeks, I've mentioned that my Tino Martinez collection was closing in on 900 unique cards. I know it pales in comparison to collectors have have thousands of Jeters or Trouts or Griffeys, but keep in mind Tino was never really mainstream. He got close in 1998 after his 44 HR season in 1997, but ultimately there were guys like Jeter and Bernie and Clemens to represent the Yankees in various insert sets over the next few years.

I do think it's a decent achievement. I'll never be able to unload them if I had to; not the way a Jeter or Trout collector could. But that's not why I do this. I do it because he was my favorite player as a kid, and I started that collection now and nearly 25 years later, I'm still pursuing it. And that's pretty cool.

As I closed in on 900, a reader named Bruce was kind enough to reach out and say that he had three of them for me. It turns out, he provided number 900 on the nose, as well as 901 and 902. I'm glad it was from sets of my childhood versus one of the 2019 issues.

It's still always funny to me when I realize I don't have a card from a fairly common set, such as 2001 Chrome. Just shows how easy it is to overlook certain cards.

So there it is. Next stop, 1,000. Who knows when. But I'm really happy about this number, and thanks to everyone who has helped me get there!