Let's go USMNT!

Tony and Tino say let's go USA!

Tino says, "USA! USA!"

I’ll show my support for the red, white, and blue with another Tino Martinez autograph that I recently picked up. My Tino autograph collection is looking healthy these days as being pretty sparse for a long time. This particular one is from 2013 Panini USA Champions.

Tino was a member of the 1988 USA Olympic Gold Medal winning squad. Let’s hope the US Men’s soccer team gets another W tonight against Portugal. I know I'm really stretching to draw a connection between the two, but bear with me!

Go Yanks! (no, not THOSE Yanks)

Go USA! Beat Ghana!

Uncle Martyn does it again

"Uncle" Martyn is one of my favorite collectors out there. He runs the blog I Collect Ball Cards from the UK, and is an overall good dude. Back when Joey was born, Martyn sent him a few relic cards "From Uncle Martyn", hence my blog post title.

We lost touch for a little bit, but Twitter re-connected us and we go back and forth from time to time. Martyn said he had a cool Pineda to send me, and he wasn't lying. Check out this beauty:

One cool thing about this card is that it's a palindrome card. It's numbered 26/62. I don't know why, but I find that cool.

Uncle Martyn also sent some stuff along for Joey since he just became a big brother. Stickers! World Cup stickers! Joey loves stickers...and I constantly find them on the bottom of my shoes. He usually peels them off and sticks them to his face. It's sort of funny and sort of weird. He did enjoy these though, although they are a bit tough for a two-year-old to peel off. I did save one unopened pack and put it in the pile of unopened packs I've been accumulating for Joey. They are mostly junk wax, but I'd love to give him a big box of unopened stuff one day, no matter when it's from. He'll enjoy seeing what it was like to open cards in the '80s and '90s, since when he's older, they will probably have flying cards and all that.

Martyn gave two packs of Match Attax too, which are the Barclays Premier League equivalent of Baseball Attax. They are cool cards, and we pulled two inserts that are X-Fractor like.

Martyn, thanks again man!

Non-mainstream cards - GI Joe, World Cup '94, Maxx Racing

I feel like all of my posts lately are either trade reviews, purchase reviews, or TTMs. They are mainly baseball-centric as well. This is all well and good, but I'm not bringing much insight to the table other than telling you what I got in the mail that day. Boring. I recently saw a post over at Community Gum about a trade for some Garbage Pail Kids cards. Man, I remember those! It got me thinking about some other non-baseball, basketball, football or hockey cards I've collected in the past. There have been a lot of attempts at trading cards - movies, TV shows, other sports - so here are a few that I remember collecting. I'd love to hear what you guys collected at one time or another.

In 1994, all the rage was about the World Cup in the USA, and rightfully so. I remember getting a few packs of soccer cards made by Upper Deck. I loved the Tony Meola (USA goalie) base card, as well as hologram (!!) insert of Roberto Baggio and Jorge Campos. Do these ring a bell?

Image completely stolen off of an eBay listing.

I was also a big collector of GI Joe's when I was growing up. Actually, screw the term "collector." I played with them and had wars. I was always jealous of the kids on the commercials who had a battlefield in their backyards. I had A LOT of action figures (the small, movable ones), and it terrifies me to know what my mom may have sold them for in a garage sale. My favorite was Big Boa (the one with the boxing gloves and punching bag), and I also liked Croc Master (he came with a pet croc). Those two were IMPOSSIBLE to find, but somehow my parents came through for me. Imagine having to find those figures in the late '80s without the help of eBay?! I also remember collecting some of the cards. The ones I collected were from the 1991 set.

Also stolen from eBay on a secret Cobra Hammerhead Mission.

Lastly, I remember getting a few packs of racing cards before they became mainstream. Nowadays they have a lot of really nice products with race-used fire suits and tires relic cards. I remember these packs of 1991 Maxx used to cost $.25 at a local drugstore, and I was a pretty big Dale Earnhardt Sr fan growing up, so I liked these a lot.

I'm sure I collected other random cards, but these three sets really stick out to me. I recall a few packs of Ninja Turtle and Dick Tracy cards. What about you guys? What did you collect that wasn't "mainstream"?