A happy family

My baseball cards and I have a healthy relationship.

There are times when the love is on overload. I can't stop looking at my cards. I want to hold my cards, touch them, feel them. Night and day, day and night, all I think about is my cards.

Then there are times, as has been the case the past couple weeks, where the passion seems to fizzle. My cards are there, but I don't feel much of anything towards them. They sit, waiting for the time when they'll be loved again.

But even in those dark periods, my cards know I'm not going to leave them. We may have highs and lows, but that balance is what keeps our love so strong.

One thing I enjoy about our relationship is that we're constantly adding new people to our home. When people like John of the terrific blog "Johnny's Trading Spot" decide to drop huge-flat rate boxes of cards on us, well...it's like adopting a whole new family.

We have over fifty different Pokey Reeses running around the house now.

Our family has members of all ages and professions.

Some collectors with a few years on me probably know Abe Vigoda as Fish from Barney Miller, but I've always thought of him as Otis from Good Burger. Something about growing up in the '90s, I guess.

It's nice to finally have one of the infamous "Missing Text" Peles from 2013 A&G in our family.

I just hope the other kids don't make too much fun of him.

John was gracious enough to add a huge stack of Cubs to our family.

One thing I liked was how diverse the stack was. Sure, we got some of the bigger brands like Upper Deck and Stadium Club, but he also included a lot of the forgotten sets that hit the shelves over the years.

UD Pro Sigs? Pros and Prospects? E-X? Fleer Triple Crown?

?????????

We don't like to play favorites, but we must admit that we do enjoy John Olerud more than a lot of the other cards running around the house.

Thanks to John, we couldn't be happier about adding a whole new page of Oleruds to the collection.

Front, back, doesn't matter to us.

We'll welcome interesting new members to the family either way.

Our mini-collection kids like to hang out together.

We're still getting used to our new "tip of the cap" theme. It's still tough to decide whether the photos on cards like this Daryl Boston are true "tip of the cap" shots, or merely feature the guy removing his hat for a split-second.

After some consideration, we've decided to add Mr. Boston to our "tip of the cap" family after all.

Our numerous little themes owe a great deal of debt to the 1990s.

They produced the vast majority of our mini-collection children.

Some of our kids look way older than they actually are in these neat throwback uniforms.

In reality, they're only a few years old.

Double plays are our largest mini-collection.

It was made even bigger by the budding stack of awesome double dips John sent over, complete with cards from just about every era imaginable.

We do have a few twins in the family.

These two plays at the plate were born just seconds apart.

Some of our kids...

Well, let's just say that they like to talk a lot.

One of my favorite things about our family is that they come in all shapes and sizes.

We love adding oversized cards to the house. This Jim Edmonds joins his fellow interviewees in the mini-collection.

Dig the '90s headphones.

It may be tough to tell from the scan, but these two 1984 Topps Supers are giant.

Anything with the word "super" in the description has to be cool.

John put a little bit of a dilemma into our hands with this flat-rate box.

The last things I pulled out from his generous trade package were these three uncut box bottoms from 1986 Fleer, Donruss, and Topps. I think you can see the question something like this would introduce.

Do I keep them intact? Or do I cut them? Which would be better for the family?

Hmmm. I guess some of the integrity would be destroyed if I were to cut them. These things did go almost thirty years without being separated from one another. That has to mean something.

Ah, who am I kidding?

Cut 'em up!

We value the individual over the whole in our family. After all, we can't put uncut box bottoms in binders, now, can we?

I can honestly say that this is the first time I've been lucky enough to cut a box bottom. It's quite a feeling. We think these cards will be much happier separated from one another. They'll get to join their other buddies in our many nine-pocket pages.

We may go through our highs and lows, but I'm proud to say that my cards and I are a very happy family. Yes, indeed.

Happy Valentine's Day, my precious baseball cards. You are the straw that stirs my drink.

Love, Nick.