Check This Box.

       I subscribe to the same theory about politics as some do religion, and it goes something like this:

Religion is like a penis.
It's fine to have one.
It's fine to be proud of it.
But please don't whip it out in public and start waving it around.
And please don't try to shove it down my children's throats.

This time of year we all get sick of the politics, sick of the partisan fighting, sick of the attack ads, sick of the canned pandering, even sick of people being sick of politics.  It is just one of those things; it's why you don't talk about it in polite society.  And I completely understand those who hate the political process.  But it is quite easy to avoid it.  You don't have to watch the debate.  You can change the channel if commercials come on.  You can change the subject if someone starts a conversation about it.  Most of us know how we feel without the constant bombardment.  And I respect all that.  But there is one thing you must do and that is be part of the process one way or another.  That means you should get out and vote - or even don't vote - and do so for a reason.  A lot of folks with say "you have to vote!" but I disagree.  If your reason not to vote is grounded in logic (ie, I hate these candidates) and not ignorance, I am with you.  We all wish the election cycle would shorten and the rhetoric would improve.  We all would like the candidates to not start at the extremes and work towards the middle. In the end, we all get the candidates we deserve.  This is part of the process.  And a messy process it is.  I vote in every election I can - primaries, school board, dog catcher, whatever.  But to each their own. 

OK, that rambling rant is now over - for now.  What I am gonna do here is pull out my presidential themed cards.  First is not only my favorite page of political cards, but one of my favorite pages in my entire collection:

This is from the 1956 Topps Presidents set.  Since these cards are well loved, I picked them up for a song a long time ago. These cards are fantastic.  Those beards are fantastic.  Why don't more candidates wear awesome hipster style facial hair?  I would totally vote for the first one who has a handlebar mustache and a sweet set of mutton chops.  My hat is now in the political ring.

We now jump ahead five decades to some more recent offerings:

Much like most people seemed to warm up to Jimmy Carter years after he left office, I have grown fond of George Bush senior in recent years.  He was a pretty interesting dude, I just don't think he ever should have been president (and the less said about his kid, the better).  The ones on the bottom there are from the last presidential cycle. 

Here is more of a mishmash of political cards:

These also have more of a sports theme.  Those cards of the presidents throwing out the first pitch are from the 1994 Baseball set from the Ken Burns Baseball documentary.  I have this whole set in piecemeal form, it was just broken up and I have been too lazy to put it back together again (cue Humpty Dumpty reference).  On this page you also will see more than a few JFK cards.  This will at least begin to tell you where my political leanings go. 


In 2007 and 2008, Topps was obsessed with these political cards, I assembled a little frankenpage of them here:

You have presidents and signers of both the Declaration of Independence and Constitution on this page.  You also have Bill Clinton yet again throwing out the first pitch in a Cleveland Indians jacket.  Is that the only team he threw out the first pitch for? Here is a good piece of trivia, William Howard Taft was the first president to throw out the first pitch at a major league game.  And John Hancock is on here twice, because he should be.  Most people know about his huge signature, and those people usually even know why.  But if you don't know how badass John Hancock was overall, go look him up, don't worry, I'll wait. 

OK, so I have kept things pretty straight and narrow, but here, I am gonna get back up on my soapbox and shove it down your throats a little:

I am unabashedly and unapologetically liberal.  Socially, economically, and morally, all of my leanings go very left.  I got up and out of the house this morning at 8:30 to vote and I voted for Barack Obama.  Has he been perfect?  No.  Does he deserve four more years?  Yes.  He has stuck by his guns and stayed true to most of his promises.  I would like to see him finish the job.  I lived in Massachusetts for 12 years.  I saw Mitt Romney at the embryonic stage of his political career when he ran against Ted Kennedy.  Back then he ran as a pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-health care candidate.  He did the same when he ran for governor years later (and won).  Now, on the national stage, he has switched (or as the GOP loves to say, flip flopped) to reflect the more radical edges of his party.  No one really knows who Mitt Romney is.  Well, except for all that pro-business corporate pirating he does...on that, he has never wavered.  The republicans have nominated the very kind of candidate they used to eviscerate.  For this reason alone, I could never vote for them or him.  Back in the 1960's, the democrats were highjacked by the very liberal factions of the anti-war hippie types.  Now, the GOP has been taken over by the far right tea party lunatics and I believe until they get their house in order and refocus on what has been their very conservative yet very populist platform (see: Ronald Reagan), they will be doomed to lose as the democrats were in the 1960's (I mean, they lost to Richard Nixon twice).  Anyway, that is my two cents about this election.  I promise not to have any more political content until next November.

Genesis.

       So where exactly did this collecting idea come from?  Let's jump in the WABAC machine to the magical time of 1998 - Bill Clinton was president for life, the stock market would never ever fail again thanks to tech stocks, and The Simpsons was winding down its run, but still pretty funny.  I was living in Boston, and I had two jobs: I worked in a baseball card store by day and was an assistant manager of a record store by night.  It was my childhood dream jobs come true.  I got to talk baseball and buy and sell cards all day.  Then, I got to change into my cool clothes, talk music, flirt with cute customers, and bang cute clerks all night.  I worked 18-20 hours a day, but not a minute of it was remotely what I would call "work".  Alas, both of those stores are gone (though the card store exists in a different incarnation) and I no longer have the energy to run such a vocational gauntlet.  Oh, to be 23 again.  Anyway, working in the card shop allowed me to augment my collection exponentially.  I built vintage sets, scored choice hall of famers, and bought a fuckton of new product (it's an industry term). 

     Back then, most of my collection ended up in boxes but working in the card shop allowed me access to binders and pages at wholesale prices.  I started putting shiny inserts into pages.  At first, a lot of my pages looked like this:

Inserts all willy-nilly.  I mean, I have since moved these around a bit, but this page is almost exactly how I put together in 1998.

The first conscious effort I made to have nine cards on a page that had a unifying theme was this one:

I loved the '98 Finest, with the busy - but not ugly - ribbon design and the little icons for positions, a conceptual homage to the 1973 Topps set.  It was those icons that I wanted to showcase so I made sure they were all represented; I especially liked the batting helmet for the DH.  I even used the rarer shiny no-protector parallels.  This is it.  This is the genesis.  It became a harbinger.  I started to go back and see if I had nine of other inserts.  So more pages were made:

If I recall, this 1997 UD Great Futures page was second:

I loved these Topps Etch-a-Sketch inserts.  There were 9 of them in the set.  Perfect.


And so instead of this...

You got this:

Instead of this:

You got this:


Once I discovered eBay, it made doing pages like this much easier:

and much much more colorful:
 
Sometimes much much MUCH more colorful: 
Pound for pound, that UD Decade page might be my favorite page, like, ever.

So, from doing this with inserts came the natural progression to do it with all of my cards and collections.  That way I could narrow down some of the bulkier sets and player collections into manageable bites and focus on grander things that I actually wanted in quantity.  I liked the idea so much, I decided to share it with the world, or at least the 50 or so nerds like me who read dozens of card blogs everyday.