I’d like to take a moment to recognize, and congratulate, @LarryG on being selected as the inaugural member of the SCC Member Spotlight.
While Larry hasn’t been a member of SCC long, he has already proven himself to be a great addition to our community. He’s been very active on the site and is always very easy to deal with. In fact, Larry has been the top trader on SCC 2/3 months this year and is in a close race to win it again this month, too. Larry, from all of us on the SCC team, I want to say thank you and congratulations.
Now let’s try to get to know a little bit more about Larry and his collection.
Larry got started with cards at a very young age, following his brother and friends around. In fact, Larry’s mother likes to tell a story about how he “learned to read by looking at baseball cards”, if that says anything about how long cards have been a part of his life. Cards were everywhere for Larry as a child. He’d spend his days playing games involving cards such as flipping cards on the sidewalk, lining them up against the wall and knocking them down, or using the cards as baseball bats to swing at gumballs him and his friends would pitch to one another.
In his teenage years Larry would pick up cards at flea markets. He accumulated cards from the 50s and 60s and had boxes of cards up until 1987, when he was 16 years old, and quit collecting for a while, spending around 30 years carrying his collection around with him in a briefcase but never really doing anything with them.
In the early 2010s Larry’s son was briefly interested in cards, especially the Topps Attax but it never really went anywhere. In 2017 Larry’s son won a pair of season tickets to a new Rockies affiliate AA minor league team in Hartford by being the runner-up in a name-the-team contest. The team would eventually settle on the Hartford Yard Goats. If any of you have dealt with Larry, you’ve no doubt seen his avatar with their logo on it. Larry attended 60 games that season, and the hobby started drawing him back in. He started out just collecting cards of players who had played for the Yard Goats but when that became limiting, he went back to his old cards and started trying to fill in his old sets. Then in 2019 Larry bought his first pack of cards in over 30 years and, as he says, is “getting into it more and more ever since”.
Now Larry collects primarily baseball cards. He does have some old basketball, football and hockey cards, although his modern card collections in these sports is very limited. When asked about what kind of cards he collects, here was his reply:
“I collect cards of players who have played for the Hartford Yard Goats (or may play for them as they move through the Rockies farm system – Brendan Rodgers, Ryan McMahon, Zac Veen are most popular now), favorite current or former Red Sox players (especially David Ortiz, Rafael Devers, Xander Bogaerts, Mookie Betts), and Red Sox prospects (Triston Casas is my current favorite) who I get to see in Hartford a bunch of games a year.
I also like to choose an insert set I like and gather a bunch of those cards – 2021 Allen and Ginter T51 Murad Reimagined inserts as an example. And my latest interest is 2021 Topps Japan Edition baseball which thanks to a SCC break got me off to a great start.
I have focused my vintage collecting on 1961 which I recently went under 100 cards to finish (thanks to a SCC trade).”
Larry is also working on the 2020 Topps Update Black Prospects 30-card set. All cards are numbered /299. Right now he has 24 of the 30, with the Wander Franco being one he mentioned as being one he knows won’t be an easy one to get.
Here's a look at some of those cards in case some of you would like to help him out.
Also, a card at the top of his want-list, which he says is “very obtainable” is a 2018 Topps Heritage Rafael Devers Action Variation RC. So, if you have this one, Larry will most likely be more than willing to make you a deal for it.
Larry’s favorite piece is his 1948 Bowman Yogi Berra rookie card, which he’s had since he was eight years old. He found the card on a bookshelf in his grandfather’s basement.
Here's a look at Larry's Yogi Berra rookie.
He’s also quite fond of his 1997 Fleer and Fleer Ultra David Ortiz rookies, which according to him, took him quite a while to track down in trades before he could get them into his collection.
Here are those two cards, now safe and sound in Larry's collection.
Larry also does some international traveling for work and mentioned that he’s purchased Japanese baseball cards from Japan and also Hurling cards in Ireland. I actually didn’t even know what Hurling was until now…
Larry doesn’t really "collect" any other kinds of sports memorabilia but he does “save” his Yard Goats programs, ticket stubs, memorabilia, etc. He also has a few programs and yearbooks from when he was a kid.
Here are a few of his Yard Goats memorabilia items.
He doesn’t mention any other hobbies but he did mention that he enjoyed coaching his son’s baseball and daughter’s basketball games when they were young. Larry’s son is now an NCAA Division 1 track athlete, so he attends a lot of track meets these days, and says that if Topps made track products he’d buy those too. Hint, hint, Topps!
Larry’s family, like most of ours I’d imagine, just shakes their heads at him when he has new packages come in the mail. To quote Larry, “they think I am totally nuts”. But, Larry loves this hobby and especially love trading. His favorite thing about the hobby is trading. He loves sending cards off to folks who need them more than he does and getting cards that mean more, or have more personal value, to him in return.
When asked about what his least favorite thing about the hobby is, Larry said he tries to focus on the positive and ignore the negative. To quote him again, “this is supposed to be fun and a diversion from some other things in life, so I focus on the good”. I’m sure most of us would agree, and this is definitely telling on the kind of individual Larry is.
Larry, once again, thank you for being a valued member of SCC.
With that, I’ll leave you all with Larry’s own final thoughts:
"I am always happy to dig in my collection for something you need or a player you are looking for. I try to keep some trade lists of cards people may be looking for, but always have more to trade."
While Larry hasn’t been a member of SCC long, he has already proven himself to be a great addition to our community. He’s been very active on the site and is always very easy to deal with. In fact, Larry has been the top trader on SCC 2/3 months this year and is in a close race to win it again this month, too. Larry, from all of us on the SCC team, I want to say thank you and congratulations.
Now let’s try to get to know a little bit more about Larry and his collection.
Larry got started with cards at a very young age, following his brother and friends around. In fact, Larry’s mother likes to tell a story about how he “learned to read by looking at baseball cards”, if that says anything about how long cards have been a part of his life. Cards were everywhere for Larry as a child. He’d spend his days playing games involving cards such as flipping cards on the sidewalk, lining them up against the wall and knocking them down, or using the cards as baseball bats to swing at gumballs him and his friends would pitch to one another.
In his teenage years Larry would pick up cards at flea markets. He accumulated cards from the 50s and 60s and had boxes of cards up until 1987, when he was 16 years old, and quit collecting for a while, spending around 30 years carrying his collection around with him in a briefcase but never really doing anything with them.
In the early 2010s Larry’s son was briefly interested in cards, especially the Topps Attax but it never really went anywhere. In 2017 Larry’s son won a pair of season tickets to a new Rockies affiliate AA minor league team in Hartford by being the runner-up in a name-the-team contest. The team would eventually settle on the Hartford Yard Goats. If any of you have dealt with Larry, you’ve no doubt seen his avatar with their logo on it. Larry attended 60 games that season, and the hobby started drawing him back in. He started out just collecting cards of players who had played for the Yard Goats but when that became limiting, he went back to his old cards and started trying to fill in his old sets. Then in 2019 Larry bought his first pack of cards in over 30 years and, as he says, is “getting into it more and more ever since”.
Now Larry collects primarily baseball cards. He does have some old basketball, football and hockey cards, although his modern card collections in these sports is very limited. When asked about what kind of cards he collects, here was his reply:
“I collect cards of players who have played for the Hartford Yard Goats (or may play for them as they move through the Rockies farm system – Brendan Rodgers, Ryan McMahon, Zac Veen are most popular now), favorite current or former Red Sox players (especially David Ortiz, Rafael Devers, Xander Bogaerts, Mookie Betts), and Red Sox prospects (Triston Casas is my current favorite) who I get to see in Hartford a bunch of games a year.
I also like to choose an insert set I like and gather a bunch of those cards – 2021 Allen and Ginter T51 Murad Reimagined inserts as an example. And my latest interest is 2021 Topps Japan Edition baseball which thanks to a SCC break got me off to a great start.
I have focused my vintage collecting on 1961 which I recently went under 100 cards to finish (thanks to a SCC trade).”
Larry is also working on the 2020 Topps Update Black Prospects 30-card set. All cards are numbered /299. Right now he has 24 of the 30, with the Wander Franco being one he mentioned as being one he knows won’t be an easy one to get.
Here's a look at some of those cards in case some of you would like to help him out.
Also, a card at the top of his want-list, which he says is “very obtainable” is a 2018 Topps Heritage Rafael Devers Action Variation RC. So, if you have this one, Larry will most likely be more than willing to make you a deal for it.
Larry’s favorite piece is his 1948 Bowman Yogi Berra rookie card, which he’s had since he was eight years old. He found the card on a bookshelf in his grandfather’s basement.
Here's a look at Larry's Yogi Berra rookie.
He’s also quite fond of his 1997 Fleer and Fleer Ultra David Ortiz rookies, which according to him, took him quite a while to track down in trades before he could get them into his collection.
Here are those two cards, now safe and sound in Larry's collection.
Larry also does some international traveling for work and mentioned that he’s purchased Japanese baseball cards from Japan and also Hurling cards in Ireland. I actually didn’t even know what Hurling was until now…
Larry doesn’t really "collect" any other kinds of sports memorabilia but he does “save” his Yard Goats programs, ticket stubs, memorabilia, etc. He also has a few programs and yearbooks from when he was a kid.
Here are a few of his Yard Goats memorabilia items.
He doesn’t mention any other hobbies but he did mention that he enjoyed coaching his son’s baseball and daughter’s basketball games when they were young. Larry’s son is now an NCAA Division 1 track athlete, so he attends a lot of track meets these days, and says that if Topps made track products he’d buy those too. Hint, hint, Topps!
Larry’s family, like most of ours I’d imagine, just shakes their heads at him when he has new packages come in the mail. To quote Larry, “they think I am totally nuts”. But, Larry loves this hobby and especially love trading. His favorite thing about the hobby is trading. He loves sending cards off to folks who need them more than he does and getting cards that mean more, or have more personal value, to him in return.
When asked about what his least favorite thing about the hobby is, Larry said he tries to focus on the positive and ignore the negative. To quote him again, “this is supposed to be fun and a diversion from some other things in life, so I focus on the good”. I’m sure most of us would agree, and this is definitely telling on the kind of individual Larry is.
Larry, once again, thank you for being a valued member of SCC.
With that, I’ll leave you all with Larry’s own final thoughts:
"I am always happy to dig in my collection for something you need or a player you are looking for. I try to keep some trade lists of cards people may be looking for, but always have more to trade."
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