My name is Tanner, and I love food.  Growing up, I simply didn’t know calories existed, so I didn’t know they mattered…until I became an adult.  Boy, did I come to an ugly realization of what happens when you replace playing basketball with a desk job!  Weight can be put on quickly.  Especially if you weren’t living at home with mom & dad telling you an IV drip of Dr. Pepper isn’t exactly an ideal lifestyle choice.  Goodness … A McDonalds Supersized #4 with Dr Pepper easy ice while watching a movie … perfection!

Don’t lie to yourself and say that doesn’t look delicious.

By the time I was 22 or 23, I was at an all time high in weight.  I remember looking down saying to myself “I’ve gotta do something about this…right after I get my business up and running.”

After I got my business going, I obsessively focused my attention to diet and exercise.  On April 10th, 2010, I weighed in at my all time low of 166.5 pounds – over 100 lbs lower than my all time high.  I found my secret weapon is running.  At first, I couldn’t run but a few blocks, then would walk and run in intervals.  There was no training or anything involved; it was simply getting out there and doing it almost every day.  Ear buds in and shoes on, going for a couple mile run was what I did to combat my desire for a McDonalds run.  I remember the first time I ran 8 miles straight.  Proud of myself, I hoped I would run into some neighbors to casually talk about the feat, and then I looked down.

Instead, I hunched over and ran inside.  Yes, people.  Bleeding nerps is a thing.  Patch those bad boys up before attempting a long run!

So, allow me to tie this in.  For over a decade, I’ve kept a simple log of how many miles I have run.  Here are some of the totals by year:

2010: 183 Miles
2013:  110 Miles
2014: 96 Miles
2015: 98 Miles
2016: 32 Miles
2017: 21 Miles
2018 up to when I stopped collecting in early June: 3 Miles

If I had the gumption to do so, I’d plot a graph showing strangely enough how my lack of running and weight gain was commensurate to my intensity in collecting.  Bah, what the heck.  I love graphs!

My family life was a great and work life was just fine as well.  I guess I have now found what I was not giving attention to in my life!  While I’m nowhere near what my all-time high was, I’m also nowhere near my all-time low.  The plan is to get back down to 200, and I am now on my way.  Let me be the first one to tell you – losing weight in your late thirties is not as easy as doing it in your twenties!  It has been coming up on two months now since I’ve touched a caffeinated drink, which, if you asked me to stop three months ago, I would have said it would be impossible to do!

For those of you who are working on … well … ANYTHING in life, I highly encourage you to journal or at least keep a log of what you are doing.  I don’t know if any of this would have occurred to me otherwise, thus spurning me on to do something about it.

I’ve heard in lectures that you can only be truly effective in a few things in life.  While I was doing the family, work & supercollecting thing, I was also writing and creating customs.  I guess the running and eating right got the bump right around the time I started obsessing over 1/1s 🙂

Speaking of customs, yeah, I’ve still been doing those and having a blast!  Here are a few of the latest.

These jumbo Tulowitzkis were created using a Panini autograph and a replica jersey.

Here is a Mantle jumbo as well, using a GU card and a cut signature.  Man, I love when they get slabbed!

Finally, I did a few … you guessed it … Canseco cards.  Just because I’m not supercollecting him anymore doesn’t mean I can’t make some new pieces, right?  🙂

I’ve always wanted Panini to create one of those cool jumbo patch cards that they do of several players, where the majority of the card is a patch or glove of some sort.  They never did,  and I always had it on my list to do something.  Here is what I came up with:

What can I say?  I’m a sucker for jumbo sleeve patch cards!  Here is one that I think I like even better, just because of what it represents:

There is more of … well … everything coming from my little corner of the world, so please stay tuned.  I’ve been meaning to write more, but between wrapping up the book, working and listing my collection on eBay, it has been challenging.  Fun fact:  For all Jose Canseco baseball cards listed at $9.95 or more, my cards account for nearly 1/3 of everything that shows up on eBay!  It would be even closer to that figure if none had sold and if I listed everything.

All of eBay:

Just mine:

One of the final things I’d like to report is a little fun I’ve been having with an embosser.  Yes, I finally got an embosser (yeah!)  To say I’ve been stamp-happy would be a bit of an understatement.

Homework Folder

Aluminum Foil Roll

Hey, I said I got stamp-happy, didn’t I?

No, the reason for this wasn’t to emboss our toilet paper.  It was instead, to emboss some cards in my collection.  Check it out!

For those of you who speak animated gif:

I did this because a ton of people have been asking for a card from my collection for their own, and wanted something special to note it was from me.  I figured this would be a great way to go about it.  If you are one of the people that would like a card from my collection but don’t want to pick up anything in particular, let me know.  I’ll PWE a random embossed card from my collection, on me, if you would be so generous as to give $10 to https://www.compassion.com/where-most-needed.htm – your money will go to help kids who are in need of food, water, medical attention and more!  Just shoot me your address and proof of you giving.  $10 is great, but feel free not to limit yourself! 🙂   This is definitely one card purchase you won’t feel guilty about!