I am currently in Minnesota en-route to Cleveland for the National. This Friday Andy Bird got married. In November of 2006 I was home for Thanksgiving, and Andy was telling me how much he enjoyed web development and how he was looking for “the next garage startup” like google and youtube. That Christmas I decided to start recruiting Andy to move to Seattle to work for my garage startup. Yes, CheckOutMyCards.com was actually operating out of my garage at the time. Back then we weren’t open to the public. We only had my cards (timgetsch, LowPriceCards) and cards from a friend (Serf77).
A few months later Andy was enticed to make the move to Seattle. That summer he got plugged into Overlake Christian Church where he eventually met his future wife Leah. Funny thing is that they are both from Minnesota and both sets of parents even go to the same church, Wooddale Church. They had an amazing, outdoor wedding overlooking a fountain at the Carlson Towers.
OK, funny story… the night before the wedding I was on my way to the Minneapolis airport to pick up another friend from Seattle. As I was trying to figure out if my friend might have checked luggage or not, I thought about the fact that he would be bringing dress clothes for the wedding… and it was at that moment that I realized I had totally forgot to pack for the wedding. I was so busy getting everything else taken care of for this two week long trip that I overlooked that detail. Fortunately I was able to call up my best friend and borrow some dress shoes, socks, a shirt and a tie. I only had to go buy pants and a belt.
While I was at my friends house picking up the clothes we saw a clip on the news about this couple that got married in St. Paul MN just a month earlier. Apparently they had just posted a youtube video of their wedding entrance and it had gotten more than half a million views in the first couple days. Well I just checked, and they now have more than 6 million views in less than a week.
I just got home from one of my favorite weddings. Those of you basketball fanatics that are planning to get married soon should take note.
A buddy of mine from Microsoft, basketball, and poker just got married. Ceremony was great, reception was great, dancing was great, but the real kicker was that the wedding was at the Bellevue Club Hotel. The banquet hall happened to be right next to the health club which had a basketball court. Of course a big group of us knew each other from playing basketball, and nearly all of us had at least some basketball shoes in our car. In fact most of us were prepared with a full change of basketball close. So as the dancing was winding down, we migrated over to the basketball court and played a couple games of 3-3 and 4-4. I have never been so exhausted after a wedding. It was so much fun, and it worked out really well.
The groom loves basketball, so he naturally loved it, and I figure since the bride’s vows included supporting her husband through March Madness, she was cool with it too.
One of the “selfish” reasons why I built this website was so that I could collect Orel Hershiser cards more easily.
Yesterday I acquired this Hershiser card.
As the site continues to grow, I hope more collectors out there can find gems of their favorite players, just like I found here. It doesn’t get much better than a 1/1 signed jersey card of your favorite player.
This one is getting framed and going on the wall in my office.
I live in Bellevue, and CheckOutMyCards.com is literally on the border of Redmond and Bellevue. If we were across the street, we would be in Bellevue. That is a great picture of Lake Washington.
Tonight you may have seen some clips of Blake Hoffarber on ESPN’s SportsCenter. Blake is the guy that hit the insane shot while lying on his back to force double OT in the Minnesota state high school championship three years ago. He was a sophomore at Hopkins High School at the time and won an ESPY for play of the year. I was fortunate enough to be in town for that state championship game and witnessed the shot first hand. I even got a chance to congratulate Blake and Coach Novak, his uncle, after the game.
Now he is a freshman at the University of Minnesota. Both of these schools are my alma maters. I was a sophomore at Hopkins back in 1993 when Blake was only five years old and one of our ball boys. I remember watching him run around and help get rebounds during warm-ups. I don’t recall for sure when he started to hit three pointers, but and I can remember watching him heave the ball from behind the three point line. He could barely make it to the rim, but he would put his whole body into it.
Now Blake leads the Big Ten in three-point field goal percentage and has a shot at setting a Gopher’s record for most threes in a season. In tonight’s nationally televised game against #9 ranked Indiana he went 2-3 behind the arc including a 4-point play to make his percentage for the season an even 50%.
Blake is a great kid that has put in a lot of hard work. It is nice to see him get rewarded for it. Blake won the 2007 Mr. Basketball award in Minnesota, and he helped Hopkins win two state championships. There were even points in the season last year where Hopkins was ranked in the top 5 teams in the nation according to MaxPreps.com. I see that Hopkins is currently ranked #1 in the state again.
I like to collect cards of players who I have played basketball with or against.
Jeff Hagen was a freshman at Hopkins High School in MN when I was a senior.
Kris Humphries also went to Hopkins High School, and I played against him many times at open gyms.
Hiram Fuller played a few games at South Sound Athletics with the Club Seattle pro-am team that I played with for several years.
Doug Christie also played a few games with my Club Seattle team when we played in a league at his al-ammeter Rainier Beach last summer.
Martell Webster played on another team in that same league at Rainier Beach.
Jamal Crawford asked me to play with his team in a tournament at Green Lake after playing against him at the Redmond Athletic Club several times a few summers ago. My Club Seattle team also faced off against Jamal in several other Seattle area tournaments and leagues. Jamal is one of the nicest guys I have ever met!
Will Conroy was also on our team at Green Lake. He had just graduated from the University of Washington at the time.
Brandon Roy was our coach for the tournament. He couldn’t play because he was going to be a senior at the University of Washington.
Shawn Kemp took my spot in the championship game at Green Lake, and Nate Robinson’s team crushed us. We only lost by 2 points on a last second shot by Nate when we faced them earlier in the tournament.
Kevin Garnett… well almost. He often played noon ball at Northwest Athletic Club in MN during the lock-out of 1998-99. My brother had played against him several times, so he got me into the club during one of my lunch breaks. After a long wait I only had time for one more game, and it would be against Kevin’s team. Unfortunately, there was only one spot left, and it was between my brother and me to shoot for it. I and still annoyed that he didn’t just let me play. The dork out shot me for the last spot, and I never got my chance to play against Kevin. He used to live about 3 miles from where I grew up in Minnesota, but now he is off to Boston where he and Ray Allen are going to win a championship for the Celtics.
Note: All of the images for this post were added by simply copying the HTML code generated by the “grab this card” feature I just added to all the card details pages on CheckOutMyCards.com. You are welcome to do this with any of your blogs or eBay listings.
Over the last week many of his cards have sold, and this got John excited to find more cards to put on our site. So he started searching eBay, and this is what he found. My Ex-Husbands Cards for sale…
This was his response.
“According to eBay, guys with cards shouldn’t cheat on their wives.”
- John Neumann
At the National Sports Collectors Convention we picked up some cards that are sure to be collector’s items.
Thanks to Upper Deck, we were able to obtain the following:
It’s the CHECKOUTMYCARDS.com team!
In case you’re wondering, John Neumann is my little brother who joined our team for the week. I flew from Seattle to Minneapolis where Johnny lives, picked him up, and together we made the drive to Cleveland! His help was invaluable. If he lived closer we would recruit him!
In fact, while at the convention, he was recruited for and quoted in a Beckett article!
“I just want to collect cards,” said John Neumann. “I don’t care what sport or who the player is. I just want to add relevant cards to my collection, even if the cards are of Barry Bonds.”
As a buyer/seller on our site, you’ll be seeing more of Johnny!
This week the Seattlest posted an interview Seth Kolloen did with me about checkoutmycards.com. It is a nice article that gives some of the background regarding the site.
Posted by Tim Getsch 
Posted by Tim Getsch 
Posted by Tim Getsch 
