Shaking the hand of a comedian

May 7, 2011

A few weeks ago I got to shake the hand of a legend. I guess shaking the hand of a famous person is the thing to do on a Saturday…

Earlier this week I ran across Demetri Martin on facebook. I have been a big fan of his comedy for a while, so I “liked” his page. This afternoon I saw this post on my facebook feed.

So that is what I did. He answered questions and read excerpts from his book for a couple hundred people. Very, very funny. I was impressed with how funny he was with things off the cuff. He isn’t just funny with a rehearsed act on stage.

3 Comments | personal life | Permalink
Posted by Tim Getsch

Check Out My Cold… huh?

September 2, 2010

I have to give kudos to my team for putting together a very creative “get well” card.

It definitely made my day. I have been bedridden all week with a bad cold, so this is what they sent me.

If you can’t read the subtitle, it ways “The safe and easy way to avoid work for a week!”

I do have to admit, this has been one of the best weeks to stay in bed. I am falling in love with ESPN3.com... watching tons of the 2010 FIBA World Championships. There is a lot of good basketball talent all over the world.

6 Comments | personal life | Permalink
Posted by Tim Getsch

The season for great weddings

July 26, 2009

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.
Wedding Reception

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.

They even got invited to recreated their wedding dance for the Today Show. Here is some more info about the wedding march.

2 Comments | personal life | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by Tim Getsch

One of the best weddings ever

July 19, 2009

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.

2 Comments | basketball, personal life | Permalink
Posted by Tim Getsch

A sign of success

December 7, 2008

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.
2005 Absolute Memorabilia Tools of the Trade Autograph Jersey #159 - Orel Hershiser/1 - Courtesy of CheckOutMyCards.com

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. :-)

3 Comments | baseball cards, personal life | Permalink
Posted by Tim Getsch

Best city to live and launch a company

October 21, 2008

Score! Bellevue, WA topped the list of 100 best cities to live and launch a company compiled by Fortune Small Business on CNNMoney.com.

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.

1 Comment | personal life | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by Tim Getsch

Blake Hoffarber makes SportsCenter… again

January 17, 2008

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.

Blake receives the ball Blake shoots Everyone watches in disbelief Blake scores
Watch a video of the Most Amazing Basketball Shot Ever

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%.

Great article on ESPN.com published earlier today:
There’s more to Minnesota’s Blake Hoffarber than just trick shot

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.

Go Royals and Go Gophers!

Third photo courtesy of Tom Dahlin

4 Comments | basketball, personal life | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Tim Getsch

A fun reason to collect

October 3, 2007

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.
2005-06 Topps Chrome #249 - Jeff Hagen DL RC (Rookie Card) - Courtesy of CheckOutMyCards.com

Kris Humphries also went to Hopkins High School, and I played against him many times at open gyms.
2004-05 Topps Chrome #179 - Kris Humphries RC (Rookie Card) - Courtesy of CheckOutMyCards.com

Hiram Fuller played a few games at South Sound Athletics with the Club Seattle pro-am team that I played with for several years.
2005-06 Topps Chrome #229 - Hiram Fuller DL RC (Rookie Card) - Courtesy of CheckOutMyCards.com

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.
2002-03 Topps Chrome Refractors #68 - Doug Christie - Courtesy of CheckOutMyCards.com

Martell Webster played on another team in that same league at Rainier Beach.
2005-06 Topps Chrome #192 - Martell Webster RC (Rookie Card) - Courtesy of CheckOutMyCards.com

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!
2000-01 Topps Tip-Off #132 - Jamal Crawford RC (Rookie Card) - Courtesy of CheckOutMyCards.com

Will Conroy was also on our team at Green Lake. He had just graduated from the University of Washington at the time.
2005-06 Topps Chrome #223 - Will Conroy DL RC (Rookie Card) - Courtesy of CheckOutMyCards.com

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.
2006-07 Bowman Sterling #68 - Brandon Roy JSY RC (Rookie Card) - Courtesy of CheckOutMyCards.com

Nate Robinson dunked on me during that tournament. :-(
2005-06 SP Signature Edition Rookie GRAPHiti #NR - Nate Robinson/100 - Courtesy of CheckOutMyCards.com

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.
1995-96 Finest Mystery Borderless Refractors/Gold #M4 - Shawn Kemp - Courtesy of CheckOutMyCards.com

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.
1995-96 Topps Draft Redemption #5 - Kevin Garnett - Courtesy of CheckOutMyCards.com

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.

4 Comments | basketball, collecting, eBay, new features, personal life | Permalink
Posted by Tim Getsch

Wisdom from a 14 year old…

September 4, 2007

John is Julia’s little brother. A month ago he got to come with us to the National Sports Collectors Convention in Cleveland. While at the convention he got a bunch of cards that we added to his account on CheckOutMyCards.com so that he could play with the site.

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

1 Comment | collecting, eBay, personal life, sports cards | Permalink
Posted by Tim Getsch

Making waves at the NSCC with my little brother!

August 24, 2007

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:
2007 Upper Deck National Sports Collectors Convention #1 - Tim Getsch/1 - Courtesy of CheckOutMyCards.com 2007 Upper Deck National Sports Collectors Convention #2 - Julia Getsch/1 - Courtesy of CheckOutMyCards.com 2007 Upper Deck National Sports Collectors Convention #3 - John Neumann/1 - Courtesy of CheckOutMyCards.com

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!

Check out Johnny’s cards for sale

Julia

4 Comments | baseball cards, collecting, interview, personal life, sports cards | Permalink
Posted by juliagetsch

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