Thursday, December 18, 2014

Surfing In To My Collection


After selling off the four 2013-14 Panini Immaculate Basketball that I didn’t need in my collection I turned towards picking up some wanted Griffey cards and one specific “other” card that has been on my personal want list for a couple of years. The “other” card finally arrived today.
 
As a teen and young adult I surfed, as difficult as that was living in Arizona. I was fortunate enough to be able to spend time with friends in California regularly hitting Redondo, Hermosa and Manhattan Beaches with the occasional outing to Zuma Beach. Being out on the water is just something Zen, completely at peace.
 
I grew up reading about guys like Bob McTavish and Duke Kahanamoku and idolizing surfers like Derek & Michael Ho, Gerry Lopez, Tom Curran and Laird Hamilton but the guy who I really liked is Kelly Slater. He is the same age as I am and he began ripping it up in the late 1980s and hasn’t slowed down since. He is an 11 time ASP World Championship Tour champion and currently has 54 total WCT victories, the most all-time.

From the 2012 Upper Deck All-Time Greats release I am happy to finally add a Kelly Slater autograph to my collection. I love the gold signature, it looks great on the card. I still want to add his Shining Moments auto (#SM-KS3) to my collection but that one will have to wait because prices are still well above my price range.

1 comment:

  1. I grew up reading Surfer magazine and following guys like Derek Ho and Tom Curren too. The only difference was that I was a total poser. Every year my family would go to Hawaii... and every year I chose a boogie board over a surfboard. Anyways... I idolized all of my cousins who surfed and when Upper Deck started issue surfer cards it was like a dream come true.

    Congratulations on the newest addition to your collection! It's beautiful.

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