My Man Room

With a week of school under my belt I've been using the weekend to recharge the battery. Sleeping in, dinner and drinks with friends, binge watching Stranger Things and finally . . . baseball cards!

Judson recently asked that we show off our card rooms and that's what I'm here to do today. It's a picture heavy post, which should make it a quick read.  Here we go!

I thought about showing a picture of my mailbox to start things off, but really this is my cardboard journey begins.

This is my blogging/pack ripping/pack opening/package labeling station. I eat breakfast here every morning while updating my fantasy baseball team and reading blog posts. It is usually this clean, but what you don't see pictured is all of the cat hair.  If you look to the lower left you'll see a package which should have went out in the mail earlier this week (sorry Ryan), and on the desk there is a blaster of Topps Bunt which will start its trek to Alabama post haste.

Let's hit the actual card room, which my wife and refer to as the Man Room.  Below are pictures of what one sees when they first enter the 12.5' by 14' room.

There are bobbleheads on the shelves in the upper left corner and baseball movies on VHS within the black shelving unit on the floor. Hugo likes to steal my little stuffed dog wearing a Cubs shirt, which is right next to my Chicago Bear wearing Joe Maddon glasses.

This is the other half of the exterior wall which contains the garden view window. My card sorting table is in the foreground, which contains many stacks of basketball cards from an inherited collection. (Anyone want some basketball cards?) You can get a better look at the table here. I spend a lot of hours on the green two-seater, as you can probably tell by the cushions.

For the record, the stop light works! I also have some ivy along the ceiling of the room to give it a little of that Wrigley feel. If you look closely along the baseboard on the right you can see a blue speck. That's one of my wife's Dove chocolate wrappers that we give the cats to play with. Simple pleasures.

Here's a shot of the closet, which is pictured in the right of the above two pictures.

 There are lots of baseball related things hanging on the wall I could point out, but instead I'll point out the hanging black cape, which I've used to dress up as "Math Man" on a couple of occasions. I'm a nerd, I know.

On the left are all of my non-Cubs cards. Binders of complete sets and monster boxes of others. There's a shoe box on the top, which houses all of my favorite non-Cub cards and just below that is the shelf where I keep cards that need to be sorted into my trade box for specific bloggers. It's pretty empty right now, because I made a concerted effort to get things in order before the school year started. Go me!

The right half of my card closet is all Cubs cards. My Sandberg binder, the FrankenSet binder and many others are housed here. On the the shelves above the binders are my Cubs monster boxes, which contain all of my unique Cubs cards including vintage, junk wax, modern cards, autos and relics. The very top two shelves are where all of my packaging supplies are stored.
One of my summer projects was adding in three wood shelves to each side of my Card Closet. I'm much happier with the usable space I have now.

The green chest contains more completed sets and all of my basketball and football cards from early collecting days. It's actually the mother in-law's toy chest from her childhood. On top of those are two 2,400-count boxes of cards to be dispersed among my blogging brethren. The trade boxes! They're not in the closet because I'm in and out of them so frequently.

The above shot shows my Brandon Hyde (1st base coach of the Cubs) jersey and my homemade bat rack, which I'm really proud of. One of the bats was what my mom and her siblings played with when they were kids and the one on the far right is my fungo for when I coach spring baseball.

The next picture in the roll should have been a picture of the entryway to the room . . . oops. I didn't take one. Doorways are boring any way.

The door is flanked by the recliner and bat rack on one side and this corner on the other side. Hanging from the ceiling is my Fear the Fleer entry for Thorzul's Nightmare on Cardboard 2013 contest, which I couldn't part with.

 The "Go Cubs Go" is a hand painted sign from Grandfather. A scratching post for the cats is in the room... you know, because of cats. Of the two cabinets on the wall, the right one is the fuse box and the left one looks like this:

 My wife bought this cabinet at a garage sale and re-purposed it to store some of my collection. I use it to keep dust off my favorite bobbleheads, autographed baseballs, pictures and ticket stubs.

Lastly, we have the television stand which I completed about a year and a half ago. It houses baseball singles organized in boxes, a couple of binders, DVDs, books and bobbleheads. I absolutely love this piece.

We've come full circle!  I really enjoy spending time in my man room. I could be sorting cards, ripping packs, building trade packages, or perhaps just kicking back with Gus and watching the Cubs.

It's my place to get away from the real world and be a care free kid again. 

Thanks for taking the tour with me.
Enjoy the rest of your weekend!