Golf Pro - Tom Lehman

Local Minnesotan Tom Lehman even has a bobblehead!  I've seen a couple of these and this is the exact kind of bobblehead I'm now looking for.  Lehman grew up in Alexandria and went to the University of Minnesota.  I believe this was a giveaway at the 2005 Marshall Fields Challenge and appears to be an AGP bobblehead.  If you have more information, please share!

Apparently I have a "Professional Eye"

Recently I was contacted by a couple people about pricing some bobbleheads they were looking to sell.  This came out of left field, ya know...much like Delmon Young played the position, never knew what you were walking into!  Crap, that's 2 Delmon Young references in consecutive blog posts, pretty sure I've met that quota for...ever.  Anyway, back to the story.

After reading the email, I instantly knew I was going to help if our schedules lined up.  As I've wrote about several times, simply basing everything off eBay is a huge frustration of mine and the seller probably won't sell too much.  Luckily the sellers were motivated and completely understood the eBay vs. local idea.  I believe they had roughly 60 some bobbleheads, ranging widely over the past 10-15 years of giveaways and retails.  We met after several emails and I went thru everything they had and priced them out fairly (both for them and whoever was going to buy them).  That's important to me, they asked for my help, so I certainly wanted to be fair to them.  But part of being fair to them was pricing the bobbleheads at a value that would sell which leaves a fairly small sweet spot.

Shortly after I provided the help I received a thank you note saying that my "professional eye" was a lifesaver and they were so incredibly happy and gracious that I gave them my time.  In all honesty, it was totally my pleasure to help them.  I'd do that for most anyone.  It's fun looking at bobbleheads, maybe I'd see one that I didn't have, maybe I'd look at a bunch of common ones, no matter what I'll always try to help, especially since I have that "professional eye!"

Crap, its been over a week!

I've been meaning to write this blog for a while.  It's been over a week since I posted a blog, but not for a lack of trying or being lazy on my part.  It happened to be my wife's 30th birthday this past weekend and obviously we had to celebrate that in style.  So most of last week was spent getting ready for that wonderful event.

For most of my readers, you'll know I enjoy helping connect other collectors to bobbleheads they are looking for.  I've had several tell me, if you ever find a Pohlad or Mauer powder blue season ticket bobblehead, please let me know.  I've also been able to find several SGA bobbleheads for new collectors.  It's fun for me.  I wrote about the chase and the find a couple months ago.  Not only for my own collection, the chase and the find are fun for me when helping others too.  Even if its a Delmon Young...wait...no, not many people actually "desire" that bobblehead, how bout...even if it's a Gary Gaetti SGA, as Pharrell would say, reason for the chase and the find is all "because I'm Happy."

So if you are looking for something specific, email me, leave a comment, get in contact with me somehow and I'll do my best to connect you to that all elusive Delm...I mean, anything from Gary Gaetti to Carl Pohlad!

Organization is key!

I've had several people ask me how I keep track of my bobbleheads.  A few months ago I touched on this, read that here.  At first I started with a simple excel spreadsheet.  Then my passion grew into something a bit more than me just being "passionate" or so says my wife.  A small obsession perhaps?  Well, at that point I knew this excel spreadsheet wasn't going to cut it.  I looked at a few different options but eventually settled on something I was familiar with - Microsoft Access.  Simply put this is a database management system and exactly what I needed to keep track of my bobbleheads.

Below is a screenshot of my access database.  You'll see I have plenty of columns, for each bobblehead.  I try to get as much data as I possibly can.  If I learn something down the road, I fill it in on my database.  It includes both bobbleheads I have and those that I'm looking for.  It's not a perfect database yet, but hopefully some day, it will be!

A rare Rod Carew bobblehead!

I hadn't ever seen this bobblehead before but knew I'd like to add it to my collection when I saw a picture of it.  This is part of my great month or so (really it probably stretches about 6 weeks).  I traded a friend for it and am happy its part of my collection.  Most minor league bobbleheads aren't worth a ton and I have no idea what the value of this one is, but it doesn't really matter - its Rod freaking Carew!

Wilson Tobs was the Twins minor league affiliate in the early to late 60s.  Rod Carew played for the team in 1966.  The team honored him with a bobblehead giveaway in 2004.  I'm unsure how many were given away but would think in the 500 to 1000 range.

I don't know much more than this, if you do, please leave a comment and fill us all in with more details!!  Thanks!