My office view from the past couple of days

I don't really blog about things outside the bobblehead world - since this blog is a bobblehead blog. So many of you might not know that I grew up on a farm in southwestern MN near the town of Jackson.  I see my parents and friends back there quite often but one of my favorite times to go is during the fall.  Fall is the best time of year.  This past week, Jess and I went down for a few days.  It was the first time I was actually able to do something anywhere close to physical labor since my surgery.  

My office view on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday was much different than my normal view. Collecting bobbleheads and this blog is simply a hobby of mine - a passionate one, but only a hobby. My weekly office view is out of huge glass block windows that overlook Northeast Minneapolis.

Quite different than the view below.  However, the view below gives me peace, happiness and a great appreciation of where I come from.  It also allows me to think about life in general.  At times I thought about blog ideas and bobbleheads.  I've mentioned before and really want to connect with more of my readers.  I kept coming back to that question.  So in order to connect with more of my my readers I'm asking you to send pictures of your collection, or your favorite bobblehead or a new bobblehead you just found.  Send blog ideas or ask questions about previous posts.  Get in touch with me.  We all collect bobbleheads or maybe you just like my writing style, while others just put up with it to see pictures of stuff I find.  

Hell - maybe the first question to get a response is this, why DO you read my blog? :)

2014 Spring/Summer Finds #4

Checking in at #4 of my best Spring/Summer Finds in 2014 is a group of Twins bobbleheads.  No picture for this one (as I didn't remember to take it).  I learned about a garage sale that had lots of sports collectibles.  I figured I'd find something that I liked and it wasn't too far from my house so I checked it out early one morning before going to work.  I'm glad I did.  I came away with 11 Twins bobbleheads plus a couple others that were good trade assets.  The deal I got was incredible as well. Since I bought so many, the seller was more than happy to give me a solid discount.  None of these were rare or hard to find, but all of them were in excellent condition and most came in their original box too.  The seller wanted to move these and I was happy to buy them.

As I mentioned - 2 non-twins made for nice trade bait too, one has already been traded and am working on another trade with the other.  A few of the Twins bobbleheads were thrown into a bigger trade as well.

Sometimes if the price is right, it makes sense to buy - even if you don't have a current need or desire for a specific bobblehead.  I knew these would be valuable down the road, and that road hasn't even been a long one!

2014 Spring/Summer Finds #5

I'm doing a 5 part series counting down my 5 best finds from the 2014 Spring and Summer.  At times I won't be able to tell you where I found the specific item, not because I don't want to, but because I don't remember!

Coming in at #5 is a Joe Mauer Autographed bobblehead.  This was a bittersweet find.  I had went to an estate sale with some knowledge that several bobbleheads would be for sale and for pretty good prices.  Notably, first year SGAs of Puckett, Hrbek, and possibly Killebrew.  I knew for a fact the Puckett and Hrbek were there and had heard the Killebrew was also for sale as well as 15-20 other Twins bobbleheads.

If you haven't been to an estate sale, they can be quite frustrating.  Not knowing where anything is located, the mad rush of people trying to get in to find those special treasures they value and at times unhelpful people who run the sale.  At other times, estate sales are wonderful.  This one fell somewhere in between.

I was lead to believe the bobbleheads were displayed (which to me, they would have been easily noticeable).  This was not the case at all.  They ended up being in their plain white boxes within another larger box, on the floor AND under a table.  A few were displayed but not the ones I was hoping to snag.  I scoured the house for 5-7 minutes before walking out.  When I was about to leave I saw the box.  There were about 10 bobbleheads left.  Another guy had spotted it before me (obviously) but the one he didn't take was a Mauer Autograph bobblehead (seen below).  I fully believe the guy saw Mauer and didn't take it out of the box to look at it.  Once I saw the auto, I knew I was buying it.  I bought a couple others for a decent price and went on my way.

This was a nice find, but I was hoping for more so I did leave a bit disappointed.

Slowing down

Perhaps it's just the luck I run into, but over the past couple of years, the spring and summer are usually when I find my best deals.  Obviously a big part of that is the garage sale season is pretty popular from May to September.  It was another great few months for me.  I've blogged previously about my best garage sale finds and I'm planning on doing another recap of that soon.  But it'll take a while for me to go thru all the deals to find the best ones.  I'm guessing since Fall is now here and winter is creeping into the picture more and more every day (or so it seems) my "finds" won't be as common.  Maybe I'll get lucky, maybe I won't.

I thought I had a to chance to get quite lucky as a collector recently found my blog and reached out to me.  He had several bobbleheads he was looking to sell.  And by several I mean...maybe 100-150? The problem I had, I was really only interested in about 10 of them.  He wanted to sell them all to one guy.  Eventually he did but that guy wasn't me.  At times, I'm glad it wasn't me and at other times, it sure would have been nice to add those 10 to my collection.  Bottom line - he found me thru my blog and that makes me happy.  No matter if you are a current or former collector, it's fun getting to know all of you.  I'll still be blogging (I sincerely hope that won't change for a long long time) but the highlights might not be as flashy as some have been in the past.

If you have blog ideas for me - let me know.  I still want to put pictures out there of your collections. I think readers would love to see other readers collections and not just my bobbleheads.  So send me an email with some pictures of your collections!

Brian Dozier STH Bobblehead

Just like the past few years the Twins did a bobblehead giveaway to select season ticket holders. The season ticket holders to rank giveaways and maybe even specifically bobbleheads high enough on their "wish list" received a certificate redeemable for a Brian Dozier bobblehead.  During the final homestand of the season, people with these certificates had to redeem them for their Dozier bobblehead at the start of each of the games.  A limited number of these were produced, only 1500! Much less than the 2500 Joe Mauer bobbleheads from last season's STH giveaway.

Below are pictures of the certificate as well as the bobblehead.

Busy week...or month even!

I haven't had the chance to blog much lately.  There are valid reasons for that, some directly related to bobbleheads.  I've been going through old storage totes, most I thought were empty.  Much to my surprise that was not the case.  This was only after I bought a few smaller lots of bobbleheads from a few friends of mine.

Other than having fun looking through hundreds of bobbleheads (and no, I'm not exaggerating that number at all) I've spent quite a bit of time trying to come up with some sort of system to sell the bobbleheads that I now have doubles of!  I still don't have a great way to do it, but what I have for now, will work...for now.  If you are looking for specific bobbleheads, let me know!  I might have found a couple you could be interested int!

Below are a few pictures of some of the new ones I've uncovered!

The first bobblehead is Torii Hunter from the Fort Myers Miracle.  This was a giveaway, several years ago.  I've heard somewhere in the range of 500-1000 were produced.  The second is Jonny Flynn from the Timberwolves.  I believe this was an STH bobblehead.  Lastly is a mascot bobblehead from the Minnesota Youth Athletics Services for the Gopher State Baseball League.  I'm not sure when this was produced, but since it's a Minnesota themed bobblehead, I'm happy to have it in my collection!  

Season Ticket Holder Gallery!

A week ago I mentioned my desire to get an image gallery up!  Twins SGA and STH bobbleheads would be my main focus.  I'm half done.  I just updated the image gallery.  It includes all Minnesota Twins STH bobbleheads.  Click this link to be directed to the main slideshow. There is a slideshow on the right side of the main page.

My next goal is to get the SGA side down.  Hopefully that'll happen soon!

Minnesota Twins - 1st Edition SGAs vs 1st Edition STHs

I've had several people ask me about the difference between SGAs and STHs.  For the most part its super easy to tell, green base bobbleheads are the giveaways while red base bobbleheads were given to season ticket holders.  However, one major hurdle is the 1st Edition of each set, as they both had green bases.

Harmon Killebrew, Kent Hrbek, Tony Oliva and Kirby Puckett make up each set.  The SGA set was given out in 2000 while the STH set was given out the following year.  There are a couple great features with both sets.  This is by far the best quality set the Twins did, both in terms of the quality of the bobblehead specifically as well as the uniqueness of each one.  Each player has different jerseys (where as most of the more recent sets - the same jerseys appear with the only difference being a red base vs. a green base).

The hard thing is remembering the exact jersey of each player to tell if its a SGA or STH.  There is a much easier way to tell the difference of each.  The base of the SGA says "Mountain Dew" (they sponsored the set) while the base of the STH says the last name of each player. THAT is the best way to tell which edition of bobblehead you are viewing.  Below is a comparison picture, on the top is the SGA set while the STH set on the bottom.

My most wanted bobblehead

I've been in the process of updating my want list, albeit very, very slowly.  I know the #1 position belongs to a Goldy Gopher hockey bobblehead.  Below is a picture.  I don't think its super rare and its not terribly expensive, but so far this one has completely avoided me.  It was a retail bobblehead sold at Gold Country (a store in Dinkytown) on the University of Minnesota campus.  If any of you happen to see this one, I'd be glad to trade for it or buy it outright.  I'll get a more in-depth want list on the blog sometime soon, but for now...I'd be super grateful if anyone contacted me about this one! Here's to hoping!

Hermann the German

I picked up this bobblehead recently.  Hermann the German is a staple in New Ulm, MN. Back in 2012, the New Ulm Convention & Visitor Bureau came up with an ad campaign featuring Hermann the German.  Part of it was to make bobbleheads of his likeness and sell them.  I believe between 500 and 1000 were produced and they sold out pretty quickly.

I've seen these on eBay now and then but never pulled the trigger.  Glad I didn't as I got it for less than eBay prices.  It's a pretty cool bobblehead and of course I wanted to add it to my collection since it has Minnesota ties!  Even better - I mentioned this as a goal of mine in my Goals Addition blog!

Image Gallery

For some time I've wanted to display some sort of image gallery.  At first it was going to be focused on all the Twins SGA & ST bobbleheads.  But the more I think about it, I'm going to try to add other SGA bobbleheads from the other professional teams in Minnesota.  This will take me quite a bit of time because I don't have pictures of all my bobbleheads.  Also I'd like to get nice pictures of the ones I'm missing, that compare well to my other photos.  It'll be a work in progress.  I'm also not entirely positive how the pictures will display on the blog.  When viewing the blog, this new section is on the right hand side, called "Image Gallery."  I believe each "set" of pictures will have a link underneath the title.  For example, it now shows Minnesota Twins STH Bobbleheads as a clickable link.  This will take you to a page that shows all STH bobbleheads.  I'll keep updating it as I have time.  But like I said previously, it's time consuming and right now I haven't been able to find much time!  However, I feel like plenty of people could use a quick link to a nice image gallery to see what a specific bobblehead looks like.  So please - start using it as such!