Being from New Zealand I am, not surprisingly, passionate about the game of Rugby Union, of which I've played, watched, followed and collected. Whilst I have collected lots of different Rugby memorabilia, collecting rugby cards has always been my main passion.....well, for the last 20 years anyway. Having said that, I guess I first start collecting cards when I was 7 years old...some 45 years ago, but gave up when I was 11 years old after my collection went missing during a school hobbies day. It turned up three months later in the school library with all my card albums plastered with the school stamp and my cards all laid out in sets and covered with that clear-film stuff they used to cover books to protect them, effectively destroying my collection. I was so disheartened I gave up collecting. Through the teens and twenties partys, girls, rugby, beer, marriage and mortgages took over. Then at around 30 years old I was walking past a stamp and coin collectables shop when I saw in the shop window an old 1927 set of All Blacks rugby tobacco cards. 15 minutes later I was walking out of the shop with two different sets of rugby cards, a $250 hole in my wallet and a newly discovered unhealthy obsession with collecting rugby cards.
Twenty years later I now have over 100 albums full of rugby union cards from all over the world. In 2008 I wrote a 288 page collectors guide to rugby cards and are now 120 pages into book number two. The new book will contain new discoveries plus all the new sets issued from 2008 onwards. I am such a nerd!! LOL.
Now that I have found the TCDB I think I will never have any spare time again. There are so many sets from New Zealand that I want to upload to the TCDB, and attaching images will be another big challenge. Oh well, I guess it'll keep me out of trouble for a while. There's worse things I could be doing than going through my card collection with a pint of beer beside me :-)
