I am an absolutely a huge fan of The Boston Sports Guy Bill Simmons from ESPN.com, and it always makes my day to read his columns. Even though I am nowhere near the writer, storyteller, and all around fun guy that Bill is, I figured it was high time for me to create a SportsCollectors.Net blog for our members.

My intent is for this blog to be a place where I (and possibly some of our other site admins) will be post news, opinons, reviews, trends, tips, random thoughts, and all other sorts of things we think may interest the members of this site. Please bear with me, as this is my first blog of any sort...

So let's start with an introduction and a bit of history:

My name is Jay Grossman and I am the guy who created and runs SportsCollectors.Net. For my day job, I build and manage software projects - so I am not the Hockey agent named Jay Grossman (I can dream).

Even though I live in New York City, I am a devoted Patriots, Red Sox, and Celtics fan (given up on my Bruins). It makes for interesting sports trash talking just about every day - especially during the baseball playoffs the past few years. I must say, I am friends with some really knowledgeable Yankee fans that are fair and make it so fun.

I have been collecting sports cards and autographs for about 25 years. My first autograph success was by Phil Rizzuto - he sent me a business card that he personalized to me "To Jay, Holy Cow". Back then, I loved watching him and Bill White do the commentary for Yankee games. Ever since, I have been completely hooked on this hobby.

Back in 1998 I came up with the idea of creating a centralized place where all of my buddies could share what players were signing by mail - and we are still using the exact same Request Tracking functionality as we had back then. For the first year and a half, this site was only available to this small group.

In 2000, we decided to open up registration and allow all collectors to sign up and join the fun. We figured the more people that contributed, the better it would be for everyone to help improve our collections. This was the best decision we could have made - as today SCN has over 15,000+ members, 280,000+ successes, I have made so many good friends over the years through the community, and my collection has become much larger and more impressive.

In November 2005, we relaunched a new version of SCN. New design, new dedicated servers, revamped the backend, and we completely rewrote all of the code in a better technology has made the site so much better and faster. We have also introduced some great new features in that time - including mailboxes, trading section, user ratings & feedback, chat, and greatly enhanced search capabilites. We have more ideas in the works to make the site better...

What makes the SCN community so exceptional is just how knowledgeable and passionate the group of folks we have here. I can't even begin to tell you all how rewarding it has been watching so many people enjoy something I created.

Going Forward:

I am going to do my best to make regular post messages on this blog, but I can't make any promises. What makes me such a fan of Bill Simmons is his reader's involvement, so feel free to send me ideas and/or comments for this blog. If there are topics you'd like to see addressed, please use the Contact link below.

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