HBO: 2005

I'm going to begin showing off the cards I received in the "Hochevar Buy-Out", henceforth known as "HBO".  But before I get to the cards, how about a little information about their former owner, Josh.

During our emailing back and forth, I learned about Josh and his Hochevar collection.  I believe he sums it up best.

"I've been collecting Hoch for around a year or so. I started collecting him for two main reasons, I always wanted to have a player collection of a baseball player (as I've mainly focused on football cards in the past), and I've been following Luke as he's progressed in the majors for the past few years. I always admired his raw pitching talent, which I believe once he gets a firm hold of it (on a more consistent basis), he's going to be a star.

I'm definitely sentimental with my cards and having to make this decision was a hard one I no longer found myself to have the big passion I had for collecting his cards as I once did, coupled with the fact that the extra money will be of much use when school starts up this fall. But I could tell you have had a consistent passion (plus the personal connection with Hoch) and I am more than happy passing these cards onto your great collection. They're going to a good home."

I'm so very glad that Josh contacted me about buying his collection, and, as you'll see over the next few weeks, it contained a ton of great Hochevar cards.

Since I've already sorted and filed them, I thought it'd be fun to go through them chronologically.  Let's start at the beginning with the card from 2005 that I needed.

Added to the collection:

Since I've already written a song about a "red sharpie auto", I'll just let the card do the talking.

The parallel rainbow the card was added to:

Also, as you'll notice, I knew these cards were from a loving home because a majority of them arrived in magnetic card holders, and every other card came in a toploader, including the base card duplicates. 

Stay tuned tomorrow as we move into the 2006 cards.