|
My name is Brian Bailey. My interest in trading
cards started when a friend was given one of the early Princess
beanies as a birthday present by her sister. Since then, we were
commissioned to hunt out bears for her, their children and friends.
Of course I started to get a few for myself as well! Well that
was it - I was hooked just like everyone else. Then the Les and
Sue Fox trading cards were created and I started to get a few
packs. It was a new experience for me since I grew up in England
- no baseball cards or anything like that. The only kind of collectible
cards they have in England are tea cards (and how much tea can
anyone drink) or bubble gum cards (never did like the stuff).
So I guess a part of my childhood was missing in American terms.
I moved to the US in 1983 and have lived in both California and
now in Oregon. Anyways, back to the cards. I had a complete set
of the commons and quite a few other sets that needed just one
or two more cards, so I had to buy another pack, or two.... I
resisted the temptation to buy the Ty series 1 cards when the
first came out, but then at last I succumbed. I started to trade
some of them on-line to try and complete the set and was impressed
by the friendliness of all of the people that I dealt with. It
became difficult to trade low level cards for the silvers or other
hard to find cards, so I started to buy a few and sell a few hoping
to pay the way to build my collection. Well, I got a bit carried
away and now have thousands of cards from series 1 to 4 and just
about every type of Beanie card ever produced.
With this many cards, I thought it would be
interesting to try and create a web page. The first incarnation
of the site went live over the July 4th weekend 1999, so has now
been live for over 7 years and I think it is now the only site
left with complete information and cards for sale. It took a while
before I got my first customer, but it was such a thrill to get
the first one. Since then I have built up a lot of Beanielad web
friends and have enjoyed doing it a lot.
When not doing Beanie stuff, I am a software
consultant. I live in Beaverton,
about 10 miles southwest of Portland and like to get out into
my garden whenever possible, although in winter that doesn't happen
too much because it is always raining !!
|
