I have been over in Kuwait now for about a month and have gone from the good old-fashioned days of drawing U.S. currency out at the ATM to drawing out Kuwaiti Dinar. It seemed a simple enough conversion rate to me… so I drew out 100 U.S. Dollars to get me through the airport and get some food. Upon looking at my statement, I realized 100 Dinar was 350 some-odd dollars! That is one of the aspects of adjusting to a new culture and lifestyle, as many Army soldiers learn. On my first overseas tour, 2000-2002, I was introduced to eTopps in Korea. Now I am here 5 years later doing the same 'ole thing! You got to love eTopps and their global position in the sports card market, or should I say lack of market (ha!).

Over here I get about every channel from the Moon to the Sun and most of the sports channels carry either soccer or cricket. Do not ask me to explain cricket because I would rather try and rewrite Newton’s law of gravity than explain cricket. Anyways, I have been here a month and thought it was about time I reached out and touched base again with all the eToppers. I have recently begun my postings on the message boards and am now getting back into the articles.

The first thing I would really like to say is thanks to everyone supporting the soldiers over here. They are doing a fine job and it is good to see morale high with a deadly threat every day for most of the soldiers. But what does this place lack? You guessed it… Sports cards! So I am the guy to bring eTopps to Kuwait! I am waiting to get my eTopps flag designed here at our sew show. By the way these sew shops can re-sew anything, and I do mean anything! They are so good they put doctors out of business for giving stitches. How hard would it be to introduce sports cards into this area? We have comic books going to soldiers all over; we have sports stars that rotate through here. How about giving out packs of cards for athletes to bring over or giving them sports cards to sign and pass out to the troops, instead of these black and white paper copies like Liddell Mitchell was handing out. Franco Harris at least had some nice black and white photo quality paper autographs he was passing out. However, at least there is an effort to get something over to the soldiers in form of people. Now we just need to figure out how to get them some cards as well. Our local store does not even carry any wax and you all know how I am about busting wax boxes...

The second (and really the most important) thing I want to talk about is the slush fund. We did so well the past two years in giving money to the slush fund to offset costs that came out of pocket for the guys organizing the eTopps conventions. There are a lot of out-of-pocket expenses the organizers incur hoping to recoup somewhere down the line; in fact sometimes they do not recoup them. The slush fund is used for that purpose (plus it also buys a lot of different things for the eCON). Last year we raised right about $1000 and the year prior we raised $300. So this year I am setting a goal again for $1300 and Jimijam is going to be my right-hand man running everything back in the states. We need your support and help. Here is your first opportunity to help the slush fund out... I am going to get desert boonie caps made up with a desert eTopps logo on the top of the hat. So when you wear it back, meaning hanging around your neck, people behind you can see the logo. I will get them printed so people can read them from behind. I will also get your names put on them. I can do this in Arabic and English if you like. I am still working on some other things like maybe putting the American flag on there or another patch on there. I still have to sort the costs out for product make up and delivery before I give you the total cost. Half of the cost will go to the slush fund and the other half will go for the patch and the hat. I will try to get a prototype up in about a week or two. Be patient though I am always on the go around here. But don’t forget other ways to help out the slush fund. Ask Jim and he will tell you all about it!

I am looking forward to a year over here in the desert and another year of saving money I would be using for gas and putting it towards eTopps. I am very confident in where the market is going and how the cards are doing. I have strong feelings that baseball is doing a lot better than expected... now if I could just figure out how many new people are out there. As usual, do your research and buy low and sell high! But the most important thing is to have fun with eTopps!!!