American Ninja Card Collector

It’s strange what can get a kid interested in collecting cards.  My 6 year old has hovered  somewhere between being somewhat mildly interested to completely repulsed by the thought of collecting cards.  He briefly toyed with putting together a football card album, but lost interest very quickly.  That’s fine with me, and I have made sure not to try to push him into collecting.  In fact, I’m beginning to understand that the collecting trait is simply completely foreign to some people.  I just want my kids to be interested in something, anything, other than sitting around playing video games.


That something for my boy this summer was the TV show American Ninja Warrior.  He watched that show religiously, and about wore out the DVR watching the recorded shows over and over and over.  It was fine with me though.  In fact, it was great because he was profoundly inspired by the show and has been relentless in making up obstacle courses in the back yard and exercising so that he can beat his times in the courses he creates.   You should see him do pullups now. 

Anyway, one of his favorite competitors was Kamerion Wimbley, who was taking a turn at the Ninja Warrior course during the offseason from playing in the NFL.  As far as I could tell, he was the only pro athlete taking a shot at the course, other than a guy from the Harlem Globetrotters.   My boy became a big fan of Wimbley’s and the other day I thought I would take a scan through my sparse football card box and see if I happened to have some cards of him.  I had one, and gave it to my son to see if he wanted it.  He stared at that card for about an hour, read the back several times and carried it around like a trophy.  I told him there were lots of other Kamerion Wimbley cards out there and he was very excited about the prospect of getting more.    I only wish there was a set of cards of the other Ninja Warrior athletes.  That would have made his head spin.

I’ve ordered a few Wimbley cards from Sportlots.com, but wanted to throw out the request for others from you guys out there.  If you have some you don’t need, please let me know and we can work out of trade.  That is, if my boy hasn’t totally lost interest by the time I finish writing this post.