My best mail day EVER!!!

I didn’t remember buying any cards PWE lately but I got an envelope today and it felt like it had a top loader in it. Open it up and much to my surprise it was a thank you letter. I sent some cards to [MENTION=1995]dano7[/MENTION] to give to young collectors at church and they sent me letters thanking me. I wasn’t having the best of days and this is just what I needed to feel much better! Thanks Danny!!


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AnthonyCorona said:

I didn’t remember buying any cards PWE lately but I got an envelope today and it felt like it had a top loader in it. Open it up and much to my surprise it was a thank you letter. I sent some cards to [MENTION=1995]dano7[/MENTION] to give to young collectors at church and they sent me letters thanking me. I wasn’t having the best of days and this is just what I needed to feel much better! Thanks Danny!!

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That makes my day, too! Thanks for your generosity to young collectors!!!!

where's the like button (the all around "like" button)???

Very cool..way to go!

Very cool. Giving feels much better than receiving!

and HANDWRITTEN letters!? Seems to be a lost form of communication.

That is so awesome! Well done all around! Those letters would go in my binder along with my PC


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Very cool.

Very nice all around.

very cool. thanks for sharing

That's awesome. I can see why that made your day.

goobmcnasty said:

Very cool. Giving feels much better than receiving!

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That's what she said.




In all seriousness, that's really awesome of you Mr. Corona and so cool to see someone show their appreciation by taking the time to write a letter thanking you. Don't see that much anymore.


Thanks for getting me back into the Christmas spirit!

This was a joy to read. Nice that people still wright letters. It is becoming a lost form of communication.

Way to go guys! Always great when you can get young collectors into the game.

That's awesome.

Very nice!

GREAT JOB ANTHONY CORONA! Everyone has extra cards they don't know what to do with, right? Please donate them! I'm going to tell my donation story as short as I can to let people know how to do it, and what you get out of it.

Until I did my first card donation of 33,000 cards (which I thought was no big deal at all) in 1989, I was told mine was the first donation of its size EVER to a large charity which shocked me (and inspired me to donate every year). The Leukemia Society of America was who I donated them to after being inspired by Gary Carter's charity work with the LSA during 1989 Spring Training in PSL, FL (Mets Spring Training site where my uncle once rented houses to all the Mets).
The LSA was wonderful, they asked me (when I was 22) if I'd mind "a little publicity" to inspire others to donate. Of course I agreed. But what was to come was NEVER IMAGINED! They did a Channel 9 NYC News story filmed on Shea Stadium's field before a Mets game against the Phillies. I had a special yellow field pass that I treasure to this day that Gary Carter autographed. Then while Channel 9 set-up I sat in the Mets dugout next to Mookie Wilson! He asked why I was there so I told him, and he shook my hand saying "you're a wonderful person!". Then Marty Siederer (who still works for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society- they merged at some point) was getting bats signed for the LSA by Gary Carter right next to me. Marty asked me if I wanted one as he had an extra, and he gave me one which is in a bat tube at the edge of my bed to today. The did a long filming for the News story and Gary Carter opened a 5,000 count box and the suction pulled a few cards out of one section a a 1988 Donruss card landed face up OF GARY CARTER! I swear this was NOT set-up. Then Channel 9 asked Gary Carter who HIS favorite player was, so he reached down picked up his own card and said "If you have to pick a favorite, you have to pick a favorite" showing the 1988 Donruss Gary Carter card for the camera. IT WAS FATE THAT HIS CARD LANDED LIKE IT DID!

When televised, Channel 9 did a fantastic job with the story giving Gary Carter as much credit as I got which is the way I would have preferred it was done if I was asked. This was Gary Carter's last year with the Mets (which no one know in July, 1989 when the TV story was filmed and on TV) and he had several bone chips on his knee in 1989 that had to be surgically removed during the season. So he was on the DL most of the '89 season. Years later I learned that he won the Roberto Clemente Award for charity work as a baseball player in 1989 mainly due to his inspiration to me and my donation.

My story was in every NYC/North NJ newspaper, every hobby publication, and I ever did a LIVE Radio interview on WFAN with two iconic WFAN Sports Radio hosts! As nervous as I was, I didn't do too bad- especially being that I was only given 10-minutes notice that they were going to call me LIVE on the radio! I was scared to death both on TV and the radio interview. The over the years with other donations newspapers in Florida did several articles. I got card dealers and card shops to join in with me for donations which doubled my 100,000 card donations. Plus got these card dealers U shops tax write-offs at .25 cents per card which was never questioned by the IRS. I inspired several of my doctor friends (who were also card collectors) to make sizable donations too and told them how to do their tax write-offs. I personally never used any donation as a tax write-off because I never made enough money as an EKG Interpretation Technologist to do a write-off!

What I got in return without ever asking for anything- was PRICELESS to me. So I donated a minimum of 30,000 cards to 200,000 cards each year from 1989-2015. After 2009 when my Neuromuscular diseases became advanced, I had to adjust my donations. So I used resealable graded cards bags I bought and put at least one Certified Autograph, one game-used card, 20-30 base & inserts cards, and two+ factory sealed packs of cards. I'd buy many extra cards of NY team players & Certified Autographs for these donations. In 2014 I bought (5) Aaron Judge Topps Inception autos & (6) Gary Sanchez Inception Autos that went into my 2014 donation.

By 2017 the Judge cards hit $500 each for many months in NY, and the Sanchez cards hit $50 each for all of 2017. That made me SO HAPPY that kids from Mount Sinai Pediatric Surgery Unit in Manhattan got cards that skyrocketed in price. This happened before, but card never went this high that I bought for $2-$3 each before! I donated cards every year to Mount Sinai/Beth Israel from 2012-2015.

I've receive so many "Thank You" letters (some hand written from children too which is worth more to me than anything I own!). From 2012-2015 I reached out to some of my hobby acquaintances to get autographs that I included COA cards with my name, personal email, and told them to contact me if they wanted confirmation that the autograph or sketch cards were Authentic. I did get several email over the years. Dick Perez signed (50) Diamond King cards that I supplied for one donation, five FAMOUS sketch cards artists for Marvel made (10+) sketch cards each for another donation with hand autographs on the sketch card backs. Plus others... with a little imagination we can make a great deal of difference in these sick children's lives!

IF EACH ONE OF US SAVES JUST ONE CHILD BY TAKING THEIR MINDS OFF OF THE ILLNESSES LONG ENOUGH FOR THEM TO HEAL, THEN EVERYTHING WAS WORTH IT!

I donated only to the Leukemia Society from 1989-1992. In 1991, I donated a total of 250,000 cards to them and won a National Award in 1991 from the LSA. They flew me to St. Louis, MO for free for the ceremonies and put me up for the night in the infamous Adam's Mark Hotel. WHAT AN HONOR THAT WAS! At the ceremony I started to realize that I was the only "regular person" to win any award. Other winners were Corporations, big businesses, famous people, or relative of deceased famous people who chose the LSA as "their charity". I was seated at a table with the Leukemia Society lawyer and NY Met Public Relations Manager Jay Horwitz was sitting right behind me. We both won Special Recognition Awards and received beautiful plaques.

It was what I did during my free time the day before the evening ceremonies that I took advantage of going to the top of the St. Louis arch (on an extremely slow ferris wheel like contraption that anyone who didn't like small spaces would have freaked out in!). Most people have no clue that the St. Louis arch has a big wide open space up top where you look out huge windows that face due west (the gateway to the west). Then I visited old Busch Stadium where they played & won the 1967 World Series (I collect Certified Autographs of every one famous in 1967, so the Cardinals are high on my list). That was a once in a lifetime opportunity for me that I'll never forget.

Gary Carter signed well over (50) autographs for me on all kids of items at his insistence. He was the nicest guy (no just a baseball player) I have ever met. His smile lit up every room he walked into, and never showed any stress he may have been dealing with on his face. His mother died of Leukemia when he was 12 which must have been devastating. Then he gets brain cancer in 2011 and died in 2012 from it. I still can't fully accept that he's gone. He was voted into the Hall Of Fame ON MY BIRTHDAY in 2003! So he sends me all kinds of Cooperstown items signed by him including the yearbook saying "Glad to hear I was elected on your birthday!". He was a one of a kind, no question.

Nothing has given me greater joy in this hobby than donating cards. I made that the main part of my hobby. The second most important part of my hobby is stopping as much hobby fraud (since 1991) and autograph FORGERIES (since 1999) from being sold to save collectors heartache which then makes many LEAVE THE HOBBY FOREVER. So everyone selling BAD items are shooting themselves in the foot, but they are too ignorant and narcissistic to ever think of such things! HEAR ME death2redemptions?
To those who bash me for fighting hobby fraud, let them; they are just jealous that they can't make money legally, so they do illegal things like selling REPRINT cards (or autographs that they have NO CLUE where they came from that are FORGERIES 90% OF THE TIME, EVEN COMMON PLAYERS!) that are illegal under copyright infringement laws, and is a Federal Offense since they ship these illegal cards by the USPS.

Now illegal Reprint card sellers are selling BRODER like cards using the ACEO "RP" acronym (which is as far from what ACEO stands for as it gets! And RP stands for REPRINT!). ACEO was created in 2007 by eBay sellers of ORIGINAL (that's what the O in ACEO stands for) artwork cards by mainly comic artists. Most of these card makers also donated a percentage or all that they made by selling these LEGAL ACEO cards. Any ACEO cards that are not original artwork cards (sketch cards) ARE ILLEGALLY USING THE ACEO acronym which stands for: Art Work, Editions (as in Limited Editions), and Originals. IT DOES NOT HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH ILLEGALLY REPRINTED CARD DESIGNS USING ACTUAL PICTURES OF ATHLETES??? I'm reporting every big seller of these ILLEGAL ACEO REPRINT cards and I suggest others do as well. THESE CARDS WILL NEVER BE WORTH ANYTHING, yet many sellers want $2.99-$5.00 EACH for these worthless cards that are printed for .10 cents each!

There are still many Children's Hospitals that accept cards, and hospitals with large Pediatrics areas. However, due to terrorism a lot of large charities stopped accepting loose cards as donations including the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. I called the LLS in 2012 when Gary Carter passed wanting to donate my ENTIRE CARD COLLECTION to them in Gary Carter's name. THEY REFUSED (I spoke only to Marty Siederer too) and he said "We no longer accept anything but factory sealed boxes or sets of cards as donations because of 9/11/01"! Then he said "If you have a place that doers take loose cards I suggest sticking with them". That really shocked me. So I endowed everything I own to St. Judes (who still accept loose cards) when I die.