A Salute to Wax Heaven

One of the first sportscard blogs I read when I got back into collecting was Mario’s blog, Wax Heaven, along with a few others.  This was probably somewhere back in 2007, but I can’t recall exactly.  He wrote about what he knew, the love for the cards he was collecting.  He also wrote about his other hobbies (photography), and his wife and son, as well as other things.

Sure, his writing may not be the best thing you could find in the world, and a ‘journalist’ might not consider it to be ‘professional’, but his heart was in it, and you could tell that he truly cared about what he wrote.  He also had a knack for finding out things that other people didn’t want known, and finding things out before anyone else did.  In some cases, this included Beckett, which caused quite a few issues behind the scenes.

It was Mario that discovered the tie between Upper Deck and Razor originally, and Mario who was one of the first to be sponsored by the card companies, first with press releases and product information, then with actual product.  His reviews were insightful and to the point, and he was fair.  He even gave away the cards that he received, which I’m less certain I could do (I’d want to keep the guys I collect, after all).

Mario’s been able to take photos of the Marlins on the field, he’s been able to photograph his hero, Jose Canseco, during his boxing career.  He’s also had his car fall apart on him around us all, and introduced us.  Today, however, Mario has announced that for undisclosed reasons, Wax Heaven will be shutting down.  We don’t know the story.  We may never know the story.

It doesn’t matter, though.  Without Mario, many of us would not be blogging.  Without Mario, the card companies might not be as public with bloggers, Facebook and Twitter.  Mario has done more for the blogging community and collectors as a whole than almost anyone else since Beckett.  For this, I salute you, Mario.  You will be missed, and I hope that circumstances allow you to bring Wax Heaven back in the future.