This story was excerpted from Kennedi Landry's Rangers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

ARLINGTON -- Josh Jung¡¯s father used to take him to Toys ¡°R¡± Us on Fridays to reward him for a good week of school. Go to school, get good grades, get something from the store.

But Jung didn¡¯t want toys. He wanted baseball cards.

¡°My entire life was card collecting,¡± Jung said at Rangers Fan Fest. ¡°It wasn't out there in the universe like it is now. I was a huge A-Rod fan, too. My dad was a huge card collector. I had 5,000-count boxes just loaded down.¡±

An MLB player collecting baseball cards isn¡¯t too out of the ordinary. But Jung, inspired by his dad¡¯s old collections as a child, has only gotten more interested in card collecting over the years.

Jung attends card shows and peruses card shops in his free time. He even started a YouTube account. His first video is 30 minutes of him opening card packs with Angels superstar Mike Trout.

Ironically, the best card Jung owns is probably a Trout rookie card, though Jung admits he loves to look for himself occasionally. He¡¯s chasing his rookie cards.

¡°My Trout card is super cool,¡± Jung said. ¡°He signed two cards for me now. One of the 2011 updates that he put out, and the 2012 Rookie of the Year, which is awesome. Super cool. ¡­ Of myself, I have my Topps Chrome Rookie auto[graph] super, which is cool. I didn't have a [MLB debut] patch, right? That¡¯s the crazy hobby right now. So that [Chrome] card is probably my most prestigious rookie card. To be able to have that one, it's pretty cool.¡±

Jung understands card collectors, too, considering he is one. Athletes spend so much time signing balls, jerseys, cards and everything between. Jung thinks about the fans when he signs.

¡°It's kind of like a game I play with myself, for sure,¡± Jung said. ¡°My signature is so simple and easy; it's not too bad. I just want it to be legible, because I remember as a kid and being a card collector, you look at autographs, and you¡¯re like, ¡®Ooh, that one sucks.¡¯ Or like, ¡®Man, I can't remember who that is.¡¯ And if it's not on a card -- if it's on a baseball or something, and it's smudged or whatever -- you can't even get a letter out of that. So I try to make it a point to write mine legibly.¡±

Jung likes to have a little fun with his cards sometimes, too. When he signs, he wants his signature to be legible, and he¡¯ll sometimes hide easter eggs in them. In November, he gave himself a mustache and glasses on a card and waited for it to surface. He once signed one as ¡°The Jungle Cat,¡± his nickname.

When Jung was a kid at Toys ¡°R¡± Us, he never expected to have his own baseball card, much less the extravaganza that card collecting has turned into. He is still ¡°giddy¡± each time he sees one of himself.

¡°I truly didn't know a ton about cards until a couple of years ago, because I didn't know about all the different products,¡± Jung said. ¡°My dad would just get us a box of cards, and that was all I knew. Chasing autograph cards or patch cards and things like that, it was a huge deal if you got one of those because it never happened. But now, with all the products, it's guaranteed almost, and it's crazy.¡±