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Baseball cards

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by Pringle, Oct 15, 2011.

  1. BUMP:

    My 10-year-old wanted look at some of my baseball cards. I pulled out a few books. In addition to the baseball cards I still had a few hockey, football and basketball cards.
    Which reminded me of the worst trade I ever made.
    When I was 15 I decided I was going to focus strictly on baseball cards. I had a few thousand football cards, a couple hundred hockey cards and about a hundred basketball cards. I made a deal with some kid (like 11 or 12) to trade all my non-baseball cards for his baseball cards.
    My card were all boxed up in neat stacks. He brought me a fucking crumpled up grocery bag! The cards - mostly shit late-80s Donruss and Fleer cards - were crumpled and creased. Fuck, a few even had teeth marks.
    But my dumbass went through with the trade.
    I traded away a second or third year Joe Montana Topps and a 1981 Wayne Gretzkey and an '81 Edmonton Oilers leaders card. All gone for a banged up Mark McGwire 89 Donruss card.
    Fuck!
     
  2. sgreenwell

    sgreenwell Well-Known Member

    At least you can take solace in the fact that he probably used them to line the spokes of his bicycle, or to crush lines of meth with, judging from the treatment of his other cards. I mean, by the 1980s, most people knew cards were worth a decent amount of money possibly, and my parents made sure I didn't actively try to destroy them.
     
  3. exmediahack

    exmediahack Well-Known Member

    I was hard core into it as a preteen by 1988 (after collecting from 79-84 before leaving for a few years).

    When that article on Mr. Mint hit the SI issue in summer 1988, it was as if the business end of it imploded. Upper Deck came out the next year (with Griffey) and then more and more sets came out each year. Just became very hard to stay on top of.

    My decent investment came that summer. I loved basketball and was happy to see Fleer NBA sets. I took my grocery bagging money and spent a summer scooping up every Fleer 87 and 88 set I could find at the card shows. Dealers were unloading them and saving their precoous Grace or Jeffries RCs. Usually $10 or $15 for the 132-card sets.

    My mother wondered why I was "wasting my money".

    Then the Fleers took off. Jordan rookie and Jordan second year brought hundreds of dollars a piece. I finally sold in 1990 and early 1991, clearing enough money for a down payment on a nice car and I didn't have to work until I got to college.

    Thanks, Fleer.
     
  4. exmediahack

    exmediahack Well-Known Member

    1980 Topps is my favorite set. Clean look, lots of cards. My first Topps box. Bought one off eBay a while back just to go through the cards once. Will probably sell it soon for someone else to enjoy. I really don't get much enjoyment from possessing cards now. I like to look at them and then resell, usually at a slight loss but that's fine.

    Henderson was the only decent rookie. Mike Scott was the second rookie to watch in the set in 1988 but that's about it.
     
  5. Doing a Google search for the Gretzkey cards (to make sure I had the right year) they were listing for between $8-10.
    Depressing.
     
  6. Huggy

    Huggy Well-Known Member

    Really? That was the Gretzky "rookie" card right? I remember when those things were like gold.

    [​IMG]
     
  7. No it was this one ... Officially list as an '81-82 Topps.
    So a second-year card.
    [​IMG]

    And this one ...

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 15, 2014
  8. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    I have the Gretzky rookie. Back when I worked card shows, I got a Jim Brown rookie and a Gretzky rookie in exchange for a 1985 Donruss set. At the time, it wasn't a completely unfair trade. The 85 Donruss set was probably worth considerably more 20+ years ago than it is now...
     
  9. clintrichardson

    clintrichardson Active Member

    A few years ago I started using my old baseball cards as bookmarks, and it's been a steady source of minor enjoyment. Before I begin a new book I reach my hand blindly into the shoebox and pull one out, and then I spend the next couple weeks or so with a 1980 Don Baylor or whatever between the pages.

    I like doing this primarily because I get to see the cards, instead of having them sit in a box in the back of a closet. I recommend it.
     
  10. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    Maybe I'll get my Gretzky rookie out of the safety deposit box and do just that... :D
     
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