Baseball cards

I was doing a pretty good job of it with David Justice back when he was my favorite player (pre-Halle days). Obviously, he didn't quite pan out the way I hoped.

 

About once a year I'll get on eBay and find someone selling a lot of three to five wax or vending boxes of 80s baseball cards. I still love hand collating a set of cards.

 

Secret Santa material! BYH will be thrilled with Junior Ortiz and Steve Christmas.

 

I've been lurking on this thread, but haven't really been on SportsJournalists.com too much lately.

Thought I'd weigh in, although I'm by no means an expert.

I began collecting in 1977, got out of it when I couldn't afford it (unfortunately, the 1982-85 years), got back in it in time for the gluttony and mass production of 1987-91, and have most recently just picked a set and worked on it.

I have about 350,000 cards, but the total value belongs to about 5 percent of that.

Favorites: Many. My "hero" rookie cards, of course (George Brett, Joe Montana, Julius Erving, Jaromir Jagr, Reggie Miller), and a few others.

Favorite sets include Allen & Ginter's and Topps Heritage, because I like the nostalgic look.

I have several individual collections, some more short-sighted than others. I'd guess I have about 95 percent of all the George Brett cards that were produced before his retirement. I have extensive collections of Joe Montana, Julius Erving, Johnny Damon, Anfernee Hardaway, Reggie Miller, Jaromir Jagr, Mario Lemieux, and most recently, Tony Gonzalez.

I pretty much got bored with it, mostly due to frustration with card companies. It seems every fucking Yankee player has to have insert cards up the ass, and it's impossible to collect a single player anymore because of the dreaded 1-of-1s and shit like that.

If I could sell my collection for a penny a card, I would do it. But literally nobody is buying much at all. I'd love to sell my Shaq and Penny collections, and a ton of doubles and extra complete sets.

Never really liked Upper Deck because, unlike Topps, if you bust a box of UD, you might get 10 doubles of cards 1-5 and zero cards 6-10. Topps, you can put together a set by buying 2-3 Walmart $20 boxes and filling holes on eBay. I recently sold a Topps Treasury autographer Derrick Rose card on eBay for $150, and could have gotten more if I didn't need the money so bad.

Give me a couple of Topps sets each year, with maybe one parallel set, and no more than 2-3 insert sets, and I would probably go back. But it has become nothing more than legalized gambling, and that's unfortunate to a generation of kids who would rather play video games than swap cards.

 

Cards are probably pretty anachronistic to kids today, given that cards don't really do anything. When I was into cards a million years ago, it was a big deal just to have actual color photography. The only other place that regularly had color photos was Sport magazine, and that was confined to a handful of pages per issue. These days you can probably find fresh video on just about any player online.

 

I agree with you 100%. It seems like a no-brainer to me. You get guys like us who enjoy hand-collating a set buying cards again. It would be a good set to introduce a kid to collecting cards. The only thing I can think of that was like this in recent years was Topps Total. The design was hit-or-miss from year to year. They retailed for 99 cents per pack. There were usually two or three parallel versions and three or four insert sets. There were one or two inserts in each pack so they were pretty easy to put together. The sets also had checklist cards!

 

I refuse to buy those because I am convinved the wax packs have been opened and picked through and the rack packs are prolly worthless sequences.

 

Yep, many of the older wax packs can be opened and resealed with a little candle wax.

Caveat emptor.

 

When I was in college, I helped out a guy in my hometown who ran a baseball card/coin shop. I'd go with him to a few shows. Met some old-time baseball players who told some great stories when they were done with their autograph signing for the day.

But, the dealers at those shows were the biggest collection of scumbags you would ever meet.

 

This was happening in the 1980s. I remember when the 1986 Canseco Rated Rookie was the hottest card out there and the local dealer was selling packs for a relatively inexpensive $1 a pack. A friend bought two boxes and didn't get a single Canseco or Clemens.