Baseball Cards

Starting lineup, man, I loved those things. I had Straw, Doc, Rickey, Winfield, Mattingly, and Willie Randolph (and probably some others I don't remember).

 

An all-time great here ...

 

Ah, yes. I also have, like, a THOUSAND of those Starting Lineup "action figures." Not sure what the appeal of them was. Their arms moved. That's it. I loved them as a 9-yr-old, though, and I wanted every single one of them.

 

OK, I'll stop after this, I swear...

 

Looks like he's saying, "Hi, Brett. Good to meet you. Why don't you have a seat over there on the bench while I play quarterback for the next 10 years."

 

Yep. This was the absolute WORST time to collect cards. The flooding of the market drove me out. Only card I have that is worth more than the paper it's printed on is a 91 Favre Topps Stadium Club rookie that might be worth about 100 bucks. I still have various stuff, but I really wish I still had all the Topps cards from when I was younger, but I just don't have the interest anymore. Used to go to the local shows and shops all the time. Now I wouldn't even know what is worthwhile.

 

Like a lot of others, I was sucked into the boom as a pre-teen in the late 80s. Chased Gregg Jeffries, pined after Canseco and McGwire rookies, and marveled at the Billy Ripken "Fuckface" card. At one point I could ID, on sight, the year of any baseball card made between 1952 and 1990 based solely on its design.
I knew the trick to finding the David Robinson rookie card in a pack of 1989 NBA Hoops cards. The packs were see-through and all of them had the same production runs, so if you could dig through the box and find the one with Kenny Walker on top you'd get the valuable Robinson -- worth $5 for immediate trade-in with almost any dealer -- as the last card in the pack, guaranteed.
My mom used to set up a table at a local flea market every Sunday morning and I'd go with her. By 1990, there were probably a dozen card dealers there every week. It was like the Star Wars cantina, only sleazier. Some guys were nice to kids, others treated us like despicable street urchins.

I had my favorite players, some better than others. When Mark Grace broke through I tried to collect every one of his cards I could find. I did it in 1988 and '89, when there were still only four cards each year. I remember swindling a classmate out of Grace's Score traded series rookie card for $1 in eighth grade. It was worth $35 at the time and I was convinced it'd be worth thousands some day. Even found a few cool specialty cards here and there. I thought they were cool, at least. Turns out they were a harbinger of doom.

By 1991 there was just too damn much to keep track of. The "Big Three" of Topps, Fleer and Donruss had been joined by Upper Deck and Score. All of them had their different subsets and premium sets, too, and the prices skyrocketed. I'd pass the time at the flea market scraping up a few bucks here and there, selling back the good cards to fuel my habit, and usually breaking even. Even as a poor 12-year-old it wasn't hard to scrape together 50 cents for a pack and a momentary thrill.
Then the thrill cost $1. And then $2. And then $3.
It got harder and harder to pull the money together for what usually amounted to a five-second rush. I'd buy a pack, get shitty cards, and then sit at my mom's Tupperware table for a half an hour or 45 minutes until I scraped some more money together or I got annoying enough for mom to give me a couple of bucks. The saddest thing was being out of money and standing near one of the dealers' tables trying for a contact high from someone else opening a pack or a box of cards. Real fucking sad.
Anyway, I was bored out of my skull sitting at that flea market table. So I got into comics. They were still about a buck each at the time for new and back issues, and I could better pass the time reading them. It might take me 15 minutes or a half hour to get through an issue instead of a few seconds. Breezing through the back issue bins for hidden treasures and books that looked cool was also a lot better than forking over money to the sleazy card dealers and ate up more time.
I already had a few issues of G.I. Joe that were awesome, and I built an impressive collection of back issues in short order. I quickly branched out to X-Men (the new series with the multiple covers for No. 1 had just come out) and from there to other characters. It was like a whole new world opened up to me.
It was a conscious decision, and I never regretted it. I collected comics off and on until about five years ago, when the stories just got stale and I realized I could put the money to better use. I'm not sure I've opened a pack of cards in 25 years.

 

About 6-7 years ago I had some hope that my boys would get into the cards and I could relive the thrill but nah, they didn't care. Maybe with some grandkids? Can always dream right?

 

Whoa, thanks for inspiring this bout of nostalgia. Though whatever is left of my collection has had to survive two hurricanes and wildfire in a closet 1,300 miles away, I carry these time-and-place, slice of life memories with me, such as...

Biking from Country Gardens to the Circle K every day during the summer before my third grade year to buy a pack of those garish yellow 1991 Fleer baseball cards. That same summer I played a lot of Strat-o-Matic baseball and got in my first fist fight because I knew my sorta-friend Stan stole my Topps Frank Thomas rookie card. He never fessed up. I never got it back. (Looks like I can buy it today for $1.00).

 

...working the elementary school barter market to finally get my hands on that sweet Shaq Upper Deck rookie card.

 

...spent a lot of time and money at The Catcher's Mint on Palm Bay Road.

I bought my only box set there, Upper Deck 1991-92 hockey with Teemu Selanne's RC. According to my Tuff Stuff -- which I preferred to Beckett because each issue including pricing for all sports, making it a cheaper choice for this four sport collector -- that set was transcendent.