Baseball Cards

I did. Wow.

 

My best friend and his brother both had paper routes when we were kids (remember newspapers?) and they seemingly spent every cent they made on baseball cards. His brother became the keeper of them years ago and now he's got a basement full of worthless Topps, Fleer and Donruss cards from the 1980s. Thirty years ago this spring, I remember we bought a bunch of cards when they first hit the stores and I pissed him off when I pulled a Dwight Gooden card out of the first pack I opened. In the spring of 1986, in our little world, that qualified as a big deal. Three decades later we still laugh about it.

Every so often when I'm in Target I'll buy a few packs because I still find it fun to open them. I go to sports memorabilia shows occasionally, and if I buy any cards it'll be particular players that I like. I think it would be cool to collect the full career's worth of my favorite players' cards and get them framed. But it's not something I do too actively. I'm more interested in looking for magazines and newspapers or other oddball-type sports publications, because those look good framed. I've got a few on the wall already.

 

What's the best card maker these days?
My twins will be 1 in October. I think I'm going to start a tradition of buying each of them two boxes of baseball cards each - one each to open and one each to hold onto.
I've never been a card collector, so I don't know jack. Is it Topps? Do any of the other companies exist anymore?

 

I'll probably just pick one of those Topps brands and go with it.
I'm not under any illusions about cards values, but I think it would be something fun to do.
When they are old enough to understand what they are, we can open a box from each year together. Going forward we can just open a box each year and save a box.
Somewhere down the road they can open the saved boxes or whatever they want.

 

Ragu's correct. MLB decided, I think it was about 10 years ago, to go with just one licensee for their cards, and of course it was going to be Topps.

Buck, just go with the main Topps set. That's their bread-and-butter and I think usually has the most comprehensive player list.

 

Thanks. That's what I'll do.

 

I'm a baseball nut and thought I'd buy a complete set every year, but those are tough to come by in the Toronto area these days. No card stores anymore.

 

I love baseball, but I'm not a nut about it.
And I've really never been a collector, but for some reason this just struck me as something that might be cool to do.
If the boys are 8 or 9 and don't give a rip about it, I can always drop it.

So I think starting on their first birthday I'm going to buy them each two boxes.
On the fifth birthday, they'll each have 10 boxes, and we'll open one box from each year, leaving one box from each year unopened.
As I said, going forward we'll open one from the current year and save one.

At any point if they don't seem to enjoy it in the least, I'll just drop it. I've never been a baseball card collector so it's not going to break my heart if the don't dig it.
If they enjoy it even a little bit, it'll give us something to share and to mark our time together.

 

My dream has always been to own the 1964 Topps Baseball set, since that was the year I was born.

I bought a bunch of sets to put away for my daughter when she was born.

Too bad she was born in 1991.

 

Was just talking about this with a couple buddies at work. Wasn't it mid 90s when the market bottomed out? Anyone remember that guy "Mr. Mint?" Pretty sure he was from NJ, and remember reading an article on him in SI. Think he was a millionaire, or at least said he was. Remember thinking 'I'll hold onto my cards and by the late 90s maybe start selling.' Was hoping for a few thous. Now, I'd sell it for a couple cases of budweiser and some Mad Dog Orange Jubilee, and I don't drink either of those anymore.

 

I had some sets that, as a teenager, I wanted to possess one day:

1975 Topps
1980 Topps
1981 Topps
1984 Donruss
1985 Donruss
1987 Fleer

Plus all of the pro basketball sets of the 1979-1984 era. I lucked out in 1988 when I bought the 1987 and 1988 fleer basketball sets for $25 total, shipping included. Three years later, I sold them (87 was Jordan rookie) and used that money on a down payment for my first car.

Yet once I was a grown-up, I bought each of the sets - spent a day or two looking through them and was quickly bored. So I returned to eBay, sold them for close to the same price I bought them for. I considered it "renting" each set for a month or so.

What I DO collect are game programs and media guides from the teams of my youth. I found a 1979 royals game program from a game that I had attended (even remember the ads and the series). That I'll look through far more than any baseball card.