Baseball Cards

Nope. He and Bruce McNall sold that years ago, before McNall went to prison.

 

I collected from 1987 to ~1995.

After the strike, prices on packs quickly rose from the $0.25 on which I built my collection ... to $2, then $2.75, then close to $4 and $5. ... And instead of the Big Three/Four, putting out 700 cards apiece, one set per company (and maybe a Topps Traded set, too) -- there suddenly were about 50 different "premium" sets to look for every year, and it was all too overwhelming ... and expensive.

Most of my cards -- the ones that are still left in my parents' basement -- are probably worthless now.

I still have one set that I've kept with me -- my first and only one, 1987 Topps. It was the least valuable Topps set ever made, but it was my first and it was my favorite. Love those wood grains.

But I never collected for money anyway, and wouldn't have sold them even when they were worth something.

Now, I collect funky cards of one player (Glavine) when they catch my eye -- I like retro-looking cards like the 2004 Topps Cracker Jacks and the '05 Turkey Reds.

But I don't think I'll ever get into collecting like I did when I was a kid. ... Still nothing like the thrill of opening a pack (Toys 'R' Us sometimes sells a box of like 20 random packs for $10, and sometimes I'll buy a box just to feel like a kid again)

 

I started collecting hockey cards when Gretzky was a rookie. I'm almost sure I had his rookie. From that, I transitioned into baseball and football with the occasional pack of basketball cards. I remember putting together a hand-collated 1981 Topps set after buying pack after pack at the local IGA store.

In '84 and '85, my parents bought me complete sets. I was a big collector by then. I had almost three complete 1985 Topps sets. By 1990, I had turned it into a business. I bought and sold like a day-trader. I had a knack for knowing who was going to make it big and who was a flash in the pan. I bought the cheaper rookies for 5 cents a pop and snatched up hot rookie cards like Jerry Rice a few months before the price went soaring. I worked and lived in a card shop for a year before it closed.

Prior to my senior year, I made about $500 at a card show. I bought a $130 pair of Air Jordans and some clothes. I was the coolest guy in school. After high school, though, the collection just sat and collected dust. Within a year, none of my cards were the hot items that collectors wanted. My Cal Ripkens and George Bretts got old and stale. The kids werent' even sure who these guys were.

Then the card industry went crazy with inserts and multiple sets and rookie cards were being printed as soon as a guy got drafted. I went from collecting maybe six different cards of my favorite player to collecting 50 in a single year and then still not having special insert cards that were priced at hundreds of dollars.

Today, I don't buy many packs. I spent $25 today, and I could probably by a nice Curt Flood rookie or something for that price. And that's really what I prefer. Some of the older cards have more signfiicance to me in the larger realm of baseball's story. We argue constantly about who is "the greatest ever." I hardly care. I like to collect the rookies of those guys who were the first greats. Lou Brook on the basepaths, Sandy Koufax on the mound.

Anyway, if you just want to give your cards to charity, let me know. ;-)

 

I collected them like crazy when I was a kid, back in the 1960's. We're talking thousands of cards. It's surprising I have any teeth left now, considering the bubble gum. I bought some sets in the late 1960's when they first started coming out in ads in the Sporting News. I believe they all went into a big box.

Eventually, I got rid of them them all -- gave them away or threw them out. To be fair, they weren't in great shape because of getting bounced around, and there were all sorts of doubles of the early 1960's cards (how many Doc Edwards cards did I need?). I think if they had plastic sheets back then in the Stone Age, I would have kept them.

Then I bought sets in the late 70's and 80's once I started earning money, and went back to the 1973 set with my buying (before that, the cards got really expensive). Sold some of them here and there in the early 90's. Then I got to the point a few years ago where I had the collection sitting in my closet, and I figured they would be happier being in a more appreciative home. So, I sold them on eBay. Got enough to buy new golf clubs, which was fine.

It was kind of a charming hobby back in the 1960's, because there was no rookie card-mania or thought that it was an investment. I used to love the little cartoons that went on the back of the cards ("Jhonny plays the guitar in his spare time"). I still stop and stare at them in the store once in a while, though.

 

Could be, but dealers always tell you what you have is worthless.

 

Yes, and having been a dealer, it's generally true. The reality is that there are a select few cards that customers will buy. If you don't have those cards on your table, you might as well be selling blank pieces of paper.

Many cards may have value, but few people want to buy a card unless they believe it will be worth more in the future. I know this because, when someone approached me with a collection, I generally looked through it to find the same kinds of cards I have in my own collection. And I knew from my own experience that those cards wouldn't sell. So the issue becomes a matter of overhead. You might sell every card you buy for a profit, but if it's only a 4 percent profit and it takes 20 years to make, it's not worth the trouble.

That said, there are a few dealers who want you to believe that what you have sucks. Then they'll convince you to sell your thing for next to nothing. These types are willing to do this to little kids. They're scumbags.

The reality is that card collecting isn't really a good business. It's nickel and dime stuff. If you want to make money with cards, you only need to buy a few a week. I had a friend who tripled his money on a Nolan Ryan rookie toward the end of Ryan's career. His source was a sixth grade teacher who was just happy to be talking about baseball cards with a younger generation. He sold cards for what the price guide valued them at. Then my friend, ever the businessman, would find someone who wanted this hot card. A guy walked in one day buying on consignment for a collector. He paid $800 for a Ryan my friend bought for $250.

 

Ah, baseball cards. Like legal lottery tickets for the young set. But I actually got into a card-buying binge around the time I graduated high school in 1991, and stayed in it until about 1994. A lot of my friends have that same time frame. I actually really dug the Fleer Ultra and (to a lesser degree) Topps Stadium Club lines. They had a nice slick finish and some cool rare cards before they went overboard with the specialty cards.

I think I still have them at my mom's house -- a bunch of basketball, a few baseball and football and, my prize catch, a scattering of Fleer Ultra Beavis and Butt-head cards. Those were the days.

 

I collected from middle school up until sometime in high school when I discovered how much fun beer and smokes were. Quit the smokes years ago, I don't drink as much, but I haven't picked back up the cardboard habit.

 

My greatest feat in card collecting was snapping up five Mark McGwire 1985 US Olympic cards for a quarter apiece in the middle of May 1987. My buddies laughed at me. He homered about 10 times in the subsequent week and that card was worth $10 or $20. All of a sudden they wanted to trade me their entire collections for McGwire. I turned 'em all down. Glorious, glorious days.

It's funny this is a topic today. I was telling a fellow SportsJournalists.com friend last night that baseball cards were my first great distraction. I bought cards as far back as 1980, but I didn't really collect until 1986, when a buddy and I got hooked on collecting via the 1986 Topps mini "League Leaders" cards. Those cards weren't worth the paper they were printed on back then, never mind now, and it was only a 66-card set. But my buddy and I each needed one card to complete the set, and we got it at the same time in separate packs. I gave him Floyd Bannister, he gave me Britt Burns, we high-fived and life was never any better.

For the next three years, I spent every dime I made on baseball cards. My first real set was the 1986 Topps, which I completed when I spent about five bucks on wax packs in search of Joel friggin Youngblood. At one point, I traded all the commons I had in the stack (of course, every 1986 Topps card is a common now) for another pack.

I went particularly crazy in 1987, when I put together six Topps sets. These are gonna be worth a fortune! They're just like the 1952 cards! Look at the wood panels! Uhh, no. I was so obsessive back then I even put together a full set of 1987 Sportflics and 1986 and 1987 Fleer All-Star Stickers. Do you know how many damn packs of Sportflics I had to buy to get all 200 cards? A lot.

I still remember my greatest day of card collecting. One Friday after school in eighth grade, I went to the local card shop and bought a lot of Star Stickers and Donruss cards. I got the Jose Canseco Star Sticker AND the Donruss Rated Rookie. I floated home.

I started to fall out of the habit in 1989 and was pretty much finished by 1991. By that point I had other things to spend my money on, and the hobby was beginning to lose its innocence. I had a little nostalgic spurt right after I graduated college--I bought like three boxes of 1991 Fleer and put together a whole set--and I still get my wife a couple packs of cards every Christmas as a stocking stuffer.

As noted earlier in this thread, the cards from the industry's most popular era probably aren't worth the paper on which they're printed. But that's OK. They're good nostalgia that hopefully I can share someday with my nephew or (gasp) my own child (gasp). I still have them all in a closet in my old bedroom, and my mother, who throws out everything, has apparently remembered my 20-year-old orders not to throw out any of my cards.

Good times.

 

I had one of my card books with me that day. He said he'd pay me $10 for the whole thing when I knew I had some damn good cards in it. Looking back, I'm glad I didn't sell them.

 

The best part about collecting cards was trading with friends.

I wasn't very shrewd when it came to card shows and the like ... I always bought the cards I coveted for near or at the cost they were worth ...

I still have a few sets, all in near-mint condition. A dealer once offered me about $15 for about $80 worth of sets ... so I still have 'em. Wonder if I'd have better luck on EBay.