Baseball Cards

Finally, a topic I can get into.

I remember the first (or one of the first) card I ever owned was a 1988 Topps Mitch Williams card. When we moved to Illinois that year I got into collecting pretty hot and heavy. Of course 1988-1994 was one of the biggest slumps in baseball cards in terms of value.

The one set I was always after was the 1989 Topps. I bought so many packs and boxes of packs but I was never able to complete it. I may have finally bought the complete set, but I can't remember.

Even though I wasn't born until 1982, I had a mammoth amount of cards from the 70s and early 80s, because the guy who'd lived in my house before me gave all his cards to a younger neighbor kid, who then subsequently passed them on to me.

I remember being little and, instead of having lemonade stands, my friend and I would have a baseball card stand. Yeah, I don't think I ever actually sold a card, but whatever.

Like a lot of people apparently, I stopped buying packs in the mid-90s when they jacked up the prices. Through high school, I would occasionally go to a local store and buy boxes of packs from the late 80s. I never had any cards that worth anything, but I was always trying to make complete sets.

My mom always bought me and my older sister complete sets for our birthdays. My sister still has all her cards, and when I moved across the country about a year ago, I didn't want to lug my cards with me, so I gave them all to her. At least they're in a safe place.

Hopefully she'll pass down all of the cards to her son. He should have an incredible collection when he's ready to inherit them. I already know my mom has been buying him complete sets for his birthday ever since he was born.

 

I remember when I thought my 1987 Fleer Will Clark was untouchable for trade. Now it's worth about a buck.

Upper Deck ruined baseball card collecting. Neat cards for sure, but once they came out, gone were the cardboard-stock, gum-stained, wax-pack baseball card packs.

I still have a handful of cards I keep a pretty close tab on. I have a 1960 Mickey Mantle as my prized card.

 

One of the girls in our office just came in to show me some "old" baseball cards she discovered while remodeling her house.
She was pulling out old baseboard and found five or six cards behind them.
She has a 1952 Topps Billy Martin rookie card, and a '52 Topps Minnie Minnoso rookie card. She also has a 1955 Ray Boone card.
They are all in pretty good condition too.

She about flipped when I told her the two '52 Topps were worth about $1,300.

Few of my cards are that old. I quit collecting in 1989. I don't own a single card older than 1992. I have about 45,000 cards in boxes and books sitting in my closet, next to my old comic book collection.

I was thinking about those cards the other day. I don't think I'll get rid of them. Maybe one day, I'll get back into collecting them.

Aside from the '87 Topps and '84 Donruss cards, I loved the Score brand cards. I have about three complete sets of their first run of cards. One factory set and two hand-built sets.

 

My favorite card out of the early Score series, and one of my favorites all time, was the Bo Jackson football/baseball card.

 

You can still buy Topps with gum. They re-introduced it a few years ago. I bought a few packs just for the gum. I remember having big wads of that stuff in my jaw.

These are great stories. I share so many of these memories. I believe Keith Olberman is a huge collector, but I'd have to double-check that.

It's true that card collecting has become a child's version of the instant lottery. The packs even show the odds for all of the different inserts. It's sad, really. But that's how these things go.

I suppose I'll always miss childhood, and card collecting was part of that. I was fairly obsessed. I actually learned a few of the card-printing sequences, particularly for Fleer and Topps, I believe. For example, if you had, say, Chris Sabo on the front of your rack pack, I could tell you that you'd definitely have a Bill Ripken error four cards behind it.

 

I've got a bunch of baseball cards in my closet as well...
1980 Topps set (including Ricky Henderson rookie card)
1981 Fleer set (2nd printing with 4 error cards)
1982 Topps set
1988 Topps set
1990 Dondruss set
1983 Topps Traded series
plus a bunch of older cards from 1976-1979/1980

 

Yes, I loved that black-and-white Bo card as well. I also liked the few 3D cards from the early Upper Deck sets. I remember when they printed a Michael Jordan baseball card. I seem to recall a Nolan Ryan card where he's throwing a football as well. My ultimate two-sport card was always this 1981 Danny Ainge card from his baseball days.

I just love the history behind cards. I recently picked up a Denny McLain rookie for under $10. Every time I see it, I think about how he's the last guy to win 30. I bought a Bench rookie for a few dollars more. For some reason, it reminds me of Krylon paint.

Does anybody remember the show Baseball Bunch? I loved that show. I remember when Ozzie Smith was on. He threw a ball against a brick wall to practice defense. There is still a bare patch by my mom's front porch where I tossed a ball against the concrete base and then dove into the yard to retrieve it.

 

DUGOUT WIZARD RULES!!!

 

YouTube rules the internet tubes:

 

Unbelievable. I never thought I'd see that again.

 

My mom once got me a vintage pack of baseball cards...Topps, I think. The specific brand doesn't matter, but the vintage gum inside the vintage pack does. I've never seen a stick of over-the-hill gum before, but I also know I never got a chance to find out what it tasted like. It crumbled like an ashen cigarette almost as soon as I touched it.

 

Among the many ways I miss my deceased mom was that she was the one who got me into baseball cards. She'd always get me a pack or two when she'd go to the store, starting in '77 or so. My dad loved baseball, but was never into the cards.

I bought a pack of '81 cards a few years back, complete with gum. I dared my wife to chew it and she did. I fully expect that she's taken 10 years off her life expectency.

I thought I had suffered a major tragedy in the early 80s with those same '81 cards. I'd take my cards up on the roof of our battleship-sized Olds Vista Cruiser and sort them in the luggage rack, the dividers were the perfect width for cards. I had all of my '81 and '82 cards up there one day, sorting them before I put them in my card box.

Then one day ... they disappeared. I was certain for over 20 years that I had left them on top of the car and we drove off one day with them up there, never to be seen again.

When my grandmother died a couple of years ago, among the finds was my '81 and '82 baseball cards. Turns out I had just left them at her house and she forgot about them.

Honest to God, that was the coolest thing ever to recover those cards.