As American as Apple Pie and Stale Bubble Gum
In an attempt to withdraw from the chaos and tragedy that has played out nightly on our television screens lately, I am watching a lot more baseball. Not just because my Mets are back in contention again (although that helps), but because as Americans, we should be thankful that we are a strong enough and resilient enough nation that we can withstand horrible terrorist attacks, come together as a people and proclaim that we will get back to our normal lives. So when baseball came back and I started watching again, I was reminded of something I had wanted to do just before I moved down here, but never did, and that was to bring my baseball card collection with me. I don't really know why I wanted to, I guess it was to have some sort of connection with my childhood nearby at all times, just to gaze at occasionally.
It has got be thinking back to the olden days when I used to be a religious baseball card collector and spent most of my money on baseball cards (as opposed to today where I spend most of it on CDs... when I have money). My dad first got me interested when I was just starting to show interest in baseball as a 9-year old kid. He got me the full 1987 Topps set for Christmas, and a shiny new album to put all 792 of the cards in. This was definitely a simpler time for the baseball card industry. You had three major card companies: Topps, Donruss, and Fleer. You had your player cards, your All-Star cards, your team leader cards, your Diamond Kings if you collected Donruss. It was easy as that, buy them, trade them, get the whole set, unless you were like me and had the whole set bought for you.
Except that I didn't know jack about baseball or card collecting at the time, and my peers took advantage of that and basically lifted all of my good cards by swapping large amounts of lesser quality doubles for them. So now I no longer had the full 792-card set, and to this day I still don't think I have the whole thing. Well, the next year I set about the process of collecting the whole set a piece at a time, hoping to track down every last card, which was REALLY fun, and by that I mean fun like a head injury. In those days, every pack was 40 cents, and being 9 years old, I got a $5 a week allowance. I got more if I begged my mom pretty please, I HAVE to get more cards!!! So you get the packs of 15 cards a piece, and once you unwrapped the wax paper cover, you were confronted with the great "extra" that was included with Topps baseball cards-- a stale piece of chewing gum. This not only stained the back of one of the cards (usually the one with the most potential to gain in value, like a Ken Griffey, Jr. rookie card), but it was also rock hard. But you chewed it anyway, it was part of the fun, even though I mean you had to chew it, usually to pieces before it somehow coagulated back into a wad of gum again.
The problem with this method, as you can imagine, is that eventually after you get about halfway through the set, you wind up buying packs that are at least 90% doubles. Other than my friend Bob from down the street, there weren't many people I knew that I could trade cards with, so it kinda meant I couldn't wheel and deal my way to a full set. As a result, I never finished the '88 set either. So what did I do the next year? Went back to square one and got the whole 1989 Topps set at once, and this time put the binder I put the cards in away, never to be removed for any reason other to look at them.
As the years went on, I of course developed an appreciation for older cards as well, mostly older Mets cards, and I made it a goal to get as many sets of Mets cards going back as far as I could, including those silly "Traded" cards that Topps put out in the middle of the season that only seem to show up at card shows but somehow wind up having more profit potential than the normal ones. I was pretty good at that, and I continued to try to collect full sets a pack at a time, without success unfortunately.
Speaking of card shows, I frequented those all the time during my middle school and early high school days. I went to every one Camillus Mall had (this was when Camillus Mall was at its height of business and popularity, and this was after Carousel opened by the way, adding more fuel to the argument that Carousel DID NOT kill Camillus Mall, but I digress...) and if I wasn't satisfied with what I had done at the Camillus card show, I'd go to the next show a week or two later at Shoppingtown or Fayetteville. Between Bob and myself, we had the whole town staked out. I also frequented a nice card shop on the North Side, the name escapes me.
Why did I stop collecting? Two reasons, primarily, and the first is obvious-- I grew up. Once you hit 14, 15 or so, your focus on what to do with your money shifts from collecting baseball cards to the important things in life: CDs, saving for a computer or car, spending money on social events or to buy things for girls you like. The other reason I stopped was the 1994-95 players strike; while it didn't kill my interest in the game, it killed my interest in baseball cards, and it also wrecked the market. You can still see that if you buy a price guide, which I did a couple years back. I discovered, to my horror, that my full 1989 Topps set was worth about half the value of a brand new out of the box 1999 Topps set.
There's no way I would collect today, because there's now about 20 different brands of cards, and each brand name puts out 5 or 6 sets, and they all have special cards, and how do they make up for this wide rollout? Smaller sets. There's only about 500 cards for your typical set today, so not even all of the players get their own card anymore (that's a shame). And the packs alone cost about $2 each, making it nearly impossible to collect a whole set pack by pack. They've taken all the fun out of it, I would imagine. Someday when I'm a star, I should buy up the Topps company just to smack all the execs over the head for what they've done. In the meantime, I think I'll work on getting my collection down here to PA so I can look at them for a while...
It has got be thinking back to the olden days when I used to be a religious baseball card collector and spent most of my money on baseball cards (as opposed to today where I spend most of it on CDs... when I have money). My dad first got me interested when I was just starting to show interest in baseball as a 9-year old kid. He got me the full 1987 Topps set for Christmas, and a shiny new album to put all 792 of the cards in. This was definitely a simpler time for the baseball card industry. You had three major card companies: Topps, Donruss, and Fleer. You had your player cards, your All-Star cards, your team leader cards, your Diamond Kings if you collected Donruss. It was easy as that, buy them, trade them, get the whole set, unless you were like me and had the whole set bought for you.
Except that I didn't know jack about baseball or card collecting at the time, and my peers took advantage of that and basically lifted all of my good cards by swapping large amounts of lesser quality doubles for them. So now I no longer had the full 792-card set, and to this day I still don't think I have the whole thing. Well, the next year I set about the process of collecting the whole set a piece at a time, hoping to track down every last card, which was REALLY fun, and by that I mean fun like a head injury. In those days, every pack was 40 cents, and being 9 years old, I got a $5 a week allowance. I got more if I begged my mom pretty please, I HAVE to get more cards!!! So you get the packs of 15 cards a piece, and once you unwrapped the wax paper cover, you were confronted with the great "extra" that was included with Topps baseball cards-- a stale piece of chewing gum. This not only stained the back of one of the cards (usually the one with the most potential to gain in value, like a Ken Griffey, Jr. rookie card), but it was also rock hard. But you chewed it anyway, it was part of the fun, even though I mean you had to chew it, usually to pieces before it somehow coagulated back into a wad of gum again.
The problem with this method, as you can imagine, is that eventually after you get about halfway through the set, you wind up buying packs that are at least 90% doubles. Other than my friend Bob from down the street, there weren't many people I knew that I could trade cards with, so it kinda meant I couldn't wheel and deal my way to a full set. As a result, I never finished the '88 set either. So what did I do the next year? Went back to square one and got the whole 1989 Topps set at once, and this time put the binder I put the cards in away, never to be removed for any reason other to look at them.
As the years went on, I of course developed an appreciation for older cards as well, mostly older Mets cards, and I made it a goal to get as many sets of Mets cards going back as far as I could, including those silly "Traded" cards that Topps put out in the middle of the season that only seem to show up at card shows but somehow wind up having more profit potential than the normal ones. I was pretty good at that, and I continued to try to collect full sets a pack at a time, without success unfortunately.
Speaking of card shows, I frequented those all the time during my middle school and early high school days. I went to every one Camillus Mall had (this was when Camillus Mall was at its height of business and popularity, and this was after Carousel opened by the way, adding more fuel to the argument that Carousel DID NOT kill Camillus Mall, but I digress...) and if I wasn't satisfied with what I had done at the Camillus card show, I'd go to the next show a week or two later at Shoppingtown or Fayetteville. Between Bob and myself, we had the whole town staked out. I also frequented a nice card shop on the North Side, the name escapes me.
Why did I stop collecting? Two reasons, primarily, and the first is obvious-- I grew up. Once you hit 14, 15 or so, your focus on what to do with your money shifts from collecting baseball cards to the important things in life: CDs, saving for a computer or car, spending money on social events or to buy things for girls you like. The other reason I stopped was the 1994-95 players strike; while it didn't kill my interest in the game, it killed my interest in baseball cards, and it also wrecked the market. You can still see that if you buy a price guide, which I did a couple years back. I discovered, to my horror, that my full 1989 Topps set was worth about half the value of a brand new out of the box 1999 Topps set.
There's no way I would collect today, because there's now about 20 different brands of cards, and each brand name puts out 5 or 6 sets, and they all have special cards, and how do they make up for this wide rollout? Smaller sets. There's only about 500 cards for your typical set today, so not even all of the players get their own card anymore (that's a shame). And the packs alone cost about $2 each, making it nearly impossible to collect a whole set pack by pack. They've taken all the fun out of it, I would imagine. Someday when I'm a star, I should buy up the Topps company just to smack all the execs over the head for what they've done. In the meantime, I think I'll work on getting my collection down here to PA so I can look at them for a while...
Labels: baseball cards
posted by Dave | 11:11 PM
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