Baseball Cards

[Rabbitlivinginverm]

I've got a closet at home just like this guy's....

http://www.slate.com/id/2146218/?GT1=8483

Requiem for a Rookie Card
How baseball cards lost their luster.
By Dave Jamieson
Posted Tuesday, July 25, 2006, at 6:31 AM ET

Last month, when my parents sold the house I grew up in, my mom forced me to come home and clear out my childhood bedroom. I opened the closet and found a box the size of a Jetta. It was so heavy that at first I thought it held my Weider dumbbells from middle school. Nope, this was my old stash. Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of baseball cards from the 1980s. Puckett, Henderson, Sandberg, Gwynn, and McGwire stared back at me with fresh faces. So long, old friends, I thought. It's time for me to cash in on these long-held investments. I started calling the lucky card dealers who would soon be bidding on my trove.

First, I got a couple of disconnected numbers for now-defunct card shops. Not a good sign. Then I finally reached a human. "Those cards aren't worth anything," he told me, declining to look at them.

"Maybe if you had, like, 20 McGwire rookie cards, that's something we might be interested in," another offered.....(read the rest of the article here http://www.slate.com/id/2146218/?GT1=8483)

[thebluehatman]

Re: Baseball Cards

my closet is like this too. i got like 8 albums full of card plus a couple card boxes and a big size 16 shoe box full of cards.

[1stRowFANatic]

Re: Baseball Cards

Baseball cards were doomed to this fate the moment you could order an entire set at once.

Maybe I'm just remembering the "good ol' days" a little too much.

[Rabbitlivinginverm]

Re: Baseball Cards

Baseball cards were doomed to this fate the moment you could order an entire set at once.

Maybe I'm just remembering the "good ol' days" a little too much.

I loved the days of trying to collect a whole set. My brothers and I broke through our sibling rivalry and combined resources to complete the 1987 Fleer and Tops set. "Good ol' days" is right.

[JackTwice]

Re: Baseball Cards

I have boxes upon boxes in my basement that my wife keeps harping at me to get rid of. I just can't pull the trigger because I keep hoping the market will come back.

[Jacks15]

Re: Baseball Cards

too many little subsets within each set of cards as well. It was fun to buy packs of cards and try to get every card. It almost became too much of a business for its own good. I to am going to hang on to all of my boxes of cards,

[UWMandSDSU]

Re: Baseball Cards

I was that little kid giving into a stupid trade to an older sly kid. I gave up a Ken Griffey rookie card to get a Kirk Gibson rookie card. I wasn't going to do it until the older boy threw in 4 more irrelevant cards. Didn't find out it was a stupid trade until I looked in a card magazine at the prices. Never again did I trade without consulting with my brother.

[MilwaukeeJacksAlum]

Re: Baseball Cards

If you want your cards to be worth something some day, convince everyone you know that they are worth nothing in the hopes that they will simply throw theirs away. That has a lot to do with why the older sets are worth so much. How many stories do you hear about someone's mom throwing away all their Mantle rookie cards? Supply and demand. The supply has been way higher than the demand for the past 2 decades. So, get out there and convince everyone to toss their cards as junk.

[thebluehatman]

Re: Baseball Cards

Bringing this subject back to life, I focused on the art of card collecting in my latest sports column.

http://media.www.sdsucollegian.com/m...-3192428.shtml

My wonderful girlfriend Jessica was spending some time at my place last week when she noticed some boxes in my closet, and we pulled them out wondering what might be in them. A look inside revealed my massive baseball, football and basketball card collection that had been left alone and forgotten for the past five years since I came to college.

Like many boys my age, I was hooked on sports card collecting at a young age. The collection numbers close to 10,000 by my estimates, including a size 16 shoebox full of various cards and several albums full of organized cards.

Then all of a sudden, the passion for collecting those valuable cards went by the wayside as I went through high school. Time and other money commitments took away from interest in the cards, as it did with countless other teenagers across the United States. With the invention of the Internet and eBay, one could easily get the cards they needed or wanted for dirt cheap instead of spending upwards of $3 on a pack of cards, hoping to get their favorite player. The market became overpopulated, driving away many collectors.

[RowdyRabbit]

Re: Baseball Cards

What a great topic!

I, like many of us here, collected cards of most sports, however, I focused mostly on baseball cards. There were many weekends when we'd go into town and I would take my allowance and buy a pack or two. I liked most brands of cards, but I really liked Fleer Ultra the best.

When Frank Thomas came into the league with the White Sox is when I became a card fanatic. I had to have all cards Frank Thomas. I remember dreaming about finding a NNOF(no name on front) 1990 Thomas error Rookie card. Back then it was worth some crazy amount like $1000 bucks.

Story time:
Around 1994 or 1995, we went to our first Twins game at the dome when they happened to be playing the White Sox. I remember walking around the Mall of America the day before the game and seeing Jack McDowell, Ron Karkovice and Wilson Alvarez, naturally, being the 14 or 15 year old I was, I was absolutely star struck. I went to Karkovice, as Jack and Wilson went into a store and told him who I was and what a huge fan I was of the White Sox ...and so on and so forth. Anyway, the next day we got to the dome and waited at the players entrance and sure as crap if Frank Thomas didn't get out of a cab that pulled up. I almost fainted! He was HUGE. I barely stood taller than his waist. So I ended up getting his autograph on a baseball and an awesome memory burned into my brain.

That event only hyped my quest to collect every Frank Thomas card. I asked Santa for a Frank Thomas 1992 Bowman Foil card, which at the time was valued at 60 bucks. Come Christmas day, I had tore through all my presents and Santa had not apparantly not got my letter. But my parents cleverly said I better look harder because they thought I had missed one..."get down real close and look hard" they said...and low and behold if a Bowman Foil Thomas card wasn't staring at me from in the tree! I was ecstatic!

I had a database on the computer of what cards existing and which I had. I got to 100 cards and thats when the market went nuts. Soon, decks had 15 differents insert decks and I couldn't keep up.

Then I discovered ebay. Now my collection stands at over 500 Thomas cards and an autographed ball...none of which have seen daylight more than about 3 times in the past 4 years.

Yep those were the glory days.

[JackJD]

Re: Baseball Cards

I have a mint condition Sandy Koufax when he was at the top of the game. Eat your hearts out you collectors.

I have lots of Hank Aaron cards when he was a Milwaukee Brave...the Braves, along with the Twins, were my team (still have cards for Eddie Matthews, Warren Spahn, Joe Torre, Hank's brother, Tommy Aaron etc.).

In the early 60s, the card collecting wasn't real serious. My box of cards contains one reminder of the fate of many cards: clothespin-clipped to the bike front fender brace with most of the card stuck into the front wheel spokes, cards in new condition made great 'motorcycle' noise. I have a Minnie Minoso (great Cuban player who started in the 1940s and played into the 1980s...he was a Cleveland Indian in the 60s) which was used in my bike spokes. Poor Minnie's face was obliterated by the spokes.

I wasn't a collector. I just bought them because that's what kids did. We traded them and played with them. My box of cards somehow survived the years in my parents' basement.

[RowdyRabbit]

Re: Baseball Cards

I had to pull out the stash of cards....I'm amazed at the amount of Derek Jeter rookie cards and Alex Rodriguez rookie cards I didn't even know I have.

I'm also amazed at the fact that the $110 Albert Belle Fleer Ultra Gold Medallion insert card I put in a 1" thick screw case is now worth approximately 42 cents. Man that was funny when I saw that!

Good times!

[filbert]

Re: Baseball Cards

I'm also amazed at the fact that the $110 Albert Belle Fleer Ultra Gold Medallion insert card I put in a 1" thick screw case is now worth approximately 42 cents.

Post Of The Week Candidate! Very, very funny!

[Jack4Life]

Re: Baseball Cards

I have always told my friends that I can turn a dollar into 50 cents faster than anyone I know. When I graduated from college a few years ago, as my Mom cleaned out my room, she asked me what to do with the several shoe boxes of baseball cards I had collected in the 60's. I told her just to throw them out since I didn't know what I would ever use them for. I think back now and I remember I had the entire New York Yankees 1963 championship team and they were all in mint condition. My wife looked those cards and several others that I know I had and she said those alone were worth nearly $1K. Heads up move, eh?

[Rabbitlivinginverm]

Re: Baseball Cards

I'm also amazed at the fact that the $110 Albert Belle Fleer Ultra Gold Medallion insert card I put in a 1" thick screw case is now worth approximately 42 cents. Man that was funny when I saw that!

Good times!

I was a big George Bell fan back in the day. I have around 100 of his cards. I knew he wasn't all that great so I didn't collect many of his rookie cards. However, a young Roberto Alomar was very talented and had a promising career ahead of him. I got my hands on as many of his rookie cards as I could and put them in a nice display book. They were probably worth around $15 a piece at the time. It went down hill fast when he was traded to the Orioles and spit on an umpire. Now, I'd be lucky if I could get 42 cents for all of them. Good times and a good investment.