Memories of a sports card collecting fiend
Published 8:59 am Wednesday, July 23, 2008
When I heard there was a sports card show coming to the Northbridge Mall this weekend I got giddy like a little kid.
Well, maybe that’s overstating it, but it’s a good opportunity for me to drum up some quick cash to pay off my bookie — he’s been looking for me for like a week and a half.
All kidding aside, hearing about the show made me think back to my childhood and collecting baseball, football and basketball cards. So I went through my collection (yes, I still have all my cards, I think of them as my retirement account) to see what I had.
The biggest surprise I found was I had a Derek Jeter rookie card, but I also had a tremendous amount of players that didn’t amount to what I thought they would.
I have nearly 40 Shawn Kemp cards, he was my favorite player and feel free to make your father of the year joke about Kemp now.
I liked Kemp because of his highlight reel dunks and the fact that he was often overlooked during his career. He made six All-Star appearances and was often criticized as being immature. I had a poster of him dunking over Robert Horry hanging on my wall for a number of years.
I also had a lot of Kenny Anderson cards. Anderson was a point guard from Georgia Tech who bounced around the league quite a bit and was a servicable point guard for a while.
As I look over the type of players I coveted when I was younger, it looks like I acted like an investor looking for the next stock on the rise. I had plenty of misses — Anthony Peeler 1992 rookie card, and I had some hits, a 1992 Emmitt Smith card.
When I reflect now it’s kind of funny how I went to great lengths to preserve the quality of my cards and the value system I employed.
I had two plastic cases where you have to unscrew the two pieces and place the card inside. This is where my most valuable cards went. I look in there now and there’s a John Elway card and a Shawn Kemp card that my friend forged Kemp’s signature. I traded him a David Robinson rookie card for it. Further down the list, my important cards were individuall placed into a plastic card guard, and the ones like the Peeler rookie card went into celophane sleves.
I had a lot of fun collecting those cards, looking for the special subset or limited editon card, hoping it might be worth $100 some day. I was enamored with a Beckett Price Guide. I only bought a handful of those because they were like $7 and I could buy a couple of packs of cards for that kind of money, but I would get caught up looking at all the old cards and thinking some day my Scottie Pippen card is going to be worth as much as a Mickey Mantle card.
It all seems pretty silly now as I look at hundreds of worthless cards I own, but when I think about all the cards I collected and the joy I got thumbing through each card, reading the stats of Scott Brooks, I think it was worth it.
A couple of years ago I found myself waiting for my car to get fixed and there was a Shinder’s nearby so I decided to venture in to take a look. I instantly transformed into that little kid, riffling through the $1 or less pile of cards for the best deal. I think I found a Tracy McGrady for .29 and I bought two packs of 1990-91 Skybox cards. I was sure to check the actual value of the McGrady card before I bought it, I was assured it was a good deal by the price guide.
Nothing had changed as I opened the packs to see if I found a Michael Jordan or some other gem. I think I found a Detlaf Schrempf and stick of old gum, but after the initial dissapointment I was busy memorizing the stats of each player and thinking maybe it will be worth something, someday.