Baseball Cards

[Adam]

Do you collect them? My son recently started. He's obsessed. Holy shit things have changed since we were kids.

[St1ck]

I was big into baseball cards as a kid. My son buys and sells football cards. He's been making some pretty decent money with it. 

[tdawg87]

I have a shoebox of cards easily worth a few grand. 

[Adam]

I found my old shoebox. I was surprised to learn how little the 80s and 90s rookies are worth

[Tank]

I don’t know how anyone keeps up with all of it anymore. There seem to be so many different brands of cards that I find it overwhelming. Want an Ohtani rookie card? There’s like 23 different ones to choose from. 
 

I’d find one brand I like (for instance, Upper Deck or Topps) and just stick with them. 

[T.G.]

I wish I knew what happened to the cards I had as a kid… I did find a few cards that I had taped into an album… yup… taped.

I collected some during the height of the hobby - when the market was saturated (unfortunately). Seems back then, there was a card shop on every corner.

I made a point of collecting Mike Mussina cards because I got to know him when I lived in San Jose. I have every rookie card of his and then some…I doubt they’re worth anything.

A buddy gave me some Bonds rookie cards… pre-steroids for my birthday. They’re probably worthless too.

[Tank]

I still have my cards from when i was a kid. Would be happy to unload 99% of them.

[arch stanton]

When I was a kid I collected for myself. I think somewhere I still have full Topps sets from '74 and '75 but I always thought the mint condition rookie card thing was pointless and I would never have paid more than the bubble gum price for a single card

[Justin]

I collected when I was a kid (late 80s and early 90s). Four years ago my parents retired and sold their house in SoCal; all of the cards were in storage in a shed there and they were either thrown or given away. My parents had asked me if I wanted to keep them but I just didn't have the time or the energy. (My brother was dying of leukemia at the time, I was in the process of donating my stem cells to him, and revisiting childhood memories was very low on my list of priorities.) 

I do not regret letting my parents get rid of all my cards, but I do wish I had looked at my old collection one last time, just for the sake of nostalgia. At my first live game, sometime in the late 80s, my dad bought me a pack of cards of Angels players with Smokey The Bear on them. Would those have been in there? I remember thinking that card with Mickey Hatcher (where he has a giant glove) was so funny that I bought about 10 of them. Did those survive the last 30 years? 

[Adam]

10 hours ago, Tank said:

I don’t know how anyone keeps up with all of it anymore. There seem to be so many different brands of cards that I find it overwhelming. Want an Ohtani rookie card? There’s like 23 different ones to choose from. 
 

I’d find one brand I like (for instance, Upper Deck or Topps) and just stick with them. 

What’s funny is now there are only two brands - Topps (Bowman) and Panini (Donruss, Leaf) and 90% of the cards are Topps. Those two companies have subsets tho - 8-10 different sets plus so many subsets.

Fanatics will have exclusive rights in 2023 so it will be interesting to see what happens

[Brandon]

I still have about 5 Rubbermaid totes of cards that I have always just dragged around with me through the years. Would love to get rid of them because it's just clutter at this point. I've talked with some dudes really into it and not only has it changed dramatically, but these dudes literally sound like those infomercial dudes from the Home Shopping Network and I haven't pulled the trigger to have them go through and tell me how shitty my cards are before ripping me off.

[St1ck]

When my son started buying football cards I shared with him the glory that was this card. 

[T.G.]

8 minutes ago, St1ck said:

When my son started buying football cards I shared with him the glory that was this card. 

What's the story?

[arch stanton]

6 minutes ago, True Grich said:

What's the story?

Read the knob of the bat

[Taylor]

I dabbled as a kid. For some reason what I remember most is those packs of cards that would come with a stick of gum, and the gum was crunchy instead of chewy.

[Taylor]

23 hours ago, True Grich said:

A buddy gave me some Bonds rookie cards… pre-steroids for my birthday. They’re probably worthless too.

Obligatory:

[Lhalo]

On 9/24/2021 at 6:50 AM, Justin said:

At my first live game, sometime in the late 80s, my dad bought me a pack of cards of Angels players with Smokey The Bear on them.

Holycrap I remember those. Talk about a blast from the past. 

Sorry to hear about your brother Justin. 

[Justin]

13 minutes ago, Lhalo said:

Holycrap I remember those. Talk about a blast from the past. 

Sorry to hear about your brother Justin. 

Thank you for the condolences. By any chance do you remember WHY they had cards with Smokey? Did every team, or was there some association with the Angels? 

[Lhalo]

6 hours ago, Justin said:

Thank you for the condolences. By any chance do you remember WHY they had cards with Smokey? Did every team, or was there some association with the Angels? 

I think the Forest Service just sponsored the cards like other companies sponsor the giveaways. Smokey the Bear ads were prolific back in the 80’s. I was young but I remember seeing Smokey in a lot of commercials in between Saturday morning cartoons. It was a battle for my attention between him and the Hamburglar.

[Justin]

45 minutes ago, Lhalo said:

I think the Forest Service just sponsored the cards like other companies sponsor the giveaways. Smokey the Bear ads were prolific back in the 80’s. I was young but I remember seeing Smokey in a lot of commercials in between Saturday morning cartoons. It was a battle for my attention between him and the Hamburglar.

I suspect you are right. It seems bizarre that the Forest Service would do that, but there are many things in this world that I do not understand. 

[Stradling]

Yea, a little more than a year ago, during the middle of Covid I started buying cards again.  For awhile I was buying and selling, now I just buy more than I sell.  Learned a lot of what to do and not to do with the newer cards.  I have spent a ton of money on cards in the last year.  I picked up the Trout RC card a few months back.  I buy mostly newer cards, but lately I have bought some older “vintage” cards.  On the vintage side I haven’t gone too crazy yet.  I have a ‘57 Aaron and a Ted Williams.  I have a Mantle.  I also just bought a 1978 Topps complete set which really was just a sentimental buy, since it was the first year I remember buying cards when I was a kid.  As @Adam said, Fanatics will have the exclusive rights to MLB starting in a few years.  That makes me a little sad since Topps has been around for 70 years.  

[T.G.]

Does anyone go to Frank and Sons?  I haven't been in years.

[Stradling]

14 minutes ago, True Grich said:

Does anyone go to Frank and Sons?  I haven't been in years.

I went once last year, maybe earlier this year.  I liked it, but didn’t love it.  I think I needed more information before I walked in and definitely more cash.  It seemed like most of the booths were selling the same thing.

[Catwhoshatinthehat]

23 minutes ago, True Grich said:

Does anyone go to Frank and Sons?  I haven't been in years.

We used to go in the 90's.  My friends and I collected up until about 97 or 98 at which point we got more interested in the opposite sex and not long before we stopped collecting is when they started grading every card worth selling.  The last time we went I remember seeing multiple sellers with cases of the same exact cards and they were priced based on whether they were a 7, 8, 9 or the rare 10's.  It felt like at that point kids were priced out and I wasn't surprised to learn years later that there was a bubble that formed in the card market.  Like Tank said there got to be too many sets.  I realize there may only be a few producers but it used to be like Topps, Donruss, Upper Deck and a few others then in the mid 90's if you wanted the chance at the best rookie card of your favorite player you had to figure out which set was "the best" then if you didn't get the refractor or whatever you were SOL.  The fact that most of the buyers and sellers looked like guys who still lived in their parents basement made it even easier to lose interest.  I still have boxes of cards some of them in protectors and I'm sure many of the ones in protectors aren't worth anything while there's the chance in some of the various boxes there's some worth something.  Part of me would rather just get rid of them and clear space but the money I put into them as a kid and the fact that maybe some of them I have are worth something (same thing with comics I have) has kept me from just tossing them.  

[St1ck]

25 minutes ago, True Grich said:

Does anyone go to Frank and Sons?  I haven't been in years.

I stole a Fernando Valenzuela 2nd year card from one of their shows back in the day.