Any Sports Card Collectors?

[Kirby_waved_at_me]

Anyone on the site a collector?

 

I recently started becoming interested again in collecting and I'm curious if anyone on the site still collects cards.

 

There is (I think) a card show this weekend in Mounds View that I'm debating checking out. Anyone gone to it before?

 

I guess there's also a semi-regular one in Bloomington as well.

[glanzer]

Unfortunately not me. I actually gave away my entire collection of 10,000+ cards to a co-worker a few years back after picking out all the Kirby Pucketts. Kinda regret that move, but I tried and failed to sell the collection for as little as $40. No one was very interested in tons of duplicates of 1990-1993 Topps.

[rpar1951]

In about 1986, we started buying complete sets of cards for Topps, Fleer, and Donruss in honor of our daughters' birth years. Then I got hooked and bought complete sets of Fleer and Donruss from their startups in 1982. And went on collecting sets and wax boxes right up to the big strike in 1994. I've got tens of thousands of cards (added Score and Upper Deck sets when they came out). Like Glanzer, I think they are pretty much worthless. The bottom fell out of the market after the strike. And then so many of the most valuable players (then) turned out to be steroid users and their card values plummeted. I've got a Puckett 1984 Fleer Update and some odds and ends for HOF'ers...and a few more valuable cards from the 50s and 60s. But they didn't end up being the college savings account we thought they were going to be. Now I only have them for nostalgia purposes, but I know I have to get rid of them. My daughters don't want to be saddled with all that bulk to dispose of after I die. The market was so flooded in those years (1981-94) that they probably won't even be worth anything a hundred years from now.

[Kirby_waved_at_me]

Yes, definitely a nostalgia thing for me as well.

 

That 1984 Fleer Update Puckett is probably one of the few cards that has retained value past the crash.

 

It seems to have more to do with an overwhelming supply of cards rather than any one player's reputation. Roger Clemens' 84 Fleer Update rookie card, for instance, still commands hundreds of dollars.

[biggentleben]

My fiance's summer job will be selling my 1.5+ million sports cards to start funding our life together. I will hold roughly 100 for a personal collection (some Hank Aarons, a few of my favorite players like Albert Pujols and Andrelton Simmons) and remove the rest. I love it for sure, and I will probably still buy packs now and then for fun, but it just got too much to move them.

[Kirby_waved_at_me]

There's a dollar store about a block and a half from my house, and I 100% blame it for my renewed addiction for worthless pieces of cardboard.

 

I noticed that they had a hanging display of trading cards (sports and cartoon shows and other random things) and they were selling "vintage" unopened wax packs from the 80s and 90s 2/$1.

 

There were 2 packs of 1989 Donruss cards, which in my youth were briefly a hot ticket. As an x-mas gift that year I was given a case of 36 wax packs, and I tore through them hoping for a Ken Griffey, Jr. Rookie card (and all the Twins, of course). No Griffey, but lots and lots of Frank Tanana and Mark McLemore. Major bummer.

 

So when I saw those two packs sitting on that shelf I thought - hey, why not? $1 is nothing.

 

Of course the very first pack I opened had Ken Griffey, Jr. in it. That was bad news for me, because now I am hooked again on collecting. I never had a 'hit' like that opening a pack as a kid, but that litte rush of endorphins has rekindled that nerdy interest.

[kab21]

I completely understand the card collecting phenomenon. It's almost like an addiction and should be treated the same imo. There is no logical reason to do it because you are going to lose money even if you worked your butt off selling them (which nobody wants to do). It's almost like thinking you are going to win at the casino.

 

I gave away 10-20,000 baseball/football/basketball cards 5 years ago. I had picked out anything interesting but almost everyone of the cards has no value other than sticking in bicycle spokes. I don't think the strike had anything to do with the decline of the baseball market. Until the late 80's there was a finite amount of cards available but after that there were dozens of different brands and mass printing of those brands.

 

I think it would be great if people started collecting cards for the right reasons. For example buying a team set every year of your favorite team(s). Or maybe starting a collection of favorite players. This would be very cool.

[Kirby_waved_at_me]

I'm personally not interested in making money collecting them - one thing I'd like to do is complete a vintage topps set (still trying to decide which year - any suggestions? Based on design and personal taste I'm looking at 1959, 1960, 1963, and 1965). Definitely would not make any money building a vintage set. If I manage to stick with it, I bet it will take years to complete and set me back a significant amount of $$$

 

I have a small interest in getting sets from my birth year, and sets that I was collecting as a kid but never got close to finishing.

 

Besides that, I don't have any ambition to become an ebay super seller, or to buy up lots or hobby boxes and scour them for big $$ rare finds.

 

I think one of my favorite cards is a 1990 Donruss John Smoltz error card. The picture on the front of the card is actually a portrait of Tom Glavine. It's barely worth the cardboard

it's printed on, but it's still funny to me . . .

[Sarah]

I have a small collection of baseball cards but they really exist as something to have players autograph. I live in an apartment so don't have room for larger memorabilia. Cards are easy to carry around and store and they are fun memento when you meet a player!

[diehardtwinsfan]

I still have mine boxed up, but no plans to really do anything with them.

[Kirby_waved_at_me]

I went to that card show - I had a pretty good time! I ended up scoring a Kirby Puckett rookie (1985 O-Pee-Chee, looks just like the topps version, but there's French on the back and the OPC logo on front.) and a 1960 Harmon Killebrew.

Just a small enclosed section of a strip mall, the sellers all seemed to be private collectors at one point, and they all were into different specialties, so there was lots of variety. I realized that the $$ earned or spent on collecting is just a small part of it- it was a lot of fun to talk shop (or in my case, listen to them talk shop).

[ashbury]

It's way down low on my list of household tasks to try and do something about the cartons of cards in our garage storage shelves. Most of the cards that would be valuable were played with when my brother and I were kids, so a dealer would have no interest; the vast majority of the cards are just commodity cards in perfect condition that likewise would draw no interest. Since I'm nowhere near the Twin Cities I can't even invite any of you to take a look and admire (or scoff, or make an offer); and like I said, it's low on my priority list so I haven't approached any dealers locally (the one I know of in a shopping mall closed, no doubt due to a dwindling customer base). In any case, it won't be funding my retirement.

[biggentleben]

It's way down low on my list of household tasks to try and do something about the cartons of cards in our garage storage shelves. Most of the cards that would be valuable were played with when my brother and I were kids, so a dealer would have no interest; the vast majority of the cards are just commodity cards in perfect condition that likewise would draw no interest. Since I'm nowhere near the Twin Cities I can't even invite any of you to take a look and admire (or scoff, or make an offer); and like I said, it's low on my priority list so I haven't approached any dealers locally (the one I know of in a shopping mall closed, no doubt due to a dwindling customer base). In any case, it won't be funding my retirement.

 

Yeah, my collection is ridiculously huge (and does have some very good value cards in it, especially in football), but I don't expect it to buy me a house or anything, just to help with the costs of a wedding and pay off some school debt.

[freshinthehouse]

Ebay was the grim reaper for card values. Before ebay card prices were defined by small, local markets and there was never really a true way to figure out a card's actual value. Ebay gave card collectors an international marketplace to buy and sell their wares, and it became obvious very quickly that the supply side dwarfed the demand side.

 

Like a lot of you, I collected during some of the worst years value-wise (87-92). Even though they hold no value now, I still look at them as a good investment. I had a ton of fun collecting as a kid. I loved the thrill of pulling a quality card, or time spent trading cards with friends. Back then a pack of cards was the same price as a candy bar, so I could usually talk my dad into buying me a pack whenever we stopped at a gas station. I remember telling my friends to avoid Upper Deck because they cost more than 50 cents a pack. Turns out I was a lil' Nostradamus because it only took a few years and the days of reasonably priced cards were a thing of the past. When I was 17-18 I went into a card shop for nostalgia's sake and almost every customer in their was 20 or older. Kids had been priced out of the market.