Growing up in the “junk wax” era of baseball cards, and well, sports cards in general makes it a bit difficult for me today to even know where to even start if I was going to do anything regarding collecting today. Back then in the early 1990’s there wasn’t much along the lines of special insert sets, or anything along those lines. The sets now, at least from a cursory look online seem to have so much more variety, even just with individual manufacturers like Topps. Speaking of Topps, they are offering cards now for events that are happening same day, with the Topps Now project including The Goose On the Loose.
Now don’t get me wrong, the fact that something like that is even a possibility now due to the internet and whatnot is quite cool, but for a collector, it would be exhausting, and also quite expensive. I remember getting packs of NHL, NBA, and MLB cards when I was a kid for $2 or $3, and them being packs pushing 20 cards per pack, now it seems like some packs have a comically low amount of cards per pack, potentially those sets are more insert heavy, I really don’t know.
I have a couple large boxes, and several binders of cards that have been mostly collecting dust for quite some time, and something needs to be done about that. As I said, most are from the “junk wax” era, of the early 90s and therefore largely not worth too much at all. I don’t really care how much or how little they are worth, they are in a large part, just part of my childhood. Happy memories with them, the thrill of opening a pack and seeing what might be in there.
This was also before there was a ton of hockey broadcast on television until ESPN2 became more commonplace, so it was a chance to learn who was on what team in the NHL, and the occasional finding of former Portland Winterhawk players as well. When it came to NBA cards it was always the hope of pulling Portland players, like Drexler, Porter, Kersey, Duckworth, Strickland etc.
A lot of the cards I have were from entire boxes of packs that were purchased, sealed, from I believe it was KB toys, or something like that, who used to have stores at the various outlet malls here. A whole box of packs could be purchased for somewhere between $10-20, and would give me a ton of enjoyment opening them, sorting them, looking at all the players and the like. That was something my dad would often do for me, which I miss. Today, with eBay, one can still get boxes of packs for about that much, but then there is the shipping cost, which isn’t cheap at all it seems.
There is also a lot less sports card stores than there used to be, which is a disappointment. I haven’t been to one in probably at least a decade or more, and don’t even know where one might be that is close. I vaguely remember seeing one off I-5 or I-205 in Washington somewhere in Vancouver the last time we were driving north. If I manage to get things a bit more organized with what I have, maybe I should go check one out and see what I can find for old cards and see if building a complete set of some of these cards is a possibility. Who knows maybe I will even get lucky with some sort of inserts.
There is no way I see sports cards as any sort of investment, not with the kind of stuff I go for, I do and always have done it more for the joy and excitement of the search for cards and the collecting side of things. I guess that is one reason I like collecting sports stuff in general. Just the enjoyment of it all.
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