<< <i>Those cards sat relatively untouched until another friend who happened to collect came across them in my room one day and told me they were worth some cash. >>
this is absolutely not meant as a slight to senor snortski or anyone else that can cite this as a motivation, but, as a total old fart, I think it's sad that card collecting is no longer based on just loving the sport and the little pieces of cardboard without a single thought towards cash.
Edited to add: in all fairness, it's pretty hard to collect cards today (or in the last 25-30 years) without the awareness of value. The old days are gone. >>
I fully agree with you. In the early to mid 70s, my friends and I traded cards solely based on teams and famous players. I don't think we ever did figure out what to do with those "Rookie Stars" cards since they were of players we never heard of. That has led, among other reasons, to my disdain of rookie cards and its craze. As far as value, it was just after college in 1983 in which I had not even touched my collection in 6 years, I saw a price guide in the bookstore. It shocked me to know that what I had (70s cards) actually had value. To this day, I remember getting all excited to see the price guide listed a 75 Lynn card as $20. That was truly amazing to me and made go back to my parent's house and pull out my collection and to start collecting "seriously".
<< <i>Say, you know how the retail Topps factory sets were sometimes called "Christmas sets"? Well, did anyone here growing up actually get these for Christmas? I bet that would've been a fun Christmas tradition. >>
I did, and still do. I'm the same vintage as you Estil (1980), and the first year that I can remember buying "packs" was around 1987. I remember the green wax-packs from Topps and the wood-grained bordered cards. I was never able to complete the sets by buying packs, but my father would go and get me a factory set every Christmas. It became a Christmas tradition to open up the long, heavy box and spend the day putting all the cards in order and looking at everything. I'd always have a sore shoulder from lying on the ground or my bed and sorting everything. It's still a tradition for my father to buy me a complete Topps factory set each Christmas, so even though I'll have hand-collated a 2007 Topps Set I'll still let him pick me up a factory set out of tradition. (Plus it looks like the factory sets will include packs of the short-printed Wal-Mart rookie card variations).
I collect the elements on the periodic table, and some coins. I have a complete Roosevelt set, and am putting together a set of coins from 1880.
I did, too, even though I was 27 in 1987. It was easy for my parents to pick this out as a Christmas present. I sold one of those on eBay last year, still in its cellophane wrapper. It would have been a lot easier if my parents gave me the $10 back then. Even with inflation, that still would have been worth more than the $2.97 I got for it. All the factory sets have done all of these years were to take up space, it also would have been better to have built a set in a binder (or at least have put the factory set in a binder). With the countless dollars I spent on vending boxes, I think the volume alone would make it all more worthless.
I think that's one of the points of the thread. Back when we were kids, we bought a few packs at a time and could slowly build a set by buying new packs or trading. By the time you get to the adult years, esp. during the age of price guide, those few packs turned into a few boxes or cases. Not nearly as much fun, you know?
Well now a days it's more the hunt for the parallels or inserts than it is for the base cards. Growing up, the point of buying a pack was to get the cards you needed for the base set. There were no inserts. Today, the base set is kind of a side effect of buying boxes upon boxes of cards to complete the insert sets and whatnot. When 2007 Topps Series 1 came out, I immediately rushed to get all the insert sets and the red-back parallel sets. I must have spent a ton of money on those sets. Now that Series 2 has come out, I'm holding off on buying those sets. I'll wait a few months until enough people have opened up cases of the stuff that the parallel/insert sets are dirt cheap.
I collect the elements on the periodic table, and some coins. I have a complete Roosevelt set, and am putting together a set of coins from 1880.
Comments
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<< <i>Those cards sat relatively untouched until another friend who happened to collect came across them in my room one day and told me they were worth some cash. >>
this is absolutely not meant as a slight to senor snortski or anyone else that can cite this as a motivation, but, as a total old fart, I think it's sad that card collecting is no longer based on just loving the sport and the little pieces of cardboard without a single thought towards cash.
Edited to add: in all fairness, it's pretty hard to collect cards today (or in the last 25-30 years) without the awareness of value. The old days are gone. >>
I fully agree with you. In the early to mid 70s, my friends and I traded cards solely based on teams and famous players. I don't think we ever did figure out what to do with those "Rookie Stars" cards since they were of players we never heard of. That has led, among other reasons, to my disdain of rookie cards and its craze. As far as value, it was just after college in 1983 in which I had not even touched my collection in 6 years, I saw a price guide in the bookstore. It shocked me to know that what I had (70s cards) actually had value. To this day, I remember getting all excited to see the price guide listed a 75 Lynn card as $20. That was truly amazing to me and made go back to my parent's house and pull out my collection and to start collecting "seriously".
<< <i>Say, you know how the retail Topps factory sets were sometimes called "Christmas sets"? Well, did anyone here growing up actually get these for Christmas? I bet that would've been a fun Christmas tradition.
I did, and still do.
I think that's one of the points of the thread. Back when we were kids, we bought a few packs at a time and could slowly build a set by buying new packs or trading. By the time you get to the adult years, esp. during the age of price guide, those few packs turned into a few boxes or cases. Not nearly as much fun, you know?