What is your card collecting story?

Golfcollector

I do a weekly sports article on this blog site. The "head guy" on the site is trying to do an e-book on card collecting. Here is the link to his article if any of you might have an interest in writing a short story.

He is looking for a number of contributors. (100 total) most of the "articles" he is looking for would be around 500-1000 words so really pretty short.

I have read some entertaining posts on here that would be perfect in terms of what he is hoping to get...there was one just the other day about going back through and looking at cards from someones teenage years.

Just take a quick look and if any of you can help out, I know Scott would appreciate it.

Link to article explaining what he is looking for with writers

Golfcollector

Bump for the day-time crowd.

No hits yesterday...I would hope a few people would step up here...Heck you don't even have to use your real name if you don't want to....

tigerdean

Ok, I bit. I contacted him and told him I wrote my story for the book. I hope you other guys will share your story as I think it will be an intersting read.

Golfcollector

Thanks Tiger Dean!

Golfcollector

here is what I wrote...just in case you want some light afternoon entertainment...

Blodgett IGA

Was the destination on most Saturday mornings after baseball practice. I would cruise up the 3 blocks from the ball field in my hometown of Ceresco Nebraska to the local small town grocery store to spend some of my hard earned allowance money. The normal Saturday after practice menu would include a free Coca Cola from the guy driving the Coke truck, a pouch of Big League Chew bubble gum, and three to four packs of Topps Baseball Cards. Nothing like those incredibly plain designs of 1979. Pete Rose, George Foster, Reggie Jackson, Bob Welch, Kent Tekulve, Bump Wills, and my personal favorite, my baseball player hero from the Boston Red Sox, Carl Yastrzemski.
This was my first collecting of baseball cards. I kept them all in a green colored “Stride Rite” shoe box in my closet like they were a long lost sunken treasure rescued from the Titanic. No rubber bands, I did not group them by teams…nope, mine were in numerical order. Completing a set was the farthest thing from my mind, you would just trade the guys you didn’t liked for the guys you liked, although I was never a fan of having duplicates.

1972 Topps In Action Willie Mays

Was the first older card I ever laid eyes on. An older kid showed up at one of our trading gigs as one of my friends heard he had some stuff that we were not familiar with. His collection stemmed from the years of 1971-1974. Man! Willie Freaking Mays! I had to have that card, I was too young to see him play but who didn’t know who Willie Mays was.
This is also about the time I purchased my first price guide to baseball cards. It was a pretty small paperback book, that was essentially a huge checklist with some values. It only covered cards from basically the Topps and Fleer issues from 1951 to the present day 1979, but it was way more than I had previously. Now I had a distinct trading advantage over my other friends because I could assign an actual value to cards as opposed to just our randomly assigned intrinsic value. This gave me an edge but of course I could not just tote this book around with me all the time.

Rickey Henderson Rookie Card

Was the first card I can remember that I owned that had a big time value of $10. I was starting to find guys setting up at the flea market once an month at Pershing Auditorium in Lincoln, Nebraska and they were selling cards. Complete sets, cards from the 1950’s and 1960’s! I could start finding older Yastrzemski cards! This became my quest at every flea market at Pershing over the course of a couple of years. Every once and awhile you would get that good garage sale find at the flea market. Mine came in the form of a person who had thousands of baseball cards for sale, all of them from 1980 Topps. I walked away from him booth with 17 Rickey Henderson rookies, all for the low price of a nickel a piece. A pretty good $.85 investment.
A Beckett Price guide was now in its infant stages under another name, something like Baseball Card Monthly. I subscribed to Baseball Card News, a giant newspaper publication that came every month. I started purchasing more vintage cards. Aaron, Mays, Mantle, Williams all from the late 50’s to early 60’s as I could find these in good shape and the price was low. Income was up for me as my allowance was being handsomely supplemented by the fact I was mowing up to 17 different yards in the summer. I pulled in anywhere from $5 to 20$ for a yard which was a ton of cash in those days, and could buy a lot of cards.

The Uncle’s Hoard

Really jumpstarted my collecting. I had an uncle who got to talking with me at Easter one year. He informed me he still had all of his old baseball and football cards from when he was a kid. After some pleasing with my parents and a short term loan until I could get to the bank and slap into some of my savings, I purchased all of his baseball cards. They ranged from 1953-1968. Most were in ok shape (excellent by today’s grading standards) but a lot of big names. A 1953 Satchel Paige, 1954 Topps Banks and Mays in multiples, countless Mantle cards from the 1960’s. it was a real haul for a young kid and purchased at a significant family discount. My only mistake is I didn’t go after all of the football cards as well, there are about three times more football than baseball, and they were in much better shape. I just wasn’t into football cards at all.

Growing up and into college

I continued to buy complete sets all the way up until 1987. This coincidentally was a good time to stop collecting complete sets as the market became significantly over-saturated with products. Production soared, values dropped. Chase cards became the new rage. I still had my collection of older cards which was modest in size, but exponentially growing in value. I had also gotten into a few basketball cards as the local grocery store carried 1986-87 fleer cards. And at nine bucks for an entire box of cards and the shot of pulling two or three Michael Jordan cards this seemed like a good purchase. You had better get their first because one of my best friends Steve Burks would beat me to the punch on the Fleer Basketball if I wasn’t on top of it.
As I continued into college, I ended up selling a lot of my complete sets from the 1980’s. This helped pay for something stupid I would want at the time, new trendy clothing, a new golf bag, a new stereo. I did notice that I was getting paid a LOT more money than I had paid to acquire some of these sets just a few years earlier. For now I left the older stuff alone and in the friendly confines of my parents basement.

My future wife

College came and went and I had been dating the same girl for a few years. There was an upcoming Tri Star card show in Kansas City, and if I was going to move some vintage material, a large card show with a lot of potential buyers was the best place. I took a couple of double shoe boxes of singles and made the three hour drive. My mission: Sell enough cards to be able to pay for the engagement ring I was about to purchase. I won’t disclose figures, but it was a significant amount of money, but I was confident that I would be able to get there.
I walked around the show, stopping at a number of places that were buying cards. There was even Mr. Mint Allan Rosen himself. After making stops at about six different potential buyers, I ended up selling my older stuff to one buyer and the newer stuff, (remember those Jordan Rookie Cards and the Henderson Rookies) to another. I now had MORE than enough for an engagement ring, and was going to leave with a substantial cash reward as well.
While on my way out, I walked by a booth I had not noticed earlier. This was a guy from Canada and he was selling what was almost exclusively British Issued cigarette cards, mainly from 1900-the 1930’s. Being a huge golf fan as well as a now former collector of baseball cards, I noticed he had a couple of complete sets of W.A. & A.C. Churchman Cigarette cards with personalities such as Walter Hagen, Bobby Jones, Harry Vardon and Tom Morris as part of the sets. These sets were in dynamic shape. And I was going to leave the show with them. The phoenix of my golf card collecting was born, and now my substantial cash reward had turned into a significant cash reward….but I still had a lot to show for my trip to Kansas City.

The Internet

Was the best thing that happened to me with respect to my golf card hobby. I got in on the early stages getting bidding id numbers to many overseas auction houses and picking up numerous golf cigarette cards at low prices. The other nice thing is golf has long been revered in England so many of the people that collected these cards had kept them in exceedingly great condition. Most of these cigarette issues are no more than 50 cards to a set, and the amount of different sets is not that large, which meant it was easy to start building a very large collection.

I spent the early days buying whatever I could but always being mindful of condition. I got all of my cards graded by Professional Sportscard Authenticators or PSA. They are the undoubted leader in the third party grading service industry. Activity picked up on eBay as well, but I noticed I was always bidding against the same small group of bidders. We started networking, and through these other folks, many overseas contacts, and reading and researching I feel that I have become one of the authorities on the golf card hobby over the years.
With vintage baseball and football prices soaring in the mid 2000’s, I came to the decision to sell my entire collection to one person. After a couple of years, and the ensuing stock market crash, we were unable to complete the deal, but I had sold what at the time was the finest 1900 Cope’s Golfers set in existence to him for a tremendous amount of money. We completed the deal for that set, I kept the remainder of my cards, and ended up making more money from that one sale than I had spent on all of my golf cards since I started in the hobby. I still have very high PSA graded examples and complete sets from many different manufacturers, and who knows….maybe the time will be right to sell them again the future.

Investing for tomorrow

I continue to buy sportscards and do a lot of grading and then selling of cards. Recently the local shop got in a huge hoard of 1950’s and 1960’s football and baseball cards that have not seen the light of day for about 40 years. The shop owner cut me a great price and I purchased a few thousand dollars of cards and am sending them all off to PSA tomorrow to be graded. There is nothing like getting that box of cards back from PSA and it is like Christmas morning….what grades did I get? How much can I sell these for? I do a lot more of this type of thing now as a money making side project and do not do as much collecting. My collecting is down to three things now. 1) Topps Heritage baseball sets each year. 2) completing a 1970 PSA graded Topps baseball set – I am 22% done. This is the year I was born hence why I chose it. 3) My newest venture a 1957 Topps Football set PSA graded since with this latest hoard of cards I was able to purchase over 2/3 of the set at a discounted price.
My hope is that my five year old son will get into collecting as I can enjoy the card show circuit and building sets as a father and son duo. With all of the expertise that I have accumulated over the years who knows? Maybe we can even work toward funding his college education with this hobby.

thedutymon

Morning,
I have written an article and contacted him. Will wait to hear something. This is the article.

How I got into collecting Sports Cards (Non Sports)

Collecting; Is it Nature or Nurture?? A question most collectors have pondered at one time or another. My belief is that it is at least a preponderance of Nurture, that’s why you see so many fathers passing there collecting bug down to their children. I also believe that you either have it or you don’t, which leans towards Nature. In other words you are a collector or you aren’t, usually it is an affliction that will follow you through your entire life, taking different guises at different stages in life’s journey.

Summer 1962….Sacramento Calif. My Father who was a lawyer under a 3-month contract with the State of California involved in Real Estate Eminent Domain matters and was living temporarily in Sac. Our family actually lived in a little coastal town on the northern coast of Ca., Ft. Bragg, nothing military, just the name.
So I was 5 almost 6 years old and went to stay with him for a few weeks at a time while my Mother stayed in Ft. Bragg with my two brothers. I adored spending time with him and when a brand new store called 7-11 opened about a mile from my dad’s apartment it became my Fathers habit to walk the mile to the store to buy a Sunday paper. So I began the journey with him and my collecting journey as well.

First some background, at this time I was so into Horror movies that it worried my Mother. One of my favorite reasons to go stay with my Dad was that he let me stay up of Fri. nights and watch the Fright Flick double feature! Movies like Them, Destination Earth, Tarantula, The Creature from 20,000 leagues, The Puppet People, The Tingler (My Favorite), and on and on. So I lived for the off center off key stuff.
My first walking trip to 7-11 when we got to the store I noticed a machine out front, a Card dispensing machine, it had 500 cards on each side of a central Poster. And the poster was Attack from Mars! For a penny you got 4 or 5 Cards you pulled out with the push in coin holder and then used to pull out the cards. Depending on the grabber, you got 4 or 5 cards. And these cards fit perfectly into my obsession with horror movies!
So I talked my dad out of 3 cents and pulled 14 cards….Cards like Attacking an Army Base, Army of Giant Insects, The Frost Ray, The Flame Throwers, and a Checklist. Oh My God, I was hooked….There are 40-45 more different ones! Oh My God, oh My God!! Over the course of that summer I talked my Dad out of enough pennies’ to buy hundreds of them, I had set after set after set!!!! And then as soon as it began it seemed it was gone, after just a month or two the cards were gone, the machine was gone!!!

But my addiction to collecting wasn’t! My Dad collected Coins, so I collected coins, I collected Stamps, I collected Non Sports Cards, I collected Football cards, I collected Comic Books, I collected Rare Paperback Science Fiction Books….Ant to this day I collect and collect. What I deem important to my collection changes, but the fact I am collecting never does!!!!

Neil N. Duty