**The night I burned over 25,000 '67, '68 & '69 Topps baseball cards--True story**
summerof68
Posts: 748 ✭
I shared this sad but true story a few years back on these boards and since a couple years have passed I thought I would share it again.
I became obsessed with baseball cards back in 1967 when I was in the sixth grade. I had a large paper route which afforded me the opportunity to routinely bust a dozen or so '67 Topps baseball nickel wax packs every week. To supplement my obsession I would also trade to my friends "creepy crawlers", marbles, toys and any other items for any of their cards they didn't want.
But in 1968 my collection really took off big-time. A new Thrifty Drug store opened and for the first time in my life I stood face to face with a type of packaging I had never seen before--the awesome "rack pack" containing a whopping 36 cards!! Consequently my friends and I spent the '68 & '69 seasons busting rack packs looking for our favorite cards.
By 1970 my friends and I had entered high-school and consequently we all found other interests to spend our money on. Nevertheless I still enjoyed cards so I was able to obtain my friends entire collections for pennies on the dollar. By this time my collection consisted of well over 25,000 '67, '68 & '69 Topps bb cards.
By my junior year in high-school in 1972 I had completely lost interest in cards. They had been overwhelming the space in my room and I decided it was time for them to go. So I decided to sell them at the swap meet and I counted out a stack of 100 and placed a rubber band around them. Then I used that stack as a visual reference and quickly made similarly sized stacks out of my entire collection. And I held nothing back so yes the cards of Mantle, Mays, Aaron and the rookie cards of Ryan, Seaver, Jackson & Bench were sprinkled all throughout the boxes.
I then took what was at least a dozen large boxes containing over 250 (100-card) bundles to the swap meet and sat out a sign asking for 50 cents a bundle. After a couple hours past with no sales I lowered the price to 25 cents. After sitting there for half a day with no sales I soon realized no one else shared the same passion for cards that I once had as a kid!
A few days later it was Halloween so I decided to hand out the bundles to the trick-o-treaters. Yes, what a great idea!. Well Halloween 1972 came along and right off the bat the kids started registering disappointment as I threw bundles of cards into their sacks instead of candy. Some complained that they only wanted candy. Others said the bundles were heavy and took up too much space in their bag. I did however have one bold kid tell me he only wanted cards from the current '72 season
So after handing out only a couple dozen or so bundles I decided to let my mom hand out candy to make the kids happy and I instead would take my frustration out on my cards by feeding the fireplace on the cold October night. And for the next couple of hours, bundle by bundle, I burned all 25000+ cards!. I was a big Red Sox fan and to this day I remember pausing as I was about to throw in a bundle with a '67 Yaz on top but I said the hell with it and tossed it in.
I know this sounds like a crazy story but you have to remember back in 1972 baseball cards had no recognized monetary or book value. They only had sentimental value and at least in my area nobody wanted them--not even the neighborhood kids. And of course what I did on that sad Halloween night in 1972 is by no means an isolated occurance as countless collectors all across this country from my generation disposed of their childhood cards as well.
Moral of the story: stick with collecting high-grade vintage cards and
you should never go wrong for the vast majority ever produced have long been destroyed!!! Oh, and don't do stupid things....
I became obsessed with baseball cards back in 1967 when I was in the sixth grade. I had a large paper route which afforded me the opportunity to routinely bust a dozen or so '67 Topps baseball nickel wax packs every week. To supplement my obsession I would also trade to my friends "creepy crawlers", marbles, toys and any other items for any of their cards they didn't want.
But in 1968 my collection really took off big-time. A new Thrifty Drug store opened and for the first time in my life I stood face to face with a type of packaging I had never seen before--the awesome "rack pack" containing a whopping 36 cards!! Consequently my friends and I spent the '68 & '69 seasons busting rack packs looking for our favorite cards.
By 1970 my friends and I had entered high-school and consequently we all found other interests to spend our money on. Nevertheless I still enjoyed cards so I was able to obtain my friends entire collections for pennies on the dollar. By this time my collection consisted of well over 25,000 '67, '68 & '69 Topps bb cards.
By my junior year in high-school in 1972 I had completely lost interest in cards. They had been overwhelming the space in my room and I decided it was time for them to go. So I decided to sell them at the swap meet and I counted out a stack of 100 and placed a rubber band around them. Then I used that stack as a visual reference and quickly made similarly sized stacks out of my entire collection. And I held nothing back so yes the cards of Mantle, Mays, Aaron and the rookie cards of Ryan, Seaver, Jackson & Bench were sprinkled all throughout the boxes.
I then took what was at least a dozen large boxes containing over 250 (100-card) bundles to the swap meet and sat out a sign asking for 50 cents a bundle. After a couple hours past with no sales I lowered the price to 25 cents. After sitting there for half a day with no sales I soon realized no one else shared the same passion for cards that I once had as a kid!
A few days later it was Halloween so I decided to hand out the bundles to the trick-o-treaters. Yes, what a great idea!. Well Halloween 1972 came along and right off the bat the kids started registering disappointment as I threw bundles of cards into their sacks instead of candy. Some complained that they only wanted candy. Others said the bundles were heavy and took up too much space in their bag. I did however have one bold kid tell me he only wanted cards from the current '72 season
So after handing out only a couple dozen or so bundles I decided to let my mom hand out candy to make the kids happy and I instead would take my frustration out on my cards by feeding the fireplace on the cold October night. And for the next couple of hours, bundle by bundle, I burned all 25000+ cards!. I was a big Red Sox fan and to this day I remember pausing as I was about to throw in a bundle with a '67 Yaz on top but I said the hell with it and tossed it in.
I know this sounds like a crazy story but you have to remember back in 1972 baseball cards had no recognized monetary or book value. They only had sentimental value and at least in my area nobody wanted them--not even the neighborhood kids. And of course what I did on that sad Halloween night in 1972 is by no means an isolated occurance as countless collectors all across this country from my generation disposed of their childhood cards as well.
Moral of the story: stick with collecting high-grade vintage cards and
you should never go wrong for the vast majority ever produced have long been destroyed!!! Oh, and don't do stupid things....
"You tell 'em I'm coming...and hell's coming with me"--Wyatt Earp
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Comments
The fate of my childhood card collection had a happier ending. I collected from '62 thru '68 and, when I left home in '72 (went into the USAF after high school), my folks let me keep as much stuff as I could in one closet in my old room. When I started college in '76, each time I went home I took something from that closet back with me. Fortunately I still have the app. 3,000 cards I had collected. Since then I've completed the '62, '63 and '68 raw sets...
Have you been trying to re-create those sets of your childhood???
Thanks for sharing your story. It would be nice if we could just delete some of those memories though.
But like you said who would have thought they would ever become what they are today.
In stayed completely out of the hobby until 2003 when the "kid" in me resurfaced after seeing a Gai slabbed '75 bb cello on ebay. Unfortunately certified packs from the late 60's are outside my budget so every once in a while I'll try to pick up a PSA slabbed '75 bb cello or '72 wax pack.
Steve
Believe me, I do feel your pain.
Actually, this one sound like he done did it to himself!
Neat story, though!
...and when I moved out of the parents house it still wasn't easy...dragging around near worthless boxes of cards, but there was sentimental value to me that I didn't want to lose...I just liked them too much to discard them.
But sorry to hear your story and I think in some way or another, it's a common story about discarding worthless collectibles that decades later became valuable. The same thing will happen today...we'll throw away or not buy something that a few decades from now will be worth some good money - could be anything.
I appreciate the memories of those Creepy Crawlers...I had forgotten about that and remember how much fun it was to stick that "gel" in those molds and produce my own bugs and insects...dam that was fun.
Sure wish I woulda bought all the cards they had, I could have easily afforded to do that, but I never even bought one.
<< <i>The same thing will happen today...we'll throw away or not buy something that a few decades from now will be worth some good money - could be anything. >>
That is pretty much the key to dramatic growth in long-term collectibles value. If something is thought to have almost no value today, but you and others like it for some reason, the odds are it will come back as a collectible down the road because people will have thrown most of them out and you and the others like you who liked it will want one. It's the limited supply story all over again.
On the other hand, if something is sold as a "limited edition collectible" today (can you say Beanie Babies?), everyone will store them safely away and keep them as a future valuable collectible. If too many are made (the story with way too many of today's "limited edition collectibles"), supply will outrun demand and they will never run up in value.
- John Wooden
<< <i>
<< <i>The same thing will happen today...we'll throw away or not buy something that a few decades from now will be worth some good money - could be anything. >>
That is pretty much the key to dramatic growth in long-term collectibles value. If something is thought to have almost no value today, but you and others like it for some reason, the odds are it will come back as a collectible down the road because people will have thrown most of them out and you and the others like you who liked it will want one. It's the limited supply story all over again.
On the other hand, if something is sold as a "limited edition collectible" today (can you say Beanie Babies?), everyone will store them safely away and keep them as a future valuable collectible. If too many are made (the story with way too many of today's "limited edition collectibles"), supply will outrun demand and they will never run up in value. >>
Postage stamps are an excellent illustration of that - look at ebay and see mint postage stamps from even the 1940's, and many of them are not worth much more than face value...because "everyone" collected them back then and stored them properly and none got thrown out. I remember as a young kid seeing the Spiderman comic first edition on the candy store rack, thumbing through it and thinking "what a dumb idea for a comic book - this will never sell" - LOL...and they didn't sell many at the time compared to others such as Superman and Batman...of course my thoughts were because Superman and Batman seemed like such better superheros, and there were scores more superheros and other comic book characters such as WW2 soldier heroes on the racks that were more interesting to me...and of course many Marvel comic book characters failed, so ya just never can tell for sure. Might even be a non-collectible item today that turns into a valuable collectible many years from now.
<< <i>Burning Cards >>
um...did he just burn an autographed hank aaron card??
I'll never forget that I came across one person who had boxes and boxes of miscellaneous for sale and amongst it I came across a shoe box full of loosely shuffled 1954 topps baseball cards. Had this happened three years earlier I would have been all over them. However since I no longer had any interest in cards and I couldn't even sell the ones I had I simply walked away!
Recently I was watching a special on TV about tomorrow's collectibles and the expert on the show said that you have to collect things today that the mainstream isn't collecting. So I am always running this bit of sound advice through my mind but for the life of me I can't come up with any one item that I feel confident spending my money on in volume.
<< <i>Stevek, funny you should mention those 206's at the swap meet. After failing to sell any of my cards at the swap meet I decided to shut my tail gate, close up shop, and take a walk around the swap meet to browse.
I'll never forget that I came across one person who had boxes and boxes of miscellaneous for sale and amongst it I came across a shoe box full of loosely shuffled 1954 topps baseball cards. Had this happened three years earlier I would have been all over them. However since I no longer had any interest in cards and I couldn't even sell the ones I had I simply walked away!
Recently I was watching a special on TV about tomorrow's collectibles and the expert on the show said that you have to collect things today that the mainstream isn't collecting. So I am always running this bit of sound advice through my mind but for the life of me I can't come up with any one item that I feel confident spending my money on in volume. >>
I always "kid" but not in a humorous way, at those who collected cards in the 50's and 60's and complain about their parents throwing out their valuable baseball cards. Well I tell them that even in the 70's when they were then an adult and had money, ya could have easily bought back the cards and much more, and in better condition, for cheap, and ya coulda retired wealthy with the money they're worth today.
I guess the premise is like those "starving artists" art sales. Sure probably one of those paintings in those stores selling for $50 might be worth many thousands some years from now, but who the yell knows which one? LOL
Ya just never know but I think it's fun to ponder, and who knows, perhaps that worthless 286 computer that everybody discarded, that ya happen to keep and just let sit buried in your closet, might be worth a bundle 20 years from now for whatever reason...but then again, probably 20 years from now it will still be trash. LOL
"cannot sell cards so buy them or i'll burn them"
I think apart from the older generation, cards are phasing their way out of the minds of collectors.
Even coins are more for monitary value than for their collectible value. Stamps - things of the past. Comics - almost a lost art. Vinyl records - played out.
What will be the next "big" collectable ? who knows ? Old cell phones and computers ? Maybe.
Just have fun collecting what you like and interests you ... otherwise you're stuck with things you do not like.
cheers
God I think i could cry! Thanks for shareing your story. But it's reads like a nightmare.