Thursday, April 26, 2012

What brought you back?

This is a question I love to hear answered by many in the sports card community. I was a collector from 1986 to 1993. I decided to get out of the hobby in the fall of 1993 after graduating from high school and my time was monopolized with college and work. Anyway, when I moved with my wife from southwest Ohio to northeast Ohio in the fall of 2001 I was bit by the baseball card bug once more after watching the 2001 World Series between the Yankees and Diamondbacks. There were a couple of card shops close (3 to be exact) so I decided to stop in and see what was there. Since I had collected the Topps flagship sets growing up I decided to get a few packs of 2002 Topps Series 1. Once I opened them I was instantly hooked once more. It doesn't matter how many times I open a pack of cards, it always seems like the first time and I'm always reminded of the first time I opened a pack of 1986 Topps my Mom brought picked up for me from a small hole in the wall convenient store in Point Pleasant, Ohio. Memories...that's what brought me back to the hobby. What about you?

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

The Joy and Heartache of Collecting Vintage

As I slowly whittle away at my overly ambitious 2012 collecting goals I decided to post some of my thought on my vintage collecting since that's what I've been concentrating on this past year. I love vintage cards. I don't know why, but there's just something about them that evoke the glory days of baseball when titans like Aaron, Mantle, Mays, Robinson (Frank that is), Banks, and Williams (of the Red Sox variety) graced us with their presence on the diamond. When these stars appear on the cardboard, along with a background of ballparks that are long gone and belong to the ages, it's like you're staring at a window looking back through the sands of time at a game that truly was the national pastime. Trying to collect Reds cards from the 1950s and 1960s has proven rewarding, but difficult at the same time. While I love adding these pieces of history to my binder, it's a grueling process since I only have a monthly budges of around fifty dollars and since I'm a stickler for condition, I want my cards to be free of creases, marks, and paper loss... something that's not easy when it comes to paper that's more than a half century old. Anyway, while it's painfully slow and time consuming to collect vintage cards, there's nothing more rewarding in the hobby than to look down at your binder and see a completed page staring up at you.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

1958 Topps

So when it comes to completing a team set from a particular year, I have the attention span of a gnat. I always try to finish a year before I start on another one, but when I was surfing ebay the other day I came across a crazy good find of 12 1958 Topps Reds cards for $32.99 that included shipping. While I'm not a huge fan of the 1958 topps set, particularly the Reds with the nasty yellow background that's present on most of their cards, I do like the vintage sets and the Mr. Redlegs image that's on most of the older sets. Another gripe I have with this set is that most of the cards are portrait shots with only a few action shots sprinkled in. Such a disappointment, but oh well. Anyway, getting back to my find on ebay...while the combined lot amounted to a little less than $3 a card, what made this find truly amazing was the fact that this card was included...a second year Frank Robinson card. How sweet is that? I was a little disappointed when I received the package and found that one of the cards (Dutch Dotterer) had a big crease down the middle of the card, but the others were in great shape. So ultimately I got 11 1958 Topps Reds cards for $3 a piece. Can't complain for getting a second year Robinson for $3 can I?