Been enjoying this thread. I’m 53 and collected from 1975 till the early 90s. Mostly baseball. My father got me into it. He had an amazing collection. Probably one of the best in the country. Unfortunately he passed away in September. But as a result of his death we had to get his collection appraised which has awoken my collecting bug a little bit.
His collection is insane in quality and quantity. At one point in the early 90s he answered and ad in the paper and bought out the entire inventory of a card store from a widow who’s husband owned and ran the store. Took my dad several trips with a U-Haul to bring all the cards home. They filled up the entire basement and garage. For decades he would sort the cards and look for treasures. We still have boxes and boxes of unopened packs of cards from around that time. Lots of unopened 91-92 Upper Deck hockey cards for example. Grabbed one and brought it to the office and every once in a while me and my brother will grab a pack each and see who gets the better cards.
To give you context of what he was collecting, he spent the last several years trying to put together the famous cigarette cards from around 1910. The set with the Honus Wagner card which I believe is the most valuable card in the world. He was never going to get that card, but he had several hundred other cards from that set. His most valuable card is a 1952 Topps Mantle Rookie. In the shape it’s in, its worth about $35,000.
We are planning to auction off his collection. When we do I’ll post a link so you can see his collection if you are interested in what a lifetime of card collecting looks like.
The industry now is a joke. At least that’s how it appears to my eyes. Cards of players who haven’t even played a full season yet going for thousands of dollars. I refuse to believe these cards will hold even a fraction of that value in the long run. I refuse to believe that a Bedard rookie is worth more than my dad’s Mantle rookie.
I’m thinking of getting back into it, but only to go back and collect cards from my childhood and earlier. No interest in this new stuff. And quite frankly, I don’t even understand the new stuff. Just seems like a bunch of silliness to me.
I miss the days of going to card shows with my dad as early as when I was 8 years old. He would give me $10 and tell me I could use it to buy any complete set I wanted from that year. And he wanted me to go find the best deal. Really he just wanted me out of his hair a big while he went looking for the really nice rare stuff. But thsoe were great memories. We did that every year for a decade and I still have all those complete sets in binders at my mom’s house.
First set I ever put together on my own was the 1975 Topps baseball. Still love that set. My best hockey card is a Gretzky rookie, but it’s not in good condition. I also have a bunch of uncut Opeechee hockey card sheets, but I took terrible care of them.
My dad would’ve been 81 this past Sunday and reading this thread made me think about him a lot. Appreciate that!
