I have a few collection. My most sentimental is my Might and Magic collection, but I also have a substantial ”Elder Scrolls” collection, and a few other minor collections. But one I don’t really speak of is my card collection. The first cards I collected made the most sense to me: ”Ninja Turtles” cards. I don’t have any of them left save one Leonardo card that my mom preserved for me. The rest were destroyed because I played with them and traded them so much.
Baseball held little interest for me until my friend Aaron moved in. He was obsessed with the Texas Rangers and collecting baseball cards. I thought Aaron was the coolest kid ever, so if he liked baseball then I liked it too. I began a collection of baseball cards to emulate him. Really there were only two things I cared about collecting. A Nolan Ryan card, because that was Aaron’s favorite player, and a Hank Aaron card because that guy had the same name as Aaron.
To start off my collection I got a baseball card collecting starter kit from a Scholastic book order. It included a Beckett (a guide to how much various baseball cards are worth), a guide to collecting, and about 10 baseball cards, including one that would be over 20 years old. Naturally at 10 years old, that sounded very impressive to me. So I got my mom to pay for it for me, and eagerly awaited it. It came, and I opened up my baseball cards, hoping for someone famous. After looking through it I found the oldest one. My friend [[blog:first-cigarette Clint]] pointed out that the card wasn’t over 20 years old it was like 7 years old. The card was Ricky Adams of the Los Angeles Angels. I looked through the included Beckett to see if my card was worth anything, it wasn’t even listed. Nothing I got was listed. None of them had enough value to be listed in an abridged Beckett, it only listed rare cards, such as Babe Ruth, valued in the twenties of thousands, or so. I fantasized about owning something like that, I guess that was the intent of a Beckett for kids.
After that my collection rapidly expanded. Topps were my favorite. I don’t know why. For some reason I had the impression that they were the more glamorous brand of cards, 1987 was my favorite Topps year (it had the coolest border art). Donruss was my least favorite. Partially because I had been given a pack of Donruss baseball cards, and didn’t get one player I had ever heard of. I also enjoyed the brands of Fleer and Score. Every time I got a new pack of cards I always looked for Nolan Ryan first, and was always disappointed. My brother was lucky enough to get a Nolan Ryan. I was jealous. He tried to make it up to me by taking a picture of it, so that I could have a Nolan Ryan as well.
So there I was trying to get as many baseball cards as possible. Always trying to get a Nolan Ryan. My brother got a Beckett with pretty much every card listed. Most were worth five cents. One time I got a card that was worth a buck, a Don Mattingly error card. (Error cards were when an incorrect stat was published on the card, which were somehow worth more because they were incorrect, go figure.) So there I was with my one card that actually had some value. Don Mattingly. I’d heard of him, so I was happy with the card. Eventually my mom bought me a Nolan Ryan, it came in a little frame, and it was a Topps card.
A year or so into my collecting, my dad took me to a ball game. We didn’t have a major leagues team, but we did have a Triple-A team. It was the most boring experience of my life. And I was like, “This is what I was collecting? What is this sport? Nothing happens.” I stopped collecting cards after that.
In conclusion, every last one of my cards is now over 20 years old 1993 was the last year I got any… and they are all worthless. My Ricky Adams card is over thirty years old, and they aren’t worth the paper they are printed on. I even have a Sammy Sosa card from his rookie years, you may remember him, the MLB was making a big deal when he was competing with Mark MacGuire for the home runs record. It’s worthless. Oh and I looked, you can get a non-rookie year Hank Aaron card for under $10.00, I don’t even care enough to get one at this point. My dad once told me that investing in the stock market was probably a better investment than baseball cards. I was a kid, so I cared nothing of stocks and bonds, but he was right. In retrospect I should have gotten more ”Ninja Turtles” cards. At least I’m nostalgic for those, but as for baseball… No way.