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Originally Posted by cjack51
Excuse the length of the post but I've never really put the story in writing. For the short answer please scroll to the bottom.
Like many people who grew up in the 1980-90's most of my money went solely to accumulating as many of the then current rookie cards as possible (especially once Upper Deck launched). I enjoyed it very much but as we all know most of those cards are virtually worthless. If only Sam Horn or Gregg Jeffries had panned out I'd be a rich man 
Anyway, in the early days of computers (way before internet) my friend had a baseball video game on an Amiga which was probably a top of the line computer at the time. The game was called "Earl Weaver Baseball" which allowed my friends and I to form a league and assemble teams using players from all eras. So many of the dead ball era and negro league players like Lajoie and Gibson were unheard of to me at the time. I drafted Roger Bresnahan as my catcher and he was great (he put up way better numbers in the video game world than in real life!).
So one year at the East Coast National I decided I wanted a tobacco card of one of the players on my team. This was also before grading so anything remotely close to EX-MT was priced at book value and as a 17 year old I really could only afford a nice T207 Bresnahan. Probably 15 years later I submitted it to PSA and it came back a 7. I slowly accumulated Bresnahan cards but not with a ton of attention to grade. Now that I have two kids and closets full of cards, it became time to condense my collection. Although I make a decent living, I can't afford the high grade examples of Cobb, Jackson, Ruth, etc., so I focused on Bresnahan as a HOFer that was (and still is) relatively affordable. I know people's arguments for why that is the case but I enjoy it. More importantly, I enjoy collecting again with focus rather then trying to buy everything I like.
Short answer - I saw him on a video game. |
One of the best answers ever to the question of "what do you collect."
Welcome to the board. Now I want to play Earl Weaver Baseball. Sounds like Bresnahan was the equivalent to Bo Jackson in Tecmo Bowl.