Leaders Cards Collecting
New to the forum and having a lot of fun the last few days reading posts.
I am 40, a product of the late 80s-early 90s card boom but despite all my efforts to chase Griffeys and Cansecos (and of course Maas and Plantiers), the single greatest thing was when my dad surprised me on my birthday with a 1958 Mantle All Star card. It was in decent shape, nothing spectacular, but was (and to some degree still is) my prized possession. He would tell me stories about Mantle and others from his era as giants of the game and it became a common bond for us.
Been out of collecting for 20+ years but just had a son of my own a few weeks ago! One of the first things I did was buy (overpay for) a nice 1960 Mantle high PSA card for him to start a collection. I would love for him to grow up with an appreciation of the history of the game, of heroes like Clemente and Robinson, and even though like me he'll never see them play in person, hopefully can appreciate the contribution they had to baseball and society and contrast that with some of today's prima donnas.
I'm sure you're thinking yeah yeah if it's all about the history/collecting, why not just get him some low grade or ungraded cards. I'm not going to lie - I still really enjoyed the chase of buying that mantle card - researching PSA pop and auction reports and trying to make the best decision on price versus long-term value/investment. Reminded me of being a kid again and scouring through Becketts and Tuff Stuffs to come up with trade offers to friends. Also, to shell out some decent money on a nice card I still wanted some sense the card will at least retain its value over time and with populations < 500 or so I felt this may be the wheelhouse of vintage collecting for me (everyone is different). Obviously that criteria though severely limits my ability to buy alot of other cards on my budget.
That brings me to my point (finally). I have really enjoyed these past few weeks researching and buying a couple of vintage Leaders and All Star cards. For me, this is the perfect intersection of the fun of the chase while not breaking the bank. For example, I got a 1962 Topps HR Leaders with Maris/Mantle/Killebrew PSA 8 for around $200. Sure it doesn't have the same panache as the individual '62 cards, but for the same grade that would be well into the thousands and it tells an awesome story about baseball history I can teach him about, maybe watch 61* together!
In my mind (maybe naive) dirtbags aren't going to go to the same trouble to doctor up a $50-300 card, so I trust the authenticity of these cards a little more. I'm wondering what people think of collecting these cards - there are so many with Koufax/Drysdale, Aaron/Clemente/Cepeda, Mays/Aaron, etc. not to mention All Star cards (like my '58 mantle), single game event cards and team cards. You often get 2-3 HOFs on one card, usually a closeup where some of their personality shows (see the 1962 HR Maris) and tells a great story about the history that year. I've enjoyed making a list of ones to target and at their usual price point (even at a PSA 7-8) may still be able to budget for one a month as opposed to one a year of the base set cards.
Just wanted to share my experience and maybe connect with some others out there who enjoy this type of collecting. After all, isn't that what these forums are for?
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