30 Year Run Comes To An End

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Posted By: Ed McCollum

I started collecting baseball cards in 1972. My grandfather bought me a pack of cards at the local Kroger store, and even though I couln't chew the gum (I had been diagnosed with diabetes earlier that year), I insisted that he buy me a pack so I could see what they looked like. I was hooked.

Over the next three years, I collected comlete sets of the Topps cards. Sometimes spending a weeks allowance to buy twenty packs at a dime a piece to get one card that I needed from a high series, and throwing the rest away. But by age 12, I gave it up. Cards were for kids, not teenagers. I put all the cards in a lock box in my closet at home and basically forgot about them.

Move ahead twelve years. I'm fresh out of college, have moved six and a half hours from Mom and Dad's, and I'm home for Christmas. Imagine my suprise to see several very heavy boxes under the tree with my name on them. Inside one was my complete set from '72, '73 in another, '74 in another, and a set from '84 in the last. Mom said she came across the cards in the lockbox, and thought I might still want them. She even found a set at a local store for that year to join them. But if I wanted them, they had to leave the house with me. Otherwise, the same fate that met my brothers cards ten years before I was born was sure to happen. Out to the trash pile they would go, and they would be burnt. I took them, and got started all over again.

I got married four years later. My wife took it in stride that every year, my Mom would give me a set of Topps cards for Christmas. Over those first couple years, I was even able to complete the run from '76-'83, and my wife even bought me my first vintage card, a red background Ty Cobb T206 for our first anniversary. The T206s became my new hobby, while I still got the Topps every year for Christmas.

Mom called Sunday night. Seems she found a set for this year, but it's $60. did I still want them, considering that would be about all I got for Christmas? It didn't take long to decide. Ballplayers today aren't what they used to be. Do I want a portion of my meager card collecting budget to go to thier union, and help support the guys who can't make it on a base salary 73 times my yearly salary? No. I'll concentrate on the T cards, and buy the poor to fair condition classics, and stop with the current madness. My son, who is 11, will still get a complete set, as he has every year since birth, but I'm giving up. I'd rather get a poor condition Bender portrait than a complete set dedicated to cry-baby, steroid using egomaniacs for my money.

Sorry to ramble, but I feel better now. Thanks.

Ed

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Posted By: Keith O'Leary

Loved it Ed, and can't agree with you any more. Best of luck with the "T"s.

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Posted By: Jaime Leiderman

Thanks for sharing your story.
My exact feelings as well!

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Posted By: Julie Vognar

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Posted By: leon

Very well put. I can't tell ya how many times people talk baseball at the office and I "act" mildly interested. Spoiled brats. Sour grapes? Not really, although a lot of us probably had high hopes at sometime in our past of being a sports star. Oh well...here's to getting older.....regards all....

(I will never forget/forgive them for stopping the Allstar game either...what a joke)

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Posted By: Todd (nolemmings)

Sorry Ed, I refuse to lay this all (or even most of it) at the feet of the players. I too stopped collecting current sets about 10 years ago, mostly because of cost but also because of the proliferation of cards on the market and the gimmicks (parallel sets, etc). Don't forget MLB makes big licensing bucks in the sale of cards, if it's the price that's bothering you.
If your point is that the game doesn't mean as much to you because of the players, fine. But frankly, I get tired of that. Seems to me anyone in this country should be allowed to make whatever someone else is willing to pay them, and the owners' repeated wailing that they need to be saved from themselves impresses me not at all.
Mark my words, four years will pass, and you will see little noticeable improvement in so-called competitive balance. The A's and Twins may still be at or near the top, but that will be due to good management and not any luxury tax. The Cubs and Rangers will still suck, and the Yankees will continue to spend. The players (and fans)will then see little return for all the ground given by the union in this negotiation, the players will balk (no pun intended) at the next cries for further payroll cuts in the name of balance, the players will have to strike as their only means of protecting their position, the public will perceive the players as greedy, the owners will continue to refuse opening their books to show how they're losing money (if they won't open 'em for Congrees, they damn sure won't let the union see them), the game will suffer, and we'll be back to where we were a month ago.
Sorry for the gloom and doom, I just think that whatever you think of the players, you should study the arrogance and stupidity of the owners before shooting all of your arrows.
Regards...........Todd

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Posted By: Julie Vognar

but I'm sure never going to forget Jeter's cross-the-diamond-and-flip-to-the-catcher to tag out Giambi last year, or Gibson's limp-off home run in 1988. hey, there's plenty of good baseball going on. You don't have to buy all the cards, or any of them. 1) you wouldn't have enough money for vintage stuff and 2) you wouldn't have enough money for dinner!