Collecting Focus: Share Your Story

[tonyo]

I wanted to keep this brief because I tend to feel the need to include all the details when writing, but in hindsight I wasn’t successful. When I realized this was going to be long, I told myself “I’ll just make this a chapter in my memoirs 😊” and kept going. Anyway, if you read all this, thanks and God Bless You!

My collecting focus has shifted two or three times in my life (maybe more depending on the definition).

My interest started in 2nd grade with the 1972 topps baseball set. Loved 'em apparently because I wanted cards from baseball, basketball and football as often as someone would buy them for me at that age. Birthday, Christmas, Easter Basket, trips to the store with mom or grand dad. Always wanted cards, not candy or toys. I played with them, sorted them in any way imaginable, read the backs, devoured the stats, traded with my friends, everything short of sticking them in my spokes. All my cards in those years came from "the dime store" (as my grand dad used to call those Woolworth type stores). I morphed into spending my allowance and chore money on cards as I got a little older. Rode my bike to the corner stores for cards, traded more to pick up a few "old cards" from my friends older brothers, you know the drill. I bought a couple of complete football sets from Renata Galasso in the late 70's but that just wasn't as fun for me.

Those trends continued thru college and early adult hood till my family started to grow in the mid 90's. One of the last card obsessions I had during that phase that lasted from 72 thru mid-90's was driving from store to store for packs of 94 pinnacle because I was hooked on those museum cards that came one per pack 😊

It tapered off after that, my oldest daughter was born in '96 and my attention was officially diverted..........

....till around 2009 or so. My kids were both in their 10's by then and I decided to pick up a couple of random packs at Target. The hamster wheel landed one day on a pack of upper deck goudey (like a heritage set mimicking 1933 goudey). I was fond of the style and was soon working on completing the set. Well, by that time the internet was in full swing so while searching for ways to fill the holes in my '09 ud goudey set I discovered that I could purchase real 33 goudeys and started with a 33 goudey Travis Jackson on eBay. Shortly after, I discovered net54 and caught the pre-war bug.

In the few years that followed, catching the bug and some disposable income had me sliding down the slippery slope. Collected a bunch of cards in fair/good/vg condition. t206 set of 520 (focus on backstamps and less common backs - no scarce backs), t205 set (no variations), 1933 goudey set (of course) (no Lajoie), t207 subset (gloves or bats), e-90 and brethren subset (clouds and sunset), an extensive hof pre-war type set.

When pre-war ideas slowed down I drifted into post war vintage and completed 1952 bowman and 1952 bowman football, 1973 topps, and finished 1972 topps (completing the cards I didn't have from those first days in real time 1972). Then a "completionist" thread on net 54 prompted me to try to complete an "all hofers playing days regular issue from topps and bowman post war thru 1980" subset. I got within a 52t Mathews, 63 Rose and 67 Seaver of finishing.

When post-war slowed down, I decided to round out my modern collection. Finished that 94 pinnacle museum collection, started a Barry Larkin type collection which grew to about 1400 different, started a couple of TTM auto sets, extended my "hofer playing days regular issue" set thru 89 and added donruss, fleer, upper deck, score, then thru '99 topps base and a select few of my favorite 90's sets.

Around 2016 or so, I had just about run out of ideas for affordable baseball sets and subsets while still keeping some resemblance of focus, so I did a small 70's and 80's topps NFL Hall of fame Rookie Card subset and was struggling to identify my next project.

Well in 2017 I had some life changes occur that caused me to consider selling my collection. I catalogued and scanned everything then solicited "buy everything offers" from 4 or 5 dealers. I still remember one dealer telling me "I think this is the most complete lower grade collection I have ever seen" That made me proud and a little verklempt as well!

Anyway, I couldn't bear to sell in one fell swoop, but I had really run out of reasonable card collecting ideas. I practically came to a collecting stop, let things simmer for about a year then in July 2018 decided to start selling my collection slowly piece by piece on my own. The first thing to go ironically was that 2009 UD Goudey set!

I've been selling consistently since then on net54 BST, eBay, and now Facebook groups. My goal is to eventually whittle everything down to a collection that is manageable enough to pass on to my kids or future grandkids and definable enough for them to know with reasonable certainty the value of the collection.

My model has been to start from the bottom, identifying those cards that spoke to me the least and would get me closer to the goal by selling them. It's been painstaking and mind numbing at times (I’ve been selling all the pre 1980 sets card by card and even sold the Barry Larkin set mostly card by card). It sometimes tries my patience to maintain a steady speed, but It’s been a good hobby for me. I do like the thought that by selling individual cards and very small lots they are mostly going to people who really want to add them to their collections. There have been plenty of times when a card sells and it's hard for me to "say goodbye" before sending it thru the mail

It’s been a lot more difficult every stage when the time comes to decide “Ok which cards are going next”. I still have a way to go before I come to a stopping point, and I’ve begun to wonder if I will ultimately just keep going and sell everything. That decision is still at least a couple of years away. 😊

I do believe that the process of thoroughly re-visiting all my cards to determine which cards to sell next and studying them briefly one last time before dropping them in the mail has been just as enjoyable as the process of collecting all those sets and subsets over the years!

Happy Collecting Everyone!