Michael Salfino new member introduction

[Salfino]

I wanted to say hello to everyone. I write about collectables (and baseball and football generally) for The Athletic/New York Times. So I may solicit some participation/quotes at some point. I started writing about collectibles in The Wall Street Journal. I wrote an article comparing Mickey Mantle cards in appreciation vs. other investment vehicles in 2016. That was the most read article in the Journal online that year. I've also been a writer for Topps since 2019 (card backs), specializing in the Heritage and Archives sets (also Dynasty). I collected starting in the 1970s but had to sell premium vintage cards to stay in college in the 1980s for pennies on the dollar -- Ruth, Gehrig, Cobb, roookie Robinson. I paid for them working in restaurants and delivering newspapers starting at age 11. This broke my heart but I got back in strong in 2016 arond the time of the Mantle article. My collection is pretty large -- all but the first two Mantles, all but the first May, complete Aaron, complete Clemente, complete Koufax, most vintage rookies in baseball/football/hoops, complete Jim Brown, complete Namath, complete Wilt and many other inner-circle players -- Jackie, Williams, DiMaggio, etc. I also have NM complete sets including 1971 Topps baseball and 1962 Topps football. Anyway, nice to meet you all virtually. I'll keep you posted on topics I'm working on in case any of you have a perspective you'd like to share.