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Monday, August 17, 2009

True Confessions of a Collector

I thought I would share a few shameful tidbits about myself as a collector:

1. I am a Mets fan. (NO, THAT"S NOT THE SHAMEFUL PART!) As a Mets fan, I hate the Atlanta Braves. And I am beginning to hate the Phillies just as much. Here is where it gets shameful. Mets fan, Braves hater, thus I must also hate Chipper Jones, who ruled Shea more than any hitter. I have 52 different Chipper Jones cards.
WHY? I have always been a "general collector". I love baseball and have always used my card collection to chronicle the MLB. Chipper is a great playerand I like having great player's cards. Now, I don't go out of my way to get more Chippers but I have only recently considered trading some of them for cards of players I like more. Larry isn't the only player I could have used as an example. The same is true for any superstar for the past 20 years.

2. I have thrown away thousands of cards. I admitted this long ago and was quickly told to send them to collectors across the nation. Since the initial tossing, I have sent around 20 thousand cards to new and loving homes. I think I have made up for my transgressions for this one.WHY? I had too many cards. I had every set from 1986 to 1991. EVERY SET! I never looked at them. There were boxes and boxes of cards I didn't need or like. My card collection gets better and better as it gets smaller and smaller. I still have too many cards. Now I usually make myself get rid of a card before I allow a new card into my collection. No, I am not throwing the excess away. They will be sent out to collectors when I recover from the shipping cost of my last giveaway.

3. Here is the big one that may get me shunned from the blogging community. I sort my cards based on Beckett book value. Some cards are in individual, hard, plastics holders, others are in binders, some in penny sleeves, and others in the raw. I have never made a trade based on it, nor do I believe that it means anything but its a way to interact with my collection like I did when I was a kid.WHY? As I said before, I have always been a general collector. I have always had my favorites but I used to want to collect EVERY card. You have to sort them in some way. Now that my collection is getting more refined, I may stop this practice. But I might not. Why should you care that the B-WORD gets a little of my money every once in while?

There you have it. True confessions. Come get some Lame Hits. The last 7 posts are filled with them.

5 comments:

Captain Canuck said...

Chipper collection, eh? Nice. Smart.
Soon, you'll come over from the dark side... into the light

night owl said...

I once sorted my pricier cards by Beckett, throwing them all together in a couple binders.

Now everything's mixed together. The most valuable -- just a handful -- are in top loaders. Everything else goes into one, big, glorious pile.

Anonymous said...

52 Chipper cards? Sounds like a man-crush, you're just covering with the "hate Braves" "hate Chipper" stuff.

gp

dc said...

"My card collection gets better and better as it gets smaller and smaller."

This, once it is recognized, is the core truth of collecting baseball cards.

Dean said...

I have never heard of someone sorting cards by price. You can not make that type of stuff up. I love it!