Quality vs. Quantity : A Debate for the New Year

 

Hi.

Hello.

            It’s been a few weeks, hasn’t it?

            Here’s hoping everyone is healthy.

            You know, I realized something about myself over the last couple of weeks. I don’t like holidays. I especially don’t like the holidays where you sit around on your ass and do nothing but eat. I’m restless on Christmas Eve. I’m restless on Christmas. I don’t enjoy Thanksgiving at all. Not liking holidays in America where you don’t sit around on your ass and eat, limits me to just a few holidays to enjoy.

            Happy President’s Day, I guess?

            And I’m not an A-type personality, one who always needs to do something or be entertained. I’ve passed many an afternoon simply staring at the ceiling. It might be the fat kid in me, who makes me not like these “sitting around on your ass and eating all day” holidays. I was usually criticized for sitting around on my ass and eating all day.

            Why was it only culturally acceptable when others did it?

More than the food, I think my eversion to Thanksgiving and/or Christmas is the fact that these are holidays where you have to be consistently entertained. By bad music. By family or friends. By gifts. By loud children and their gifts. By endless football or basketball games on TV. By watching A Christmas Story ad nauseum.

            There’s no time for self-examination or contemplation during those holidays.

            I enjoy the examined life.

            I did get a few moments to mess around with my cards over Christmas/New Year’s. And I did make a few card purchases. I got to be like everyone else used to be by finding retail product in a suburban Pittsburgh Wal-Mart. 

            My brother took me to the most amazing sports card store in the northern Pittsburgh suburbs. Baseball Card Junction. It was like entering Christmas-land for card collectors.

            I treated myself to this.

            Merry Christmas to me.

            But…buying that 1983 Fleer set, a much-coveted set if you will, got me to thinking. And, again, finding time to think during these holidays, is a tough endeavor. It got me to thinking about how I collect. More specifically am I buying cards for quality or for quantity? I don’t know if this is an age-old question for many collectors, or just one specific to me. I think some collectors can relate. I certainly see a lot of FOMO on the socials when a new product comes out.

            Maybe quality vs. quantity is a central issue for many collectors.

            Let’s go back to 2020 for a minute, shall we? Yeah, I know, groan. Sparing the details, I had a lot of time on my hands in 2020. So, I bought a lot of baseball card product. Like everything. You name it, I bought it. I resolved to do better in 2021. And I did…for the most part. Are there a few random, homeless stacks of 2021 Bowman laying around the apartment? Yes. But that was a rare impulse buy.

            I kept it pretty much to Topps base, Topps Heritage and Topps Archives. The nostalgia sets, as I call them. For as long as Topps is around (or at least its brand name is around), I’ll buy Topps base. Regardless of the design I’ll buy Topps base. Topps base is the mothership. It’s where it all started for me. Some collectors pick and choose if they are collecting base, based on the card design. Topps base it The Beatles White Album to me. It might be a mess at times, but it’s the bloody Beatles. It’s the bloody White Album. Get over it.

The other two sets had me at hello.

I think I’ve over-explained my love of cards that put new players on old designs, or old players on newer designs.

Heritage and Archive are cat nip to me.

But back to all of those cards I bought in 2020.

Or quality vs. quantity.

But a small digression first.

One of the things I was really looking for in my trip to Pittsburgh was a 1966 Roberto Clemente card. I love that card. I love the dark pink border and slash. I love the picture of Roberto. The ways he’s seemingly staring off into the distance, caught in whatever thoughts he may be having. He appears almost totally oblivious to the person taking his photograph.

Here it is again:

I want that card.

I was thinking about what I would spend on that card if I came across it.

I wouldn’t have said 1983 Fleer set if I’d come across that card.

Not that 1983 Fleer is a slouch.

Alas, the 1966 Roberto Clemente card remains elusive to me.

But…I could’ve had that card whenever I wanted it, actually.

The 1966 Roberto Clemente card has been sitting on ComC for as long as I’ve been using ComC. The card sells on there from $46-$86 dollars. I know this because I’m often on ComC looking at the 1966 Roberto Clemente card…usually before I go onto another web site and buy a hobby box of whatever for $100 or more.

Get the requisite inserts for players I don’t care about.

The relic card for players that I don’t care about.

The rare auto of a player that I don’t care about.

And here’s where I get into the quality vs quantity aspect.

Right now, I have an incomplete 2020 Topps Stadium Club set sitting in a binder. It’s about 70 cards shy of completion. To get to 70 cards shy, I purchased a hobby box and a number of blasters. Without going into the math, I’ve spent a good deal of money getting to within 70 cards of completing the 2020 Topps Stadium Club set. More than I probably should’ve spent.

And guess what?

I have absolutely no desire to spend money on the remaining 70 cards to complete the set.

It’s not that I don’t like Stadium Club. I think the cards are great. The photos are top-notch. I respect collectors who love and collect Stadium Club. More power to you. As John Newman says, “hobby your way.”

But I don’t care about Stadium Club.

I wish that I realized this when I was buying a hobby box or those blasters.

I wish I bought a 1966 Roberto Clemente card instead.

But one card for $86 vs. an entire hobby box for $100? Christ, my mind just doesn’t work like that. My mind works in a quantity is worth more than quality aspect. I wish it didn’t. Maybe I would’ve bought the smaller yet more effective name-brand nasal spray. Maybe I’d have a 1966 Topps Roberto Clemente card or a 1967 Clemente, or maybe even a 1964 Henry Aaron card instead of boxes upon boxes of 2020 Topps Stadium club doubles and triples taking up much-needed Brooklyn apartment space.

Mmmmm....1964 Henry Aaron

Again, I’m not slagging off Stadium Club.

I could make the same argument for all of the Topps Big League that I have sitting around.

The Gypsy Queen as well.

What I’m trying to get at. What I’ve rambled on about for one-thousand-plus words words thus far…is that I want to be a better collector going forward. I want to be the type of collector who values quality over quantity. It’s a new year, why not make a resolution? And I say this even if it effects that actual card sets that I do collect. Not that I won’t get some base this year. Or Heritage. Or Archives. But maybe it would be better to have a Clemente or so that I’d love as opposed to stacks and stacks of Heritage doubles.

I want to be a smarter collector.

Even if that means I have 5 new cards at the end of 2022 as opposed to 5,000 new cards. A couple of Clemente cards and maybe a Willie Mays. A few cheap Bill Mazeroski cards thrown in, and that Big Ben rookie I’ve been eyeing up. A small little stack vs me running out to buy ½ a dozen 800 count card boxes by next august.

That would be so nice.

But I know me.

I know how my mind works.

Most likely that 1966 Roberto Clemente will continue to exist is my dreams.

And….

            In case you’ve been living under a rock, there’s been another big change in The Hobby this week. I don’t know if it was expected or simply inevitable, but Fanatics bought Topps. At least they bought Topps’ sports and entertainment division. What this means is that we’ll still have Topps cards. We’ll still have Topps brand. We’ll most likely have Topps Football and Topps basketball cards back in a few years. And 350-people will still have their jobs.

            These are good things.

            For now.

            I still do have my worries. But they’re not like some other collectors. Because I’m only going into my third full-time year of collecting since I initially stopped after 1992, I, admittedly, don’t have the same hung-ups and bias for/against what Topps, in its current form, does. I mostly enjoy what Topps does.

I collect the base sets. I love Heritage and Archives. I’m still not into the flash. Don’t care for parallels, autos, or numbered cards. I’m still swimming in this sea as a very old school collector in a very modern era. And because there still is room for a guy like me, I don’t have to worry so much about the bling, the chromes of the world.

Topps is Topps…for now. And there comes my worry. I don’t know much about Fanatics but they seem flashy. They seem like they’re the kind of company where everything is spectacle. I mean, they do traffic in sports merchandising and memorabilia after all. My worry is that the flash will start to seep in more. More digital. More online. Less emphasis on the tactile. The brick-and-mortar stores that felt like they were just starting to come back.

And I worry about cost.

I’m getting set to start placing orders for 2022 product. Base and Heritage. And everything seems to continue to be going up in cost. Pre-sale on Hobby Boxes is about ten bucks more than it was for 2021 product. With Fanatics and their flashy vibe, I do fear that costs will continue to go up. I’m excited about Topps getting NFL and NBA products back to collectors. But will NFL hobby boxes still be four-hundred bucks? Is a Topps baseball hobby box going to start heading up toward two-hundred?

Man, I hope not.

But with everything I’ve seen of Fanatics, and considering their CEO, it is a concern that they could eventually begin to cater more to the big-time collectors. The big-money collectors. And that, even with a brand like Topps in their fold, that they’ll still move further and further away from the average collectors who truly built this special Hobby into what it is.

Maybe that won’t be the case.

Maybe there will be room for all of us.

For now, I’m going to try and put aside the anxiety, and just be happy that Topps will be around further into the future.

 

Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting!

 

NEXT FRIDAY: We’re going to talk about wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey stuff again. This time, what to do with all of those rookie cards for those good but not great players who played during the junk wax era.