Trading Cards : Erasing that old bad feeling in search of the new

 

I didn’t like trading cards as a kid.

            At least I don’t think I did.

            That first sentence might be hyperbole.

            Or revisionist history.

            But I was sitting here thinking about trading cards as I kid, because I’m writing a blog post on trading cards, and the memories just left me with a bad taste in my mouth, and an uncertainty that I ever enjoyed that famous pastime of kids sitting down to trade their baseball cards. I blame anxiety. I know I have an anxiety as an adult. As I kid it might manifest itself through anxiousness. I was anxious a lot.

            That anxiousness came through when trading cards.

            I’m not saying that I always got ripped off. I think I’m saying that I thought I always got ripped off when trading cards. There were people I know who ripped me off. And, in every instance, it was my fault. Phineas was one of those people. His sheer reluctance and the amount of hemming and hawing he did over the most insignificant of trades (I’m talking swapping out common cards here), caused me to get anxious to the point of losing my temper, throwing card after card at him just to complete a deal. And it was me always on the losing end.

            Dimitri Danielopoulus was the other one whom I let rip me off in trades. I’ve said it here before, but Dimitri (D) was always the kid who had the new cards first. Being the idiot that I was, and not realizing that I’d too soon have access to new baseball card product, would trade away key older cards from my collection for a few trifles, or even star cards, that D knew (and I too should’ve known) he’d be getting time and time again in packs over the course of the baseball season. I’d blame the fact that D was two years older than me, or my foolishness…but I knew what I was doing.

            Maybe it wasn’t anxiousness…or even idiocy.

            I was too impulsive when it came to trading cards.

            And trading cards happened everywhere back then. In bedrooms. Outside at picnic tables or on curbs. Kids with binder and travel boxes met up like mafiosos trading goods. We traded at school. Before class. At lunch. At recess. In classrooms while the teachers taught, and we should’ve been focused on learning. If we got discovered, we’d lose that stack of cards for a week. Those were rushed trades, impulsive on both sides.

            I can’t remember the substance of most of those trades.

            But I remember the feeling of loss.

            Even if I got something I wanted, I didn’t like having to give something up.

            Maybe it was Phineas and D playing at my psyche.

            Because of my impulsiveness with them in trading, well, then every trade I made was obviously impulsive with me on the losing end.

            At least that’s what I thought.

            But I’m no one to be pitied.

            I ripped a kid off once…bad…like really bad.

            You can read the sordid details HERE.

            I don’t make many trades as an adult collector. In truth, I’ve made two trades. The one I'm not going to go into detail about involves me trading this.

            For these

            What I like about trading as an adult collector is that the kid guilt doesn’t come along with it. And anytime this lapsed Catholic can avoid guilt is a-okay with me. There’s no feeling of being ripped off. I guess back then we all thought we were getting rich on cards, so any potential bonehead trade, and there went that future yacht I was going to buy when I cashed my cards in for cold hard cash. There went the mansion. There went the sport car.

            There went the plush life.

            It was dog eat dog back then.

            Well…its still dog eat dog.

            But not where me and trading cards are concerned.

            The trade I made recently involves this card.

            Pretty sweet huh?

            I ended up opening two hobby boxes of 2022 Topps Series 1 back in February and that’s where I scored the Nolan Ryan auto card. It was cool to open…but…ultimately underwhelming. I’m not really an auto collector (except if I get a Pittsburgh Pirate). I’m not a Nolan Ryan collector. I don’t sell cards. So the only thing that was going to happen with that Ryan was that it was going to languish in a box with other accumulated autograph cards that I don’t care about. And a Nolan Ryan autograph card should be with someone who wants that card, who will cherish that card.

            See…that’s where I’m at with trading now.

            I’m not making money off this stuff. I never will. So trading card is more in the spirit of helping someone enhance their collection, and maybe I get to enhance mine too. Maybe it should’ve been that way when I was a kid. Perhaps there was something inherently wrong with me that made trading cards more of an emotional burden than it had to be. Would seem to be my M.O. in making things hard than they are.

            Getting back to the Ryan. I’m twitter mutuals with another collector, and he casually inquired about the Ryan back in February when I showed it off on Twitter. Vague plans were made to work out some kind of deal, but then, I guess, life go in the way. This collector, an avid Astros collector, reconnected with me recently concerning the Ryan card, did I still have it, and could we maybe work out a trade because he’d be coming into some Pirates stuff. I was glad to hear from him. That Ryan had been in a box, unlooked at since I opened the pack in the winter, put the card in a top loader, and hid it away.

            So we made a trade.

            And this is what I got in return.

The bulk of which is Topps Pristine. I wasn’t a collector in the early 2000s, so I wasn’t even aware that Topps once had a Pristine line, or that it was even coming back this year. I think the cards are pretty cool. And, despite how badly the team is playing in 2022, there is certain joy in seeing this Pirates with the RC on their card. And the photo of that emerald Gypsy Queen Oneil Cruz doesn’t do it justice. Like I said earlier, I’m no big auto collector…but I make the exception when it comes to players like Ke’Bryan Hayes.

            Overall, I think we were both satisfied. And it was pretty cool to see a card that meant little to me go to a collector that it would mean much, much more to. I wish I had allowed myself to feel that way as a kid trading cards, instead of it being a mini business transaction funneled through the latest Beckett price guide quotes. And I think I’ll keep trading cards…if I have anything anyone wants.

            Like this Devers SSP

            For any of you Red Sox collectors out there with too many awesome Pirates cards just sitting in  a box.

Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting!

NEXT FRIDAY: Adventures in ComC purchases…and, yes, more non-sports cards.