I Get to Be That Guy !!!!

 

I like think back to when I was a young collector.

            When buying a pack of cards was the apex of conspicuous consumption. When my cards were almost as important as my family and friends. Maybe, more so? I kid. I think. Being an adult collector is nice. But it gets mixed in there with work, health, death and taxes. Although it is a decent stress reliever. It’s nice at times to think back on the kid who led a relatively stress-free childhood. The kid racing down mall hallways to get to the card shop first. The kid whose pockets were on fire the minute he stepped into a drug store or a card show.

            When I was that kid, I always had a jonesing for older cards. Vintage in the current parlance of our times. Cards from the 50s and 60s. It was always my hope then, when deemed old enough, that my old man would bestow upon me an old collection of cards that he’d been keeping in boxes for years, for just the right time. Sadly, that didn’t happen. My old man’s cards, few as they apparently were, went to that sickening age-old tradition…of putting them in bicycle spokes?

            Imagine this…spinning around in bicycle spokes.

            Also, to my old man…cards were silly.

            A waste of money.

            Coin collecting was where it was at for him.

            To each there own.

            At least I was able to cage some smokes off of him.

            Okay, I’d tell myself, back then. If not the old man, then…an uncle. Yes, yes! An uncle. I had two uncles. Of course, one was my dad’s brother, whom I rarely saw. The other was my mom’s brother, whom I saw at least few times a year. Good ol’ Uncle Bud. Maybe Uncle Bud had cards. I used to feel him out. Ask about them. Talk about players and designs. But, like my old man, any cards that Uncle Bud kept, also went to flipping or spinning around goddamned bicycle wheels. Also, he had two sons of his own. I might’ve been the oldest nephew. But I was third on the pecking order, if any cards were found.

            Again…this…in tire spokes.

            My wife’s family has had it rough the past few years.

            Her father died in March 2021.

            Her mom, my mother-in-law, passed away in July of this year.

            She (mostly) and me have had to go up to Buffalo to help settle all the affairs (money and insurance and the like) and handle, along with my wife’s two sisters, the sad and sometimes overwhelming job, of cleaning out their apartment. On one of the trips that my wife made alone, she called me out of the blue, and began asking me if I knew these baseball and football players. Being an avid sports fan, a collector, a drunkard, and a guy who can’t do much beyond 7 P.M. but blearily watch sports on his cell phone, of course I knew the players that she was talking about.

            But inquiring minds wanted to know why she was asking?

            Apparently my ten-year-old nephew was now into sports card collecting. He had stacks of cards everywhere in a room where ten-year-olds hold court and are small kings of their castle. He had cards in binders. He talked value. He had friends selling cards online. Suddenly, a spot of excitement burst in me, outside of all of the sadness we’d been dealing with. My nephew? A collector? A ten-year-old collecting cards? I knew that kids still did collect, Pokemon and shit, right? But I’d never been in such close proximity to a child collector. To me, a child collector was like spotting a unicorn.

            All of the sudden my childhood flashed before me.

            Friends with their own stacks of cards.

            Kids carrying binders like they were stock portfolios.

            My old man.

            My Uncle Bud.

            Them desecrating a card like this in bicycle spokes.

            How I always wanted that older collector to bestow upon me some older cards.

            Then I realized…I GET TO BE THAT GUY!!!

            I asked my wife to get me a list of players that my nephew collected.

            She texted me this.

            

            A list. A player’s list. A kid’s sports card wish list! At least the Football part....i deleted the baseball one and can no longer find it on my phone.

            I knew we were going up to Buffalo in August for the dreaded task of cleaning out my in-law’s apartment. The least I could do was give the kid some cards. Now, I get it that the players on the list aren’t very old. They aren’t Clemente, Aaron, Mays. Or even my junk wax heroes like Bo Jackson or Barry Bonds. But to a ten-year-old, a card from 2018 or 2019 can feel kind of old. Also, he’s a novice. He starts getting further in further into the sport and, oh, boy, do I have the junk wax to push upon him.

            I spent the few weeks before going up to Buffalo, sifting through all of the boxes of overflow cards that I had taking up ½ a room in our space-deprived Brooklyn Apartment. Though I hope to one-day give my nephew some cards of some big guns, most of the players he’s into right now, are players that I couldn’t wait to give away.

           Think the Joey Vottos and Harrison Baders of the world.

            All in All, I ended up filling a 300-card box of cards for the kid. All in year order. All in player order. All of which he managed to get out of order, in about a minute, while excitedly sifting through them.

            Sigh…ten-year-olds.

            Not only did I get to be the guy to bestow cards upon a young collector, I got to be the guy who got to take a young collector out on a spending spree…at an actual card store! My nephew and I spent an afternoon a Dave & Adam’s Card World, where I was able to spoil him on some football and Champion’s League Soccer cards (his true favorite sport), as well as some Pokemon blah blah blah…I don’t know.

            *brief aside…I know own A soccer card. *

Nephew wanted the experience of opening cards at the Dave & Adam’s “break bar,” where he opened a back of Pokemon cards and got a rare Chandor or Chandar or Chandler Bing…I don’t know these cards…and immediately started screaming, as dozens of dorks (I mean Pokemon collectors) came over to take a look at what he’d ripped out of a $3 pack. The guys at Dave & Adam’s took our picture with the card (which they have yet to post of the site), and we found out said card was worth $90 raw. More if we got it graded.

            Wait…people GRADE Pokemon cards?

            To make the afternoon complete, we also stopped and did the retail thing at a suburban Buffalo Target (God, I love cities that have suburban big box stores with cards), where more Pokemon cards (not the same kind of luck) were bought, and I was able to get my hands on a few of these.

            Then we promptly went back to my in-law’s apartment and ripped all of the packs in a crazed haze, devil be damned if I had the proper storage to get all of my stuff back to Brooklyn, along with the rugs, crock pots, stand-up fans and everything else we were taking back with us. One doesn’t think when one rips cards. One reverts back to thoughtless childhood. And speaking of childhood, my nephew does all of the funny things we did as kids with packs. Rubs them for good luck. Had me rub them for good luck. Wouldn’t let his sister touch them out of fear that she was bad luck. Grabs packs from the bottom of the box.

            That kind of voodoo.

            And the kid really did know the value of what he was opening. To me…meh…that’s a good or bad thing. I know my sister-in-law doesn’t like it. She thinks one should collect the players they like. And this older, wiser collector agrees. I tried to instill that in my nephew, while he combed the Beckett web site, looking up the value of anything that he or I opened. Would I have done the same thing with that access as a kid? Probably. I tried to let him know that value was important, but more important when it’s a player or a Chandor or Chandar of Chandler that you actually care about. But…you can be as thoughtful, altruist and honest a collector as you want. This is still America. Money talks. I don’t like it, but I’m not fooling myself about where I live. And, like I said, he has friends whom are already selling online with their dads.

            So…

            And my nephew even gave me a stack of cards to take back to Brooklyn with me.

            Including this sweet Sauce Gardner card that I’d been coveting from a pack he’d opened.

            I like that I get to BE THAT GUY for now. I like that I’ll get to send my nephew cards in the mail. I like that whenever I visit him in Buffalo, that we can make trips to Dave & Adam’s (and other fine LCS there) regular parts of the visit…at least until he gets older and the money goes to other activities. And I hope my nephew begins to find the value in collecting players that you care about, and not just the players/cards that are worth money. Maybe I can help him along with that process.

            That said, a few days after my wife and I returned home from Brooklyn, THIS arrived for me in the mail.

            No players listed, just value.

            Guess I need to reinforce that lesson a little bit stronger next time.

            And, yes, I’m sending the Pickett card back to the kid…with a few extra goodies.

 

Thanks for Reading! Happy Collecting!

NEXT WEEK: Finally…getting the football cards in order.

 

*Sorry the posts have been sporadic. Lots, good and bad, going on. Finished a new novel and now figuring out what to do with it. Hopefully this blog will be a little bit more on the regular now. Thanks for sticking with it!*