Growing up in the late 1980s, during the junk wax era, it was hard not to fall in love with collecting baseball cards. There was something magical about opening a pack of 1987 Topps and looking for cards of your favorite player or team and trading them with your friends. One of the highlights from that summer was riding my bike to the local card shop with a dollar bill tucked into my sock with the intent of purchasing two packs of cards. On my 8th birthday, I remember receiving the complete set of 1988 Topps as a gift and being told not to break the factory seal on the box, because they were going to be valuable in the future (I believe back then a complete set cost $40 and today you can buy them online for $10-15). However, all I could think about was breaking the box open, putting them in plastic binder sleeves and looking through all of the cards and comparing the players’ stats.
It wasn’t until a couple years later, when I began to consider the current and potential future value of my baseball card collection. The breaking point was the release of 1989 Upper Deck. It was the first pack of cards that I remember retailing for over $1, well above my budget. The reason for this premium price was Ken Griffey Jr’s rookie card. He was the son of a Major League Baseball All-Star and a teenage phenomenon, deemed to one of the future greats of the game. I couldn’t believe my eyes, when I saw the card in the display case with a price tag of $100 (today you can purchase an ungraded version for around $50-60, but a mint condition PSA 10, recently sold for nearly $1,200).
It was at this time that I begged my parents to subscribe to Tuff Stuff, a monthly magazine that featured articles about the hobby but more importantly included a price guide for all of the trading cards. Amongst my friends this became our sports bible and we would use it to broker trades with each other or when selling our cards to the local card shop so that we would get “fair” value.
One of the regular columns in the magazine, highlighted athletes that would autograph cards that were sent to them by fans. It included their name and the address with the instructions to write a letter and enclose your card and a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE). The idea of writing to an athlete and getting an autograph sent back was mesmerizing. After some convincing, my parents gave me on book of stamps which contained enough postage to send out ten letters. Within a month, I received my first positive response and I was hooked. Over the course of the next year, I would write about 50 letters and received most of them back signed (I still have them today).
By the time I was 14, my interest waned, and I stopped purchasing packs and writing autograph requests. It wasn’t until the birth of our first born that I got back into the hobby. Our son was born with a very complex and deadly heart disease that resulted in us spending a considerable amount of time living in a hospital. During this time, one of the things my wife and I did to clear our heads was walk around the Christiana Mall and get a snack that wasn’t hospital food. In the mall, they had a card shop and walking through it brought back so many fond memories of being a child. Not knowing the fate of my son, I needed something to have hope for, and the idea of one day collecting trading cards and sharing that joy with my son was exactly what I needed (it also helped that this card shop supported the hospital that was treating my son).
Shortly after visiting this card shop, I was talking with a colleague at work, who shared his new hobby with me, which involved writing to influential world leaders with one big question on an index card for them to answer and sign their name. I thought this was such a fun idea and it brought back memories of me writing to athletes for their autograph. I began writing some letters again and as the responses came back, I was hooked just as I was as a child. Over the next 7 years, I received back thousands of positive responses.
As my collection grew, I looked for options to protect and authenticate the autographs that I received, so that one day, they would have real value for my son. I choose to use PSA and have been participating in PSA DNA group submissions for several years. The process is simple, you send the cards to PSA, they team of experts reviews the signature to determine if it is real and if so, the card is encapsulated, assigned a certification number and entered into their database. I have been fortunate that 99.99% of my collection has been authenticated.
A couple years ago, my wife and I had our second child and while there were no medical complications our son was diagnosed with autism like his older brother. The idea of passing down thousands of trading cards to my children turned from being viewed as gift into a potential burden. It wasn’t an easy decision but ultimately, I came to the conclusion that I would be smart to reduce the size of my collection while at the same time, looking for opportunities to re-invest in autographed cards that I feel are strong long term investments for my children.
I am currently in the process of slowly selling off roughly 2,000 PSA DNA slabbed trading cards and I am learning a ton along the way. I am enjoying this new phase and along the way, I have added several cards to the collection that I could only have dreamed of as a child. My current focus is adding autographed vintage and modern high-end rookie cards of athletes that I believe will double in value over the next 10 years.
I plan to use this blog to share my collection and the lessons that I have learned. I hope readers find it enjoyable and that along the way, I can connect with other collectors.
Thank you and happy collecting!
Disclaimer: Collecting and investing in autographed sports cards involves financial risk and is not suitable for everyone. I am not providing financial advice, the content on this blog is based on my own research and experience; similiar results are not guaranteed.