Sure, we all know how rare the Honus Wagner and Mickey Mantle rookie cards are. And how valuable if they’re in pristine condition. How many times have we denied ourselves the pleasure of just handling the cardboard, worried about bending the corners or leaving finger prints?
Back in the seventh grade, I did a project for a class in which I pasted cards from the 1968 Topps set to a piece of oaktag. And not just any cards, but superstars like Mays, Seaver, Yaz, and more. How much would they be worth today if I’d had shown them “collector’s respect?” (Well maybe not now, but a few years ago.)
That’s why I was especially tickled to find the Poor Old Baseball Cards, which shows what real cards look like: cut, cracked, bent, creased, you name it. It’s like in Toy Story III; the old broken discarded toys that nobody wants.
ESPN even ran a piece about “The value of beat-up baseball cards.”
Each entry discusses a particular card and how the POBC blogger, Anthony Tarantino, acquired it or his emotional attachment to it. Fun stuff.
Of course, I think it only works for old cards; no one cares about a defaced Esmil Rogers.
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All I can think of is how many small fortunes were lost by attaching cards to bicycle tires – I only put on Expos and Padres, but I am sure a few McCoveys or Nolan Ryans (who knew what he would be?) ended up making a lot of “cool noise” while riding bikes back then. Or of course there was the shoe box of cards that was left out in the rain, but I don’t want to think about that…
When I was a kid, we used to have a game at my school called “Scramble” — one kid would stand up on the steps and flip cards down to a mob of kids who would fight to get some. I got a 1966 Carl Yastrzemski card with Yaz’s face completely ripped off. Didn’t matter — I loved that card!
🙂
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