“My mother threw them out.” An oft-told tale.

Every now and then I think of what might have been.

I paid for my wife’s engagement ring with the money I received by selling my 1968 Topps set. A good investment.

People of my generation know what other goodies came with the cards at a time when it was rare to just buy a complete set. Where’s the fun in that? Much of the joy was sitting with friends opening one or two packs at a time. When I started collecting in earnest, they were five cents for a pack of five cards, if memory serves, with that little slab of gum. (I won’t wax nostalgic about that.) If you had a quarter to splurge, you could get 15 cards wrapped in cellophane.

But wait, there’s more.

For a number of years, Topps offered a bonus in each pack. One year it was a comic booklet. Another it was a fold-out poster. Deckle edge cards, rub-offs, coins, embossed All-Star cards, stamps. I had all of them. I kept them in a plastic shoe box in my closet. But when it came time to move out on my own, it was nowhere to be found. Could it have been…my mom?

Do you what a set of 1968 playing cards, pictured below, goes for on eBay? I saw one offer for almost $2,000 (a complete 1968 set itself was going for more than $40,000!).

I’m a bit too lazy right now to look up every year and its extras, but the folks who run the Trading Card Database have done a great job. So as Casey Stengel used to say, “You could look it up.”

I can’t help but wonder: if I still had all of those inserts, what would they be worth?

Tagged as: Baseball Cards