Like many American boys, I collected baseball cards when I was growing up. I don't remember exactly how it started, but my guess is that one day in the late 80s, my parents (or just my dad) came home with some cards for me and my brother. We both got into it and pretty soon we were building up our collections, getting cards as Christmas gifts, trading with each other, and meticulously organizing all of them in an OCD-like fashion (maybe that was just me).
I collected baseball cards from about 1989 to 1995 and ended up with over 18,000 of them. A lot were in complete sets, but most were singles that I organized into three-ring binders with those plastic sheets that can hold 9 or 18 (or more if you're crazy) cards. According to the all-knowing Beckett price guide, this was the era of Ken Griffey, Jr. and Frank Thomas. If you had a card that wasn't either of those two, your card wasn't worth shit. What's funny is that even though I collected baseball cards, I've never really followed baseball, so I don't actually understand what set those two players apart from everyone else. Based on Beckett's prices of baseball cards, in the early 90s, Major League Baseball had an entire league of average players and exactly two superstars.
I stopped collecting cards when I was about 14 and my entire collection has sat on a shelf in the closet of my old bedroom since then. Now that I have some free time to tie up loose ends, I figured it was a perfect opportunity to do something with those cards. I've never viewed those cards as an investment, but rather just a fun childhood activity to pass the time. As an adult, I find the concept of sports cards a bit silly and I don't have any sentimental attachment to them. I'm also wary of the future of the collectibles market given all the serious problems this planet is going to face in the next couple of generations (global warming, peak oil, etc.). I don't think people are going to care as much about sports cards in the future as they did in the past, which means they aren't going to be worth that much. We're all going to have bigger problems on our hands.
Given these feelings, I decided that the best course of action was to donate my collection to charity since it wasn't doing any good collecting dust in the closet. Selling them myself would have been a supremely tedious and time-consuming process and I just didn't have the energy or inclination. Donating the collection wholesale to a charity was attractive because I could unload everything at once and let their employees deal with the chore of actually selling everything.
Google research turned up two charities: Cards2Kids and Collectibles With Causes. The former donates the cards themselves to children in hospitals, but they require fairly recent cards, presumably so the kids actually know who these players are. The latter sells the cards and donates the profits to charity, which is exactly what I was looking for. I contacted them and got the ball rolling.
Meanwhile, my mother ransacked the old closet and stuffed all the cards into ten flat-rate USPS shipping boxes. Want to know why the postal service is going bankrupt? It's because they will deliver a 10-pound package from one coast to the other in 3 days for $11. Seriously. But hey, I'll continue to patronize them if they continue to offer outrageously cheap rates. I'm just not surprised they're going under.
Once all the packages arrived, I unpacked everything and starting taking an inventory of what I actually had, since it's been over 15 years since I've looked at these cards. I signed up for one month of online price guides at beckett.com and spent about a day coming up with my best appraisal: $1,900, or a bit more than 10 cents a card. Once I realized how little my collection was actually worth (relative to how many cards I have), I was really happy I didn't try to sell it myself.
Flipping through all those cards brought back some nice memories. I thought back to sitting cross-legged on the carpeted floor in my bedroom, organizing cards, opening new packs, reading stats, looking up prices (which was almost always followed by disappointment), trading or comparing with my brother, and generally just being lost in my own little world. I can see why it appealed to young me, even though I'm lukewarm on the actual sport of baseball. I'm quite happy that young Kyle was so anal about taking immaculate care of all those cards, because now they'll be worth a bit more, which means some charity gets a bit more money. *pats self on back*
Collectibles With Causes is located in Clovis (California), which isn't too bad of a drive from where I live, so I was quite prepared to load everything up in my car and take a one-day road trip. However, it turns out that this wouldn't be necessary as they do free pickups for California residents. Last Thursday, a transporter from Fresno drove up to San Francisco and picked up all the boxes from me. It was quite unceremonious as we exchanged pleasantries while loading several cardboard boxes into the bed of his pickup, but that was okay by me. I was just happy I finally found a good home for all those cards.
Today was the final handshake of the deal: I received an envelope containing a Form 8283 (Noncash Charitable Contributions) for deducting the donation on my taxes and a voucher for two free nights in "deluxe hotel accommodations" for two people, applicable to select cities throughout the U.S. The selection of cities is not that great and I don't know what they consider "deluxe", so we'll see if I actually pull the trigger on that. Maybe I'll grab a friend and fly down to San Diego for a weekend.
I'll finish this tale with some random humor. When I was taking inventory of my cards and trying to appraise them, I came across this gem:
I don't know about you, but the name "Don Money" immediately made me think of a blinged-out rapper with huge chains, a mink coat, and a platinum grill, throwing dolla bills with wild abandon in a strip club and shouting his own name. The contrast of this image with a dorky white guy in a powder-blue Brewers uniform is overwhelmingly hysterical. Ah, we all can dream I guess.
I collected baseball cards from about 1989 to 1995 and ended up with over 18,000 of them. A lot were in complete sets, but most were singles that I organized into three-ring binders with those plastic sheets that can hold 9 or 18 (or more if you're crazy) cards. According to the all-knowing Beckett price guide, this was the era of Ken Griffey, Jr. and Frank Thomas. If you had a card that wasn't either of those two, your card wasn't worth shit. What's funny is that even though I collected baseball cards, I've never really followed baseball, so I don't actually understand what set those two players apart from everyone else. Based on Beckett's prices of baseball cards, in the early 90s, Major League Baseball had an entire league of average players and exactly two superstars.
I stopped collecting cards when I was about 14 and my entire collection has sat on a shelf in the closet of my old bedroom since then. Now that I have some free time to tie up loose ends, I figured it was a perfect opportunity to do something with those cards. I've never viewed those cards as an investment, but rather just a fun childhood activity to pass the time. As an adult, I find the concept of sports cards a bit silly and I don't have any sentimental attachment to them. I'm also wary of the future of the collectibles market given all the serious problems this planet is going to face in the next couple of generations (global warming, peak oil, etc.). I don't think people are going to care as much about sports cards in the future as they did in the past, which means they aren't going to be worth that much. We're all going to have bigger problems on our hands.
Given these feelings, I decided that the best course of action was to donate my collection to charity since it wasn't doing any good collecting dust in the closet. Selling them myself would have been a supremely tedious and time-consuming process and I just didn't have the energy or inclination. Donating the collection wholesale to a charity was attractive because I could unload everything at once and let their employees deal with the chore of actually selling everything.
Google research turned up two charities: Cards2Kids and Collectibles With Causes. The former donates the cards themselves to children in hospitals, but they require fairly recent cards, presumably so the kids actually know who these players are. The latter sells the cards and donates the profits to charity, which is exactly what I was looking for. I contacted them and got the ball rolling.
Meanwhile, my mother ransacked the old closet and stuffed all the cards into ten flat-rate USPS shipping boxes. Want to know why the postal service is going bankrupt? It's because they will deliver a 10-pound package from one coast to the other in 3 days for $11. Seriously. But hey, I'll continue to patronize them if they continue to offer outrageously cheap rates. I'm just not surprised they're going under.
Once all the packages arrived, I unpacked everything and starting taking an inventory of what I actually had, since it's been over 15 years since I've looked at these cards. I signed up for one month of online price guides at beckett.com and spent about a day coming up with my best appraisal: $1,900, or a bit more than 10 cents a card. Once I realized how little my collection was actually worth (relative to how many cards I have), I was really happy I didn't try to sell it myself.
Flipping through all those cards brought back some nice memories. I thought back to sitting cross-legged on the carpeted floor in my bedroom, organizing cards, opening new packs, reading stats, looking up prices (which was almost always followed by disappointment), trading or comparing with my brother, and generally just being lost in my own little world. I can see why it appealed to young me, even though I'm lukewarm on the actual sport of baseball. I'm quite happy that young Kyle was so anal about taking immaculate care of all those cards, because now they'll be worth a bit more, which means some charity gets a bit more money. *pats self on back*
Collectibles With Causes is located in Clovis (California), which isn't too bad of a drive from where I live, so I was quite prepared to load everything up in my car and take a one-day road trip. However, it turns out that this wouldn't be necessary as they do free pickups for California residents. Last Thursday, a transporter from Fresno drove up to San Francisco and picked up all the boxes from me. It was quite unceremonious as we exchanged pleasantries while loading several cardboard boxes into the bed of his pickup, but that was okay by me. I was just happy I finally found a good home for all those cards.
Today was the final handshake of the deal: I received an envelope containing a Form 8283 (Noncash Charitable Contributions) for deducting the donation on my taxes and a voucher for two free nights in "deluxe hotel accommodations" for two people, applicable to select cities throughout the U.S. The selection of cities is not that great and I don't know what they consider "deluxe", so we'll see if I actually pull the trigger on that. Maybe I'll grab a friend and fly down to San Diego for a weekend.
I'll finish this tale with some random humor. When I was taking inventory of my cards and trying to appraise them, I came across this gem:
I don't know about you, but the name "Don Money" immediately made me think of a blinged-out rapper with huge chains, a mink coat, and a platinum grill, throwing dolla bills with wild abandon in a strip club and shouting his own name. The contrast of this image with a dorky white guy in a powder-blue Brewers uniform is overwhelmingly hysterical. Ah, we all can dream I guess.
