THree Cards That Mean A lot
There are a handful of cards in my lifetime that mean way more to me than just value or ROI.
True, being a small business owner in the hobby for nearly four decades now, wheeling-and-dealing trading cards, has meant a lot of very cool cards have come in and headed out. Some have been pretty valuable and some have found a home in quarter-boxes.
There are three cards in particular, however, that mean a little bit more than the others — and they’re not the most valuable or desirable ones in the world to most, either.
They are, however, a trio of cards that have a deeper meaning to me for various reasons.
The first, a 1979 Topps #65 Mark Belanger is literally the first card I ever saw after opening my first pack of cards
back in 1979, when I was barely 7 years old.
I was, and still am, a huge Orioles fan, and I remember it like it happened this morning opening that first-ever pack from Abott’s Drugstore and having the top card be an Orioles player, Belanger. Needless to say, I was hooked and Belannger quickly became one of my favorite players… Until I began to play baseball myself and found a home at first base.
For me, there was one clear top guy in the game that I tried to emulate and his name is Don Mattingly.
So, I did what every 11-year old kid would do — I started begging my mom to buy pack after pack of 1984 Topps — and she did.
That was when I started trading friends for their Mattingly rookies as well, and selling some of my collection in order to fund the purchase of more ‘84 Topps, Fleer and Donruss packs.
At one time, I had quite a few Don Mattingly Topps rookie cards, filling several pages of my baseball card binder as well as a small shoebox. Over the next year or so I started selling some of these too, to friends and even my local LCS.
Although I loved Mattingly as a player, and that card, truth be told, that card changed my life and set me on a path that I am still traveling today. I learned that I absolutely loved the business of trading cards, and entrepreneurship.
I started paying more attention to condition and doing everything I could to keep every card mint. I rushed out to buy Beckett magazines and tracked the value of my collection. I started buying, selling and trading with friends and local card shops in the area. I started networking with folks who loved the hobby as much as I did, and really started paying attention and listening to folks on the other side of the table at card shows and my local LCS. I became a student of the hobby.
Less than two years later, just shy of my sixteenth birthday, I set up at my first card show with a single homemade showcase, stocked with about every card I had accumulated in my collection, the newest copy of Beckett, and about $50 in change.
I don’t remember how much I made at that show, if anything, but I do remember the rush I felt with being there. I still get that same feeling.
Over the next four years I, and my brother, would set up at dozens of shows a year, grow our little business into something that really had substances. Buying a box or two to break down for inventory at the next show turned into buying cases of product to break down, pack out and sell as wax.
We went from setting up at small VFW halls to traveling all over the midwest to set up at shows with 100s of other dealers from all over the country.
Which leads me into that final card — 1990 Upper Deck French Sergei Fedorov Young Guns.
I’ve always loved hockey cards, and back in the day, our card distributor rep, Tom, told me about the Young Guns cards coming out in the newest hockey release. He nudged me to buy more than our normal order because of it, and he even said he had a way for us to get several cases of the French version, which were way more scarce and sought after here in the states at the time.
So, I did just that, and he wound up being spot on about Young Guns.
And that card in particular, was on fire.
We broke down cases of it, looking for the Fedorov, Bure and more — and finding more than a few.
We literally had a showcase filled with nothing but French Young Guns cards for a good while at shows. Our table became the epic center of the hockey hobby at local shows, particularly in the Detroit area.
We sold a ton of them in a short span, and we also got just as lucky with 1990 Score Lindros cards, over-buying and breaking down cases of it, moving that card and a few others literally as fast as we could put them into the showcase.
The Fedorov card, in particular though, proved to me that I could build a legit and very cool business buying, selling and trading cards — that it could be more than just a hobby.
Believe me, there have been other cards that mean a little bit more than others, but none more than these three in my hobby life. What are some cards that you can say do the same thing?
Drop them into the comments. I look forward to what you all have to say.