I kind of got a kick out of something today and it was a reminder to me that I am indeed jaded.

I ran into a freshly stocked shelf at Target today, one consisting of the new Topps Update Chrome Mega Boxes. I grabbed a few for me, and one for my son. I opened mine and got some decent looking cards but nothing to really show off.

Then when my son got home from school he opened his Mega Box. And there in the last pack was an autograph of … Yankees rookie pitcher Chance Adams.

My son was enamored. There in his 9-year-Old hands was a rookie autograph of a Major League Player. It instantly became one of his favorite cards, even though it’s far from his best card. But all this kid knows is that from the box he opened he got himself an autograph card … and I wasn’t going to sully his thinking by telling him he could probably buy 15 of those autos for the cost of the Mega Box.

The joy on his face and in his voice when he announced it and showed it off to his sister is what the hobby is all about. It’s something that I and many others miss because we’ve all been jaded — whether we want to believe it or not — by the cost of products; the incessant complaining about lack of creativity, and the feeling that we need to get our money back in our breaks for any of this to make sense.

I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir. And I’m also sure there are some of you laughing that my kid is excited about a Chance Adams auto. But fact remains that we are all chasing that joy; we are all trying to recreate those fabulous feelings we all had whenever we pulled something that made us smile.

We don’t all collect the same. Hell, not all of us even participate in this hobby the same way. But whenever anyone is feeling joy about whatever they’re doing in this hobby, it is a great reminder of why some of us got into it in the first place, and I wish we — I — could feel more of that.

This entry was posted on October 31, 2019 at 3:10 pm and is filed under Box / Pack Break, Misc. with tags baseball, baseball cards, Topps, Topps Chrome, Topps Chrome Update. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.