I always dreamed of having at least one child who followed me into this hobby, and thankfully that has come true.

Having a 10-year-old boy who understands this hobby as best as he can for his age is pretty awesome. It’s gives me someone with whom I can sit and crack a blaster with, talk about the ups and downs of the hobby, and truthfully, gives me a new appreciation for the collecting experience.

There is one side effect though: It’s the gray area that exists when making a decision to give cards as a gift.

For the last year and a half I have noticed myself buying cool potential PC pieces and some sealed blasters under the premise that they are for him to be given as a gift, only when the time comes to give it, I’ve found I’ve bought too much and complicated the situation.

It’s sort of began in the summer of 2019 when I started picking up certified autographs of Oakland A’s players for my son. He’s a fan of the green and gold and I had this vision of getting autos of the top 5-10 stars and giving them to him for either his birthday or for Christmas, which are about seven weeks apart.

Well, those A’s autographs are STILL sitting in a box because I keep finding other things to buy for him, namely blasters of products I know he likes — last year it was holiday versions of a Topps baseball and Hoops basketball, and this year it’s a Mega Box of Prizm Draft Picks basketball and a blaster of Topps Gallery baseball.

But here’s the thing. It doesn’t stop there. In the last month I also acquired the original artwork used for the 2020 Topps Gallery Matt Chapman card, a fantastic collectible in my opinion. Chapman is my son’s favorite player.

I bought this the same day that I purchased my Clayton Kershaw from 2019; the idea was this Chapman would be his Christmas gift for 2020.

But here we are two weeks before the big holiday and the Chappy is sitting in a drawer — and the A’s autographs are still in the aforementioned box — because I purchased the 2020 products for him.

All of this made me start thinking about this habit I’ve got: Did I really buy them for him, or did I acquire them for me only under the guise that they were for him?

I can honestly say that my intent was and still is to give the Chapman and the A’s autographs to him but I also realize I complicated things by purchasing the sealed product for him.

I’ve still got a week and a half to change my mind and still give him the A’s items as his gift. But part of me knows that much of his hobby enjoyment in this time also includes opening packs, and the blaster and mega box might give him more joy.

Do any other parent collectors deal with dilemmas like this?

This entry was posted on December 12, 2020 at 7:17 am and is filed under Collecting With Kids with tags baseball, baseball cards, basketball cards, Matt Chapman, parenting. 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.