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“Forever Homes” are necessary for our hobby

Posted in Commentary with tags , , , , , on November 19, 2022 by Cardboard Icons

I went down the rabbit hole of Burbank Sportscards Instagram Reels recently and there Rob Veres, the owner of who calls himself “The Cardfather,” has been speaking lately about the hobby lacking collectors and the notion that cards need “forever homes.”
Rob is absolutely correct.


For decades this hobby has been built on the idea that people buy these cards or trade for them because they enjoy the actual cards. The process by which they make those transactions can of course be part of the enjoyment, but ultimately a person’s long-term involvement in this space comes down to the cards.


Now before you click off this piece and call this gate keeping, know that I realize that being involved in this hobby today is different than it was two decades ago, and two decades before that and so on. I’m not suggesting that the way folks decide to participate is wrong.

What I’m saying is that if there is no one to ultimately collect the cards and own them regardless of value – and this is key – and be their “Forever Home” as Rob said, then the future of this hobby is not sustainable.

This is an exciting time for our hobby. There are more eyes on these cards, and more money flowing here than ever before. But if that is only occurring to continuously flip one card for the next, someone ends up getting stuck holding the cards that no one wants anymore. And that’s when it has a trickle-down effect that drives people out of the market because of lost money and “worthless” cards, and ultimately this hobby becomes a joke again.


One of the ways we can combat this is to evaluate our own involvement. Determine the thing or things that really have our attention in this hobby. And when others around us express and interest in cards, we should help them determine what it is that they want to achieve or collect in the hobby before they jump in head-first and max-out a credit card buying into breaks or playing a different version of the lottery.


So, what’s my history in cards? Here’s a short version of how I’ve collected over the years.


I started collecting in 1987 (Age 7) and at the time my goal was just to acquire and own cards. And with the price of packs in those days this was a simple task. Through my early teenage years I chased chase (insert) cards as everyone else did, but also collected the Boston Red Sox and Roger Clemens. In my mid- to late-teen years I made a switch from inserts and turned them all into rookie cards as I set off to collect every rookie card of all stars listed in Beckett. In my mid 20s I expanded the rookie collection and began adding Hall of Famers dating back to the 1940s. And in my early 30s I expanded again to include Hall of Famers back to tobacco era and then started to piece together a collection of Clayton Kershaw cards. Additionally, I decided to go back and build/acquire a run of Stadium Club baseball sets.

And now in my early 40s I am pivoting again. I’ve actually started to sell off some of the Hall of Fame rookies/tobacco cards — note I said some, not all — and narrow my collection to some player PCs, and various items I enjoy collecting with my son.


I got my son involved in the hobby about five years ago – he was also about age 7 – and since then we have enjoyed this hobby together, albeit in different ways. He collects Oakland A’s, Matt Chapman, some Matt Olson, Stephen Curry and other current Golden State Warriors. My Player PCs consist of Clayton Kershaw and Roger Clemens, as well as Carney Lansford, Nolan Arenado, Madison Bumgarner and others. These collections are now on their “Forever Home.”

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I am an attention-seeking hypocrite … there, I said it.

Posted in Commentary with tags , , , , , on December 9, 2020 by Cardboard Icons

Hypocrisy is often something I wrestle with. I cannot tell you how many times a day I scroll through my Twitter timeline and either groan or shake my head at something that I see posted by one of the persons I follow. 

Every morning I can count on three things:

-Someone is bitching about a facebook post involving a card that appears to be grossly overpriced.

-Someone is posting about a shopping cart full of retail products they scored that morning; or conversely a picture of empty shelves.

-Someone stirring the pot about the collector versus investor/flipper.

It’s fucking tiresome. I stare at the stuff and wonder why folks post what they do, and almost always it comes back to one thing: Attention.

Whether you realize it or not, your decision to type 140 characters and hit the “send” button is often an act of self indulgence, an exercise to reassure that you have a space in this world, in this card hobby. Sure, every now and again your intentions are pure. Maybe you’ve got a question about a product or are seeking something. But when you’re posting random stream-of-conscious thoughts, pithy messages or even meaningful ones — particularly vague ones — or pictures of stuff you own, there is only one reason you do so: It’s because you need the attention.

And don’t get me wrong, I write this column KNOWING that I often do the same thing. I wrestle with this every day. There is indeed a desire for attention, but also an addictive quality to this whole social media phenomenon in which we participate and it’s good to call it out every now and again.

We love writing something that gets people talking; we love having a unique take or being the one to break news. We love the “like” and “retweet” notifications, and we get off on the number of followers we have.  All of this is part of what some deem a form of “social currency” — it gives us purpose, value in a world — digital or not — where it is easy to go from super popular to someone who gets lost in the shuffle. And at age 40, some 33 years into this collecting career, I fear this is where I am.

I’ve never been one to seek attention, yet here I am almost every day looking for a way to hold my space in this hobby. There is a real fear that I may in fact become irrelevant, and after being somewhat public for the last 12 years through my blog and Twitter, that is a reality with which I am having a hard time coming to grips.

And don’t get me wrong, I’ve never believed that I was/am super important in this space. I’m just a dude in California who got into cards at age 7, spent a bunch of money over the years, amassed some desirable cards, retained a bunch of information relative only to this hobby, and decided to start a blog one day to chronicle my journey. But the blog got some attention, it was coupled with the birth of Twitter, and was taken to another level a few years later with some thrift store finds that opened doors to some magazine writing opportunities. All of this created this idea that the account “cardboardicons” was worth following for some of you; and with each of the likes, retweets and follows grew this notion of importance. And with that “success” comes this incessant desire to maintain it.

Where I struggle though is realizing that some of this forces me to be something I never was or really wanted to be: An attention seeker. And while I have days where I tweet whatever I want, whenever I want, I have many other days where I self edit because I can see myself groaning and shaking my head at some of the very things I begin to write. Because I know that I am indeed a hypocrite.

Having said all of this, I cannot say this changes anything. So much of the hobby experience — at least for me — these days is dependent on sharing thoughts and experiences with persons whom we have deemed friends because we follow each other on Twitter. And I enjoy this little space that I occupy in this hobby, even if it’s shrinking in relevance given today’s market and current practices. But the one thing I will continue to be is real, and that is why I felt it important to identify these feelings I am having. Hell, maybe some of you also feel the same way about hypocrisy and need someone else with whom you can talk to about them.

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What message am I sending to my kid collector

Posted in Commentary with tags , , , , , , , , on August 2, 2020 by Cardboard Icons

Over the last year and a half I’ve enjoyed perhaps the greatest thing any card collecting father could want: My son enjoys and wants to participate in my hobby.

There was a point where things were a bit touch and go early. I was not sure that my hobby, one I’ve enjoyed since I was 7 years old, would be one on to which he would latch. But here we are in 2020 and at age 9 he is learning things I am teaching him.

But this learning point is exactly what’s concerning me at the moment about the relationship between cards and my son and I. I came into this hobby with no hobby role model. My dad wasn’t a big sports guy during my youth, and while my mother is the one who really introduced me to collecting in general, she did not really provide a structure. All I knew is that she would buy several boxes of Topps Garbage Pail Kids — I have this vivid memory of us plucking boxes off a pyramid dysplay in the center of an aisle at a store like Woolworth — then we’d sort them and put them in a box. I never learned why we did that, or what we would do. In fact, I later took them (without permission) and traded them for baseball cards.

With my son, I feel I have this opportunity to present him with a foundation for a collection. To this point I have introduced him to cards in general, taught him all about the rookies and prospects, how to store the good cards and how to sort his other cards by team and store them in binders. This kid is organized and that is lightyears ahead of where I was when I was 9. But I am wondering what MY actions with my collection are teaching him.

I have a bad habit of buying too many baseball (and now basketball) cards. It’s a problem a lot of us have. Over the last year and a half, however, I have reconciled this in my brain as being OK as long as its an experience I share with my son. We open together, announce the player names and share excitement (and disappointment) together — it’s an experience. And the way it works with us, any base cards we need for the set are for the set, but anything else he pulls from packs are his to keep if he wants. He’s hit some big cards (relatively speaking) and usually accepts them, but every now and again he refuses … it’s not that he doesn’t want them, it’s that he’s being modest.

I digress. Over the last five years I’ve had a lot of fluidity in my collection. Don’t get me wrong, I have my foundation of stuff that I do not intend to move unless circumstances dictate. But I am always selling and sorting stuff. And over the last year specifically I have been liquidating (or preparing to anyway) a lot of items that I have deemed as items I no longer have a desire to keep.

This is important for me as the sheer amount of cards I own often put me in a place of depression. The volume alone can be daunting and overwhelming and can actually cause me to not appreciate any of it. And so I have been pillaging box after box for items to send to COMC to re-purpose, and then sorting other stuff to sell off in team lots (look for an announcement soon).

Having said all of that, I am not sure what message my son is receiving through all of this. I talk about moving items out, but am constantly bringing stuff in. Am I doing this wrong?

I’m pretty open with my son about this hobby. He knows this hobby is expensive, but that we can enjoy it even on a small scale. He knows there are terrible people in and around it, but knows there are some great ones as well. He also knows it takes a lot of work and desire to keep things organized and has seen first hand (read: me and my mess) what happens when you let things overrun your life.

I am a sentimental guy and can find a reason to keep just about anything, especially when cards are involved. Hell, cards are what kept my head straight when my parents split; when I witnessed ugly domestic violence; when my friends got caught up in drugs and other nonsense. The cards are also what’s kept me connected to sports at times, what’s helped me remember not only the aforementioned bad things, but also the great things.

That said, we cannot possibly keep everything. And so it has been a constant struggle lately to purge things and almost hit the reset button in a way. With these actions my son has been involved — he’s helped me sort teams in recent months — and has heard me say things like “It doesn’t matter,” “I don’t care,” “I don’t need it in my collection,” and “I want them out of the house.”

These phrases are a coping mechanism for me to sever ties with items that I really don’t “need” with hopes of being able to remove some of the weight from my shoulders. I explain to him my thought process. I just hope that he understands, and that these help shape his future in the hobby to determine what he enjoys. As I’ve said already, his collecting skills and collection are advanced for his age.

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Embrace these times; things won’t always be this good

Posted in Commentary with tags , , , , , , on May 6, 2020 by Cardboard Icons

For about 20 years, we’ve been talking about the rise and fall of the hobby since the days of the Junk Wax Era. We have shared and embraced story after story discussing the great times we had during the 1980s and 1990s as this hobby rose to stardom.

We discussed the simplicity as well as the ingenuity of the time. We discussed chasing rising stars who eventually flamed out on the big stage, or never even got there. We discussed a time when base cards and simple parallels or inserts carried massive premiums only to be forgotten as interests shifted to relics and autos.

Then of course we discussed how that all attention had waned, and how seemingly almost everything from our youth became worthless. Simplicity was for the most part thought of as over-produced rubbish that many discarded at thrift stores, or even burned in their backyard bonfires.

But due to various influences (both people and circumstances) here in 2020 we have arrived at the summit of the collecting world again. Business is booming — it actually has been fairly healthy for the better part of a half decade or longer — and now our hobby has national eyes on it again. The folks who collected in their youth are returning to recapture the feelings they left behind when they discovered other interests, or because life took them in a different direction. And then of course there are folks who see dollar signs and view cards as an area for investment.

Like many collectors, I cringe when I hear that folks are treating these cards as investments. I don’t have an economics background, but I know from experience that the investment piece of this hobby/business is real, but also is an area that is ripe with scams, con-artists and really is something built on the notion that others believe in the idea that “he’ll only get better” and plays on the character flaw of FOMO, the acronym for “fear of missing out.”

Where things have changed recently for me is a shift in mindset about these so-called newcomers. It’s still frustrating and mind-boggling at times to see the big numbers thrown around at cards we considered to be forgotten or relatively worthless, but I’ve been trying to be more accepting of these folks. In reality, this isn’t all that different that the boom that many of us 30- or 40-somethings had a part in when we joined this world of baseball cards. I mean it’s not like folks were always spending hundreds, thousands, or hundreds of thousands of dollars on cards, let alone a singular card.

Instead of pushing back against this new type of hobbyist, we should to some degree be embracing the voracity with which folks are enjoying ANY aspect of this hobby. I don’t chase prospects anymore and can’t see the allure to spending hundreds of dollars on unproven players, but others do. And it is because of their dedication to breaking that stuff that small businesses (online breakers and even some brick and mortar stores) are enjoying success; it is also why other cards filter to different types of collectors at prices that don’t always make sense. Their “loss” is other persons “gain.”

At some point we can expect there will be some sort of regression, and with it a lot of finger pointing and laughing because that’s just how some folks are, but for now we should understand that this hobby/business/market is no longer just about the old school curmudgeons who love splitting hairs about hobby definitions and can’t see past the idea that folks with different mind sets might also enjoy cards, even if their type of enjoyment or their reasons for being involved is not the same as our personal reasons.

There isn’t just one way to sort a stack of cards; to organize your collection; or to protect your cardboard assets. Then it is wrong for us to assume there is only one way to participate in this world of sports cards.

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I had the talk with my boy …

Posted in Dad Life with tags , , , , , , on February 9, 2020 by Cardboard Icons

There comes a time in every man’s life when he sits his boy down to talk about important things in life. That time came last weekend.

I asked him if we could talk, and he looked concerned. He looked nervous and I told him that he’s growing … and so is his collection.

The Birds and Bees talk has already been broached in a age-appropriate way with my 9-year-old, but THE TALK I had with him recently was about choosing a collecting focus.

He had cards on the table and cards on the book case, and cards in sorting boxes, which ultimately are set to make it into binders. It was time for him to think seriously about WHAT he wanted to collect and not just quantity. I told him there was no rush, but I wanted him to start thinking about it. I left it in his hands.

The morning after I mentioned this, he woke up and asked when we could talk — he wanted to discuss some possible focus for his collection.

I told him that he didn’t need to have unbreakable rules for his collection, but he should think about what type of cards excite him, and what players’ or teams’ cards he likes to see.

While his focus is not like that of a laser, he has come to this conclusion: He wants to collect these three players: Steph Curry and Klay Thompson, and Matt Chapman. He likes other players, but he is actively collecting these guys.

Eventually I want to get him to a point where he basically has items that he wants to keep, and others that he is open to moving. And when he has that determination, I hope to help him find some trading partners to move some of his excess for items that he enjoys.

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