OK, this has been discussed before, but I think a lot of the conversations got wiped out when the board got hacked.

I guess this could fit in non-music as well, but I posted here since it is sports-related. I won't cry if it gets moved, you nazi mods. ;)

So anyway, I collected just about everything from '74-'85 when I was growing up. mainly Topps baseball, but I also collected Topps football and just about every novelty card you can imagine - Wacky Packs, Star Wars, Six Million Dollar Man, Planet of the Apes, Charlie's Angels ( :p ), Happy Days, etc., etc.

In the early 90's I started to pick it back up, but my ex-wife gave me shit at the time about it.

So this year I decided I'm going to jump right back in, and I've been having a blast. The whole concept of insert cards is pretty new to me, so that's been fun. Autographs, collectible jersey pieces, and all that stuff. I'm still pretty much a Topps guy, though.

So, who else is still a collector here and not afraid to admit it? :D

I used to be a heavy collector when I was younger, I might buy a pack every once in a blue moon now but I mainly quit collecting because the price of a pack of cards is absurd..fewer cards for more $$$$.

I got into collecting specific players on Ebay, I would buy big card lots of one player but I've really slowed down from cards and gotten into getting memorablia (sp) signed (footballs, baseballs..etc).

I still have all my cards though, plan on keepin those forever. :D

I used to be a big basketball collector back in the late 80's/early 90's. My goal was to find a rookie Isiah Thomas card, which I eventually found. Along the way, I got several Jordan cards. Once there was more than one or two card companies that came out, I quit collecting. After the Pistons won their championship this past year, I began to collect their cards just to get framed. But finding them down here is next to impossible-any helpers out there know where I can find just a regular card or insert that says 2004 NBA Champs or something to that effect?

Topps baseball man, myself, started in 1974 and ended in 1997 or 1998 or so. Also own the 1972 & 1973 Topps baseball sets. Even though they put a lot of bells and whistles with the cards as I got older - can't beat those '70s sets for quality - just about every player in the league, team photos, managers, world series and playoffs cards, record breakers, all stars and occasionally goofy stuff like "boyhood photos of the stars". Competition killed baseball cards I think - that and the damn rookie card craze, followed by the insert craze. Sets shrunk toward the end so that instead of getting 25-27 players on a team, now you were getting 15-17, and about a quarter of those were draft picks and low-minors prospects, just in the hopes of having the next "big" rookie card. I understand sets have gotten a little bigger again, but with the price and all, it's over for me. I still want to drag out some of my older sets and reminisce one of these days, though.

Also bought Football, Basketball, Hockey and Racing cards at various times - a lot of them (except the racing) are now gone, though.

I collected hockey cards in the 80's and early 90's. I also remember collecting Star Wars cards. I bought movie cards too, like Batman and Dick Tracy and Terminator 2. I also bought a lot of Superhero cards, I have the first 3 sets of the Marvel series. I still have all of them.:cool:

So anyway, I collected just about everything from '74-'85 when I was growing up. mainly Topps baseball, but I also collected Topps football and just about every novelty card you can imagine - Wacky Packs, Star Wars, Six Million Dollar Man, Planet of the Apes, Charlie's Angels ( :p ), Happy Days, etc., etc.
So, who else is still a collector here and not afraid to admit it? :D

My god, you just named exactly what I have in my collection! I guess same age has something to do with it. I also have those cards found on boxes of Hostess Twinkies and DingDongs.

I was really into football and from 69 to 73 picked up Topps at the local drug store for .10 cents a pack. I also aquired alot at Catholic school when you would flip cards off of a wall and top other cards. I have a lot of rookies from back then although the way they rate them today I would have problems with near mint status due to actually playing with them and not sticking them into a plastic holder. I also live near Duryea, Pa. In the early days Topps was located there and I 've talked to people who as kids would wander onto the property and find cards and uncut sheets of cards in a burn pile. At the time Topps used to burn stuff on the property. In fact, the guy who inspected my home has a nice uncut sheet of Micky Mantle cards and others. I also have older baseball and the 70-71 basketball. During the late 80's and into the nineties I got into Nascar; Maxx cards. I still dabble but I am very selective and mostly look for Rookie cards. Never looked at it as a $ thing but something that still connects me with my days as a youth.

I was big into baseball cards from like 86 till 97. I hated all these inserts they put in it now. All you get now is maybe 3 players and the rest are inserts. I will get back into it sooner or later. I have alot of Magic cards when they got huge in the mid 90s. Lot of my good ones got water logged. But still have a few good ones left that are dry. Nascar cards and comic cards i also collected when i was a kid.

I guess I'll rehash a story I told here a couple of years ago.

Like I said, I was hardcore about Topps baseball primarily, and collected from '74-'85. Well, around junior high school, me and a buddy that I went to school with went to get cards together all the time. Middle of high school (when I actually started tailing off with the collecting and spending more of that money on beer... :D ), we got our first pro card shop in town. Well, my buddy and I decide we were going to open up a shop of our own after high school. One day we take all my cards over to his house and combine our collections.

* (raise your hand if you see where this going right now)

Naturally, towards the end of high school, we start hanging out with other people more than we did together. Graduation comes, and we both go to UK together, but rarely see each other at all. If you raised your hand a second ago, you knew that I never saw the cards again. :brickwall

Well, I used to tell my ex-wife I was going to call him up and talk to him about it, some 8-10 years after the fact. We happen to bump into him and his new bride that summer, and we meet her, blah blah blah. No chance to mention the cards since we were in a noisy restaurant and they were on their way out, but I tell him I'll give him a call sometime, and he says cool. Well, I call his house one day and talk to his wife for a minute or two, and she says he's out of town, she'll leave him a message I called (not that I was believing her).

A couple of years ago, I tell my girlfriend the story and she says it won't hurt to contact him, but not to expect anything - pretty much what I'm thinking all along, too. I decide I'll write him a letter instead of just calling on the phone out of the blue some 15 years after we last hung out together.

A couple of weeks later, I got a really, really nice letter back from him, saying he was really glad to hear from me and he wondered often what I was up to these days. Turns out he is working overseas in England - has become very successful for a big well-known firm, running their worldwide sales. He tells me the good news is that he still has all the cards. The bad news is that he is over there for a couple more years and has moved his family over there with him, so there is no way to get into his storage unit to get a hold of the cards. However, he said once he is back, no matter when that is, he'll get in touch and we'll throw down some Little Kings cream ales like old times (our preferred brew of choice when we were young budding drinkers) and see what we can do with the cards.

Hell, nothing may come out of it, but I'm hopeful that we may actually do that once he moves back stateside.

Hope you can reunite with your cards and friend in the near future. Little Kings! Wow I remember drinking those around '85-'86 or so. Are Little Kings still around? Good luck!

I collect older Baseball cards mostly, or cards of guys that were my heroes growing up. I have an Al Kaline rookie, a George Kell rookie, both former Tigers. Probably my fav card is a 1909 t-206 Ty Cobb tobacco card....it is in pretty crap condition, it has been graded a 1 by PSA, but hell how many of those cards are even left out there. I also have a Cobb Autographed ball, not sure if it is real or not, has been passed down through the family so I think it is, but one of these days I want to have it authenticated. I used to have a lot of Mantle cards, God the price on those things are outrageous!! Anyone ever see what Mantle rookies go for?? Crazy. I had a Ted Williams rookie, bought it just a few months before he died, err, was frozen....after he died the price shot up so much I sold it. Could kick myself now, should have held on to it. I have some nice Bowman's and Leafs also, Yogi berra, Stan Musial. I also have an almost complete set of 1951 Topps blue/red backs, this set originally was a kids game. I like the older cards alot, they have a lot of character.

topps where my favorites . i remeber back in the 80's . when i lived ny for a few yrs . that whenever i went to shea for a game . you would see the nl players getting their pixs taken at shea. i remeber cutting classes for 1.00 pm games . to see batting practice and getting autographs. well ff to now at dolphin stadium you cant even see batting practice , opening day hasnt been the same fora long time. bud selig youve destroyed baseball.

Yeah, opening day in Tiger town is still special, but it will never be the same without Tiger Stadium. How was it/is it to see a game at Shea...good ballpark??

i loved watching games at shea.
you could tip the old men who worked as ushers and they would sit in the best seat in the house. literally. countless games i saw sitting off the 3rd base dugout.

Cool, Tiger stadium was the greatest. I had season tix for 2 years...upper deck eight rows back, right behind home plate....greatest eight dollar seats ever!! You were right on top of everything...damn I miss that stadium. I wish the Tigs' would play ten games a year there seeing as they won't tear it down but ........Detroit is a mess as usual!!

I've got over 100,000 cards in my collection, but I don't do it actively anymore.

Was big from about 79 till about 95. Cards suck now!

I do go after some individuals here and there now.

Anyone else here collect Kenner Starting Lineups at all? I've got way too much of that plastic crack laying around.

I remember people used to give me a hard time for buying football and hoop cards in the mid-80s. Baseball was king then...It wasn't until Beckett did the monthlies for those sports at the end of the decade that they took off.

Beckett sucks by the way. I hated it. It always glamorized everything. Nothing was ever cynical or realistic.

Probably my best score was buying a few boxes of 86-87 Fleer hoops when no one else did. Wish I'd bought more...

I collect everything sports related. I live near binghamton, ny with the Mets minor league team so I try to get tons of autographs. Other then that I do buy tons of cards. I have also slowed down because of prices of cards. Another big factor is how much people want for rookie cards. Hockey this year was insane with everyone chasing crosby.

A Topps error creates demand for Alex Gordon's card. Apparently only 100 or so are believed to be in circulation. I won't set foot in a Wal Mart, but apparently that's where the first sets of cards were shipped.
Here is a bit of the article from ESPN:

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2429888

Alex Gordon has yet to play a single game in the major leagues and yet his rookie card is the hottest in all of baseball, selling for as much as $2,550 in recent weeks.
Is Gordon the Kansas City Royals' next great player? Could be. But that isn't why his card, which is No. 297 in Topps' 2006 set, is worth that kind of money.
The piece of cardboard is worth that much only because it never should have been produced in the first place.
Last year, in part to reduce confusion in the marketplace, the Major League Baseball Players Association ruled that card manufacturers could make rookie cards only of players who either made the 25-man roster or played in a major league game the season before. Gordon didn't qualify either way. After he led Nebraska into the College World Series, the No. 2 overall pick in the 2005 draft didn't sign his contract -- including a $4 million signing bonus -- until late September.
Whatever you do, don't let mom throw this card away.
"At the last second, we realized we had made a mistake, so we pulled the cards, destroyed them by cutting out the photo and then destroyed the plates," said Topps spokesman Clay Luraschi.