All In the Cards

As a kid, I found collecting baseball cards a wondrous hobby. Long before baseball cards were issued in numerical order complete sets, baseball card collecting was a mind boggling and time consuming hunt. Card collectors could wind up with 37 cards of an over-hyped rookie whose major league career lasted for a cup of Sanka coffee. By the same token, collectors could spend a lifetime chasing an All-Star player on a quality conditioned card that never reached your best friend's bicycle spoke.

My childhood featured familiar treks to card shops whether I walked, bicycled across town, or bummed car rides off of my mother. Like chasing the heels of heroes, every card added to my prized collection felt like it moved me closer to the Holy Grail. I used to memorize the statistics on the back of the cards and spent what seemed like an eternity playing with cardboard. Regrettably, I haven’t done anything in the last two decades to add to my baseball card collection. Life makes a habit of getting in the way of what we take for granted.

Low and behold, the wizardry of Ebay has made completing baseball card sets possible without ever leaving the home. Everything a collector needs is a fingertip click away. So I scouted for the lone card needed to complete a 700 count 1972 Topps baseball set valued at approximately $2000.00. High number cards are commonly scarce and this set had a limited high print run. In my day, finding star cards in a high number series of the 1972 set used to be as easy as setting out to uncover a dinosaur bone in the backyard. No bones about it, I have been looking for card #686 Steve Garvey since I was ten years old. In 0.02 seconds I found 23 quality 1972 Steve Garvey cards to choose from. The market was saturated with virtually any baseball card imaginable and the only thing missing was the stale bubble gum the cards might have been packaged next to.

After only a few minutes of online shopping, I found the right card to complete my set. If waiting 34 years constitutes an impulse purchase, I double clicked on a BUY IT NOW option for a pristine Garvey with four razor sharp corners. I didn't care too much about the cost factor. I longed for this card before my first girlfriend, before my first wife, before my firstborn. Nah, this wasn’t an impulse purchase. This was a middle-aged man reclaiming a piece of his rightful youth before his first mid-life crisis.