The Collector's Portal
The value of the collectible lies not in the completed set, but by the tangible object and memories that coincide with it
When I was a child my family would drive from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to Springfield, Missouri, each summer. My aunt and uncle lived there and another set lived in Dallas, so this was the intermediate meeting place. There were three events that took place during the trip: a day at Silver Dollar City (an amusement park with a backwoods feel), a visit to Bass Pro Shop (headquartered in Springfield), and a selection of a box of baseball cards to open.
I don’t know how the baseball cards part of the equation started, whether it was because I loved playing baseball and wiffle ball before that, or the general shared love of the Cubs in our family. When this annual extravaganza began in the 1980s, there weren’t that many companies putting out cards. Topps, Donruss, and Fleer were the mainstays and later in the decade Bowman, Upper Deck, and Score arrived on the scene.
Frankly, I can’t remember whether Bass Pro Shop sold baseball cards at the time, though I want to say they did. I’d get to choose a box of cards to take back to my relatives’ to open. A box contained about 36 packs of cards with around 15 cards per pack (there were close to 800 cards in a set). I’d begin tearing into packs and looking through the players, hoping my favorites would be there. Any Cub was a win—later, my favorite players were Ken Griffey Jr. and Frank Thomas.
It’s impressive to see 540 cards spread out before you. Trading card companies were smart: each card was numbered and buying one box wasn’t enough to complete the entire set. Plus, because cards were randomly packaged, duplicates abounded. The easiest way to access the haul was to numerically order the cards, remove duplicates, and see what you were missing (in those days checklists were included and it was simple to see which players were absent). Because the majority of the set is already in evidence and the missing cards can be in any given pack, the collector feels frenzied to complete the set.
I didn’t know I was a collector then, nor did I understand what a collectible was. I only knew that a complete set would satisfy something. I wanted to be satisfied.
It’s been years since I stopped collecting baseball cards; now, I collect comic books. I tell myself they are more useful than baseball cards because they contain a story. Certainly, this is true. Also true is that if you miss an issue, you miss part of the story. It’s enough to drive a person mad. Thankfully, comic shops have pull lists, meaning they’ll hold a copy of each new issue of a given title that comes out until you can make it into the shop to buy it.
Now, avid collectors are after specific things besides complete sets. In the world of trading cards, rookie cards are the major draw as it is considered the first official print of a player. The catch is that even top prospects in baseball don’t even make it to the big leagues, either languishing in the minors or never getting over injuries or simply quitting the game before they make “The Big Show.” The other side of the coin is also true: extremely low draft picks can become stars in the majors. One never knows whose cards are worth keeping until years down the road—better save every rookie card you can and hope one is a winner.
In the 1980s and 90s trading cards exploded as collectibles and card companies began putting out more types of sets under their brand. For example, Topps began producing Topps Stadium Club, a series of the same players with a different design. Moreover, companies started printing “inserts” or special cards that formed subsets. My favorite early subset was Donruss Diamond Kings because it showcased the best players in variant cards. Over time the number of options available became mind boggling and I lost interest.
The same thing happened in comic books, I just decided to focus on a few ongoing series. It took me a while to make this move since more is always better, right? Now, I look for stories I’m interested in and writers and artists that I enjoy. Even with these parameters in mind I sometimes fall for one-offs or collected stories or variant covers. It is a type of addiction, the idea of being a serious collector, of owning everything relating to a certain character or story.
After years of hanging on to all the baseball cards I ever collected, I’m finally ready to sell them, to free up more space in the house. I’m even considering selling some comics, those that aren’t important to me. I don’t know how I feel about it even though I’ve made up my mind. See, the one thing that is true about keeping things is that when you go back and look at them you’re transported to a time and place you can only access through certain avenues: memory, story, image, smell. What collectibles do provide is a portal to the past that isn’t as easily accessed using only the mind. When you hold a thing that you spent hours with, it’s hard not to find yourself remembering something you thought you’d forgotten or something you simply hadn’t recalled for decades.
When I look at a 1990 Topps baseball card I can see the wooden coffee table with inlaid glass at my aunt’s old house in Springfield where I opened the cards. Her long dead golden retriever Abby is there and the pool table room with the notched carpet and the kitchen/dining room on the other side of the living room wall where my other aunt is baking sticky rolls and they smell so sweet.
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