Digital collectibles evoke memories of ’60s trading cards
The evolution of sports memorabilia, of collectibles, struck me this week as I discovered for the first time a phenomenon of a fad called NBA TopShot.
I’m closer to a Luddite than someone out front on the latest trends, so it was no surprise I’d been unfamiliar with these socalled “digital basketball cards.”
I happened to learn of NBA TopShot on the same week I’d been immersed in my garage, rooting through large plastic storage tubs, in search of something long-lost. My youth.
And there they were, stacked in old shoeboxes: Hundreds and hundreds of baseball and football cards, almost all of them from the 1960s. At a time when the Beatles and Motown were America’s soundtrack and LBJ was in the White House, I was a card collecting fool. Obsessed.
You’d buy a pack of Topps cards (I was a Topps kid) and couldn’t wait to get home and unwrap the mystery. Odds were they’d be ordinary players. Oh, but what if you struck gold and Mickey Mantle was there. Or Willie Mays!
I collected cards nonstop from the early ’60s into the early ’70s, elementary school into the start of high school.
More than a half-century later, this week, I discovered those old shoeboxes were falling apart but the long-forgotten treasure they held — those 3 1⁄2 by 2 1⁄2-inch rectangles of thin cardboard — were miraculously intact, not all but many in what the collectible experts might call mint condition.
The sojourn back in time happened by accident Tuesday, during my weekly spot on the Dan Le Batard Show With Stugotz. Somebody asked if I was a hoarder. I had to plead guilty and used my old baseball cards as an example. Soon after that at the show’s request I was in my garage, live on the air, traveling back in time to revisit my 12-year-old self.
I remembered I had boxes full of baseball cards but had nearly forgotten I also had collected a slew of football cards (not to mention a smattering of miscellaneous cards such as Batman, James Bond and a set of dragster and hot rod cards).
After hearing some of the cards described on the air, an attorney I don’t know offered me $10,000 for the entire collection, sight unseen.
On Thursday, an expert at card valuation, Tyler Holzhammer from the Sports Card Investor app, was on the Le Batard
Show to identify the most valuable of my cards, including a 1968 Mickey Mantle, a ’69 Mantle, a
’69 Nolan Ryan, a ’68 Hank Aaron and a 1961 Carl Yastrzemski.
All are worth more than $100 each, and perhaps much more if the cards were to be authenticated and found in good condition.
My football collection includes ’60s cards for Joe Namath, O.J. Simpson,
Larry Csonka, Paul Warfield (with the Browns) and Nick Buoniconti (with the Patriots), to name a few. And Y.A. Tittle!
Alas, several cards that would have been worth lots of money were devalued because as a kid I’d written on them in pen. These included a 1966 Mantle and a Pete Rose from the same year. That’s proof that as a child I collected cards to have them, never considering how much they might be worth in10or20—or50— years.
I still feel the same. The cards to me are not an investment, but a living memory, a big piece of my childhood not for sale.
It isn’t just the valuable cards, the dozens of future Hall of Famers in my collection. So many other lesser cards tell a story.
There’s Freddie Patek, the shortest player at 5-4. There’s Bob Uecker. There’s Jim Bouton, the “Ball Four” guy. And Bo Belinsky, the pitcher/ playboy who dated AnnMargaret.
And there is Brian Piccolo, namesake of the movie “Brian’s Song.”
“That’s his only card,” Holzhammer said, explaining the Piccolo card’s surprising value. “That was his rookie card, and following that season he passed away.”
I have cards for Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich, the Yankees pitchers who in 1972 swapped wives and families, including the kids and dogs.
So, now, a half-century later, the NBA TopShot craze involves buying digital packs of short video clips that you “own” and may keep, trade or sell. I put “own” in quotes because the LeBron James highlight dunk you just paid for almost surely is something you’ve already seen ad nauseam on ESPN SportsCenter and can see again, on demand, on YouTube for free.
Digital memorabilia has its place.
But I was reminded this week what having baseball cards in my hand meant to me. The anticipation as you carefully opened the waxy paper and the smell of that thin slice of chewing gum hit you.
I was reminded this week what baseball cards mean to me, still, and not just the A-list cards deemed valuable such as the handful I have of my boyhood idol, Yaz, including that ’61 card that looks as much like a painting as a photograph.
Rediscovering one particular card made me smile.
All my life, as a joke, when leaving the dinner table or restaurant after a big meal I’ll sometimes say, “I’m fuller than Vern Fuller.”
Well, there he was! My 1968 card for Vern Fuller, former Cleveland Indians second baseman of little note.
“Put that one in the dollar bin,” said Holzhammer.
Nah, I’ll keep it, thanks. Fuller today is 77 and living in Wisconsin.
I should make an effort to reach him, except I’d be embarrassed to try to explain why on earth I’ve been saying his name across all these decades.