There comes a time in every man’s life when he learns the sum of his mistakes. On a Saturday earlier this month, the error of my ways were adding up quickly.
“Hey, I had that Ricky Henderson card growing up,” I thought to myself as I walked around the American Legion post on Pine Grove Drive, “Wow, it’s worth $300!”
Other names and dollar figures would soon follow. There was Wade, Cal, Nolan, and Pete, to name a few. All great athletes. All captured in a two dimensional photographs with their career statistics printed on the back. And all of them worth drastically more than the 35 cents I paid back in the day… (do you remember the pack included a stick of the world’s stalest gum?)
Baseball was a big part of my life. As a boy I could name the starting lineup for every team. Maybe I out grew the game, or maybe the game out grew me. I haven’t been to a card show in at least 30 or 40 years. Truth is, I haven’t watched too much baseball in that time period either. These days I would struggle to name more than three or four current players. The connection between the boy and the past time is gone.
But for at least a couple of hours that connection came back. I may have been staring at the faces of old ball players, but what I was really looking at was a portrait of my childhood. I remember the excitement of opening up a pack, hoping you’d get a star. And when you did, how gentle and delectate you treated that possession. It was stored away in a plastic sleeve, which was placed in a binder, which was then put on a shelf well out of harms way. I would be a rich man right now… if only my parents didn’t sell the house and throw away the cards.
At the card show someone wanted $500 for one of the Nolans, $200 for one of the Wades, $300 for a Cal, and astonishing $600 for one of the Petes. According to my rough count, once upon a time I owned cards that are now worth a collective $4,000.
It was not my original plan to spend a rainy Saturday looking at a card show. I came, only because, a co worker found out about the event and invited me to tag along. “I talked to the organizer,” Just For Buyers Agent Scott Saxton told me, “Apparently, this is the first card show they’ve had in Wilmington in years. ”
At a table in the back sat former Red Sox pitcher Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd. My co-worker took his young son up to meet the right hander. I am not sure it meant as much to him as it did to the dad. The son came to the show in search of Pokemon cards. He’s never heard of the “Oil Can,” but his father remembers him, and lit up at the chance to shake a hand and get an autograph.
I am told that future shows are in the works, here in Wilmington and in other nearby towns. Although not as popular as it was in the 70’s and 80’s, baseball and the card collecting hobby, are having a reemergence. We need that. There seems to be something right with the world when kids are trading baseball cards. I just hope they learn from my mistake and take the collection with them when they finally move out of their parents house.
