Hey, welcome to the Hobby Corner!
This series of articles will be dedicated to the world of sports card collecting, specifically basketball cards (although I may mix in some other sports as well from time to time). I know what you may be thinking, “Why would I care about sports cards? I did that when I was 8.”
1) Do you like sports?
2) Do you like money?
If you answered yes to either of those questions there’s a decent chance you would be into buying a few packs of cards. If you haven’t kept tabs on sports cards recently, long gone are the days of walking into a convenience store and buying a handful of packs for $5, at least for basketball cards. You can still find football and baseball cards at Target and Walmart for $1 each, but those the Scotts toilet paper brand of sports cards.
No one wants Scotts, you tolerate Scotts because you either A. are a cheap asshole or B. you don’t care about your asshole. Charmin is the only real brand. The moral of the story is, you get what you pay for with both sports cards and toilet paper.
I digress, a quick Google search will show you that, much like the sport itself, basketball cards have become very popular and in turn very expensive. Take a look at this box of Panini Mosaic NBA cards:
$225 will get you 80 total cards without any guarantees at any special autograph or jersey patch cards. Twelve year old me would have thought that was insane and the amount of begging it would have taken to get my parents to buy one would not have been worth it. So what cards are in this box that are driving the price so high? It would be the two top rookies in last year’s draft, Zion Williamson and Ja Morant. The hype that has come with these two players from what we’ve seen in this NBA season so far has been sky high. Because of that, the resale value of their rookie cards has also risen with it (we’ll talk about this a little bit later in the article).
A little bit of background
So how did I get into collecting cards? It started during quarantine actually, when my dad randomly texted me out of the blue to tell me he was thinking about collecting again. Back when I was 10 my dad and I would buy packs of cards (he probably enjoyed this more than I did) to try to find rare or high priced cards. Not really knowing much at the time, I would try to find players on the Celtics (I grew up in Boston) to try to get autographed at games by the players. I would usually be able to show up early to the games and get a signature or two with a little bit of help from a family friend…
That family friend would be a man by the name of Wilson. Wilson had grown up with my dad in the Boston area and is a long-time season ticket holder and would invite us to games every now and then. Wilson didn’t just go to games to watch from his seat though. He would do whatever he could to gain access to the players. Over time he befriended security staff, team sales reps, even the guy on the jumbotron during time outs giving away free seat upgrades to the “Fan of the Game”, he somehow knew that guy too. Wilson basically became a mob boss at the arena, the Don of the TD Garden if you will, with a whole network of people to help do his bidding. His goal? Get to the locker room tunnel to get some autographs from players*. He would of course bring my dad and I along too as part of his entourage.
*Btw, Wilson didn’t just chat with people and players to gain access to them. His method of gaining an in with people was to create a playlist of R&B music, burn them onto CD’s and give them to people. I’m dead serious. It still blows my mind to this day. Who knew all you needed to do to get someone to like you was to give them a Boyz to Men album?
So anyway, I would collect cards to get them signed (with help from Wilson) at games, but I also got wrapped up in the excitement of finding a card worth hundreds of dollars. One of the top cards my dad and I got back then when we were collecting was this Lebron James rookie card.
We still have this card now (valued at a couple thousand dollars and rising as his legacy grows), but probably won’t sell it until he makes it into the hall of fame. I mean, look at that baggy suit! That alone is priceless.
So that brings us back to today. After seeing the kind of money that was coming in for certain cards, I was in. Regular Zion rookie cards today are going for anywhere between $25-$60 each. I needed a piece of the action and so, the hunt is on. Not to mention that cards today look pretty damn cool and way better than they did back in the day. Take a look at this Gilgeous-Alexander card I pulled the other day.
Throughout this series of articles I’ll discuss some of the basics of card collecting, the things I learn along the way and of course the big hits I get out of the packs that I open. You’ll be joining me on the search for Ja and Zion and will hopefully have some fun along the way!
More to come soon!