The current sports cards boom has me and many others around my age chasing cards from our childhood. Back in the 80’s and 90’s when I collected, it was all about buying wax packs in hopes that I might pull that special rookie card I was chasing. There were sports card shops all over the city and there were also sports card shows as well. I would save up what little money I had to buy packs and then maybe splurge on a special card at the shows. My buddies and I would also trade cards and that was another way I could acquire a card I desired. Baseball cards were my main focus but I also was buying basketball and football cards as well. And it actually doesn’t stop there as I have hockey, wrestling, soccer, and comic book cards in my collection too. In total, my brother and I have over 100,000 sports cards sitting in our parents’ attic. Sports cards were and are everything to us.

Every month I would run to our mailbox in hopes that the new Beckett Monthly Price Guide had arrived. This was the source to find out much my cards were worth and it was such a great feeling to see a card I owned had gone up in price. While my brother and I had a subscription to Beckett Baseball Card Monthly, I was also purchasing Beckett Basketball Card Monthly and Beckett Football Card Monthly so i could check my values of cards in my collection.

We didn’t have the internet back then so all we had were our Becketts, sports card shops, and sports card shows to understand what our cards were worth. But Beckett price guides were our true barometer to find out the value of our prized cards. In each Beckett, you had 2 prices listed, one that was perceived to be not-mint and the other being what is deemed mint condition. A card in mint condition made it more valuable but that was all subjective. What made a card mint? It was all to the eye of the beholder or that friend or card shop you were trying to trade/sell the card to.

Counless hours going through these price guides

Many of the cards in my collection aren’t worth much today and I could care less. I collected during the junk wax era where sports card companies like Topps, Upper Deck, Fleer, Donruss, and Score overproduced to try to keep up with demand. My sports card collection is all about memories of my childhood and time spent with my brother and friends who loved collecting as much as me. And I can’t help but think of my parents through all of this because they supported our love for sports cards with weekly allowances that we could spend on packs, boxes of cards gifted for each birthday, and the willingness to drive us to sports card shops and sports card conventions so that we could dork out with other peeps like us.

While I love all of my sports cards I just don’t have the room for them. I live in a small 2 bedroom apartment with my wife and baby boy so unfortunately we don’t have excess space for all of my cards. I do have a storage unit but there’s little to no room there as my music collection takes up a good amount of the space there. Damn those CD’s that I just can’t ever get rid of. Lately I’ve been buying a few graded cards so that I can have them here with us in our home and look at from time to time to bring me back to my memories. So this time around I’m being very strategic with my purchases and chasing my favorite cards of all time. I try to obtain PSA 10’s on all but my budget doesn’t always allow it so I’ll dip down to PSA 7’s, PSA 8’s, and PSA 9’s as well. Below are some of my favorite cards due to the style and bordering of the card itself or the photography used. Please drop your favorite cards of all-time in the comments!