Wait...Cards Have Value?

Up to this point in 1995, I looked at sport cards as sport cards and not pieces of cardboard money. They were fun to collect and sort and that was it.

But, after pulling my "big hit", I was at one of my friends houses telling him about it and he suggested that "we look that card pull up."

I looked at him dumbfounded as I had no idea what that had meant.

He looks at me and says, "You didn't know that cards have value?"

No. No I didn't.

It took almost a full year in the hobby for me to realize that the money we were spending on these cards actually could get us money in return. Not that I was planning on selling any of them. But, knowing their value was a fun fact to know. It actually added a whole new twist to my collecting as I began to look every card up each month and add their values to my notebooks. I had to make changes, or as I called them scribbles, to adjust the prices as they went up and down.

The harder part was finding a Beckett locally but luckily my friend would hand me his older football issues to use. His uncle collected multiple sports and always handed me his baseball issues.  In 1996, I began finding them more locally as the hobby continued to thrive and I finally started to subscribe for myself.

Beckett magazines also started a new hobby for me, collecting them. I held onto every single issue I ever got until I moved out of my parents house. I realized how much space they were taking up and left those for my father to dispose of. However I did pull out all of my Griffey ones just to have for that PC. We will discuss my origin to Griffey on here soon as well.

Here is one of my oldest issues I had when I was younger for Griffey. Not sure what kind of pose this was....

 

And here are my oldest football ones as well. I really like the creative covers. I was lucky enough to land both of these as they came one month then the next. I also have a Griffey one that was supposed to have a 24 but I am missing one of them.

 

 

I not only enjoyed looking up my card values, but I also enjoyed reading the articles. They gave product previews, A Hot/Cold list, they had Readers Write in to ask questions (something I attempted but never got published), pictures of fans with their favorite cards, PC highlights and much more. It was a goal in every collectors life to find yourself in Beckett. Something I was able to do later on in both a PC feature in Beckett Baseball and a couple of big pulls in BSCM.

Today's magazine is much different and so much less interesting because as a blogger I have all of that access to the information they publish. They also got rid of all of the features that I think made them popular. If only they could go back in time and bring some of them back.

Speaking of going back in time, about ten years ago, I discovered a yard sale with a binder full of older Becketts. My mind told me, no, you don't need to find room to store those, but my collecting heard said, yeah you do. Guess who won....

 

 These were only a few of my favorite ones. There was roughly 17 overall.

20 years later of being a Beckett subscriber, I still look my values up only for fun though. I don't have the time anymore as an adult to write down every single value but in my mind I know what most are. I still look at sports cards the way I did 22 years ago though, cards do have monetary value and I could sell if I wanted to but I don't, because to me, cards mean so much more than that.