Do you still have the sports cards you collected as a kid?

[BADOLBILZ]

 

I still have a ton of 80's and early 90's cards.   I did a lot of research on prospects every year and didn't just buy packs off the shelf I would speculate on large lots of certain rookies via mail order and nailed a few of them.   In some cases the profits were insane.  I bought two lots of 500 Eric Davis Topps rookie cards for like 15 cents apiece and sold most of them for like $10 each to dealers at card shows when he was blowing up.  It was easier money than Wall Street in the 80's.   Like finding it on the street in 1987-1989 before the market tanked.  I was paying for college and still stacking some $ and staying in Nikes etc..  The Sundowner might have got a little of that money too.  It was great fun.  Some of my fellow collectors thought I was crazy selling hot cards but being able to buy lots of hundreds of a new cards in the mid-80's might have been the first sign that this sh!t was going to become worthless.   I obviously should have sold all of them but I can't complain.  I mean, imagine getting real money for Willie McGee rookie cards.   I'll leave what's left for my grand kids(to throw out, probably) except for those few selects like the 80' Henderson's.  I never sold a Rickey he was my player. 

[SinceThe70s]

I expect to find a box or two of the ones that didn't make it into the spokes of my Schwinn Sting Ray after my Mom passes away and we clear out the house I grew up in. None are pristine so probably not worth anything beyond the memories - which are fond. Good times.

[Joe Ferguson forever]

On 2/2/2025 at 12:34 PM, BillsPride12 said:

If you do why do you continue to hang on to them.... sentimental value or holding out hope someday they will still be worth some $$$?

 

I still have a big box of all of my sports cards from when I was a kid in my parents basement.  When I was a kid my grandpa was big on don't ever get rid of your sports cards because someday they will be worth lots of money.  That was true for his generation, and I am pretty sure he was one of those people who had some valuable cards when he was a kid that he didn't hang on to that were later on worth a lot.  But cards in the late 80s and 90s were so mass produced there just isn't that kind of value to them.  I check in with local memorabilia and collector shops to see if there's any value to these cards yet every few years or so and there really isn't.  I guess I hold out hope that maybe in another 10-15 years some of those cards might be worth something but I'm not expecting it.

 

I guess I have a little sentimental value attached to my sports cards and the players I loved as a youth but it's not like I ever go through them and the older I get I think the more the excitement of going through them lessens.  I have thought about getting rid of them but at the end of the day I really don't have any reason to as I just have a box full of stuff and my parents have allocated a little bit of space in their basement for me to keep a few things in "storage"

 

I have a couple OJ rookie cards.  They're not in great shape cuz I actually tried/played with them.  Still probably worth at least $50.  I should sell but my dad and I had season tix then and the nostalgia s worth more than that to me.  I have some hockey cards from the late 60's and early 70' with some big names including a Bobby Orr rookie card.  Also in bad shape and not worth selling imo.

Edited February 15 by Joe Ferguson forever