REFLECTION
I’ve been into trading cards for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid back in San Mateo, I would spend hours on the weekends at our local card shop, What’s On Second, flipping through cards, checking the value of my collection in the most recent edition of the Beckett’s guide, every once in a while buying someone’s rookie card from the display case. For most of my childhood, I saved as much of my allowance and birthday money as I could every year just to buy boxes of baseball and football cards. Complete sets were a rarity, but they were always very high on the Christmas list to Santa Claus and the grandparents.
I wasn’t alone. Of the 75-80 kids who grew up on my street, most of the boys and a few of the girls could tell a similar story. During summer vacation, when we weren’t playing sports, we’d hang out in the street in front of each other’s houses trading cards, showing off our collections, talking about which packs we were going to buy next and whose card we were most hoping to get.
We’d obsess over the coolest cards like the 1990 Bo Jackson Score card where he’s wearing shoulder pads and holding a baseball bat. We’d fantasize about getting our hands on legendary error cards like the famous 1989 Billy Ripken Fleer card with the f-word on the knob of his bat. We all had our favorites too. Mine was Don Mattingly. To this day, I ride hard for the 1984 Don Mattingly Topps rookie card, where he’s in that familiar crouch off first base, wearing the old school stirrups and the double wristbands and the sunglasses flipped up.
As kids, we put so much time and energy and emotion into collecting cards, it was inevitable that so much of my generation fell in love with the hobby. Standing out there in the atrium of the American Dream mall last week, looking out at the excited faces of thousands of like-minded adults—many of whom, as Giants and Jets fans, took great pleasure in my pain back in 2008, 2011 and 2012, I was reminded how much fun trading cards are and how easily they can bring together people from all walks of life.
LESSON
But fun is only part of the story with trading cards. It’s amazing how much you can learn when you become obsessed with something.
I learned about fractions, percentages, averages and probabilities from the statistics on the back of baseball cards—more than from any math class I ever took. I learned to identify both greatness and mediocrity at a glance. I learned that a lot of baseball and football players come from warm-weather states. I learned the limits of statistics: there were no numbers that could adequately reflect the value of guys like Jesse Sapolu or Guy McIntyre to those Super Bowl-winning Niners teams in the 80s and early 90s, for example.
The real education, though, came in more intangible areas of life. Through trading cards, I learned about my friends’ preferences and personalities—what they liked, what they didn’t; who their favorite players were and why. I learned how to make a fair deal. I learned the value of a dollar and how to put a value on things I care about. I learned how to treat the things I care about with respect. I learned how to sort and organize information. I learned just how much I love sports and admire greatness.
Math, economics, business, friendship, relationships, time management, integrity, asset management, financial discipline, investment strategy, myself—all of these things I learned about through my love for trading cards.
It reminds me of that famous line from the ancient Japanese samurai, Miyamoto Musashi: “from one thing, known ten thousand things.” I’ve read that quote in so many places. Usually in the work of people who talk a lot about passion, discipline, and mastery. Which makes sense. Being obsessed with something and having the discipline to learn everything about it will eventually lead to mastery. But that equation is missing a piece, in my opinion; maybe even the most important variable of all: the why.
APPLICATION
I’ve thought about that question a fair amount since teaming up with CardVault. Why did I collect cards? Why does anyone collect anything? Why was I so obsessed? Why do I still care as much as I do? Why do I still have all my cards from 30-40 years ago?
I don’t think there’s one answer. There’s never just one answer when we think about why we do anything. I know for me, part of the joy of collecting was the connection I found with other kids in the neighborhood. I also love that it’s something I can share with my own kids now, even if I’m collecting baseball cards while they’re collecting Pokemon cards.
There’s a nostalgia element to collecting, too. You start to connect items to completely unrelated events from the same period you got them from. Anyone who’s been collecting cards as long as I have remembers the debut of Upper Deck baseball cards in 1989 and how people went insane trying to get a Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card. Well, I also remember the Niners winning the Super Bowl and the Giants going to the World Series that year. I remember the Loma Prieta earthquake. I remember the Berlin Wall coming down. I remember Appetite for Destruction coming out. Trading cards are my anchor point for a lot of these memories. In my mind, the beginning of Axl Rose’s career will always be connected to the end of Pete Rose’s career thanks to his grouchy 1989 Topps manager card with that IDGAF flowbee bowl cut of his.
But there’s a deeper, more personal layer to this kind of nostalgia where I think the “why” of collecting really lives, and that’s when the things we collect become mementos. When they are connected to specific events in our own lives, in particular specific accomplishments where the collectibles then become a kind of reward which gives them extra significance. Whenever I’d get a good grade on a test, for example, my mom would take me to What’s On Second and buy me a pack of cards. Some of my favorite complete sets were gifts on big round-number birthdays from loved ones who are no longer with us. Now that I think about it, I don’t think it’s crazy to say that my collection, to this day, is built around and defined by those memento cards from my childhood—if not literally, then at least in spirit.
Whether it’s trading cards, or watches (which I collect now), or crystal figurines, or refrigerator magnets, there’s no denying that collecting as a hobby is a ton of fun. And going deep on your collection isn’t just fun, it’s highly educational. But understanding why you collect what you collect, that is what turns a hobby into an avocation that can last a lifetime and maybe, one day, turn into a business.
