While growing up, I, along with a few of my buddies, collected cards; mainly baseball and football. We never had any big money cards, autographs, or anything like that. We weren't worried about having every serial carded number or this or that. We just wanted to collect cards of our favorite players. Sometimes we simply thought a card looked pretty cool so we kept it. We had a few, semi-organized binders filled with 3x3 pages of our heroes. Our favorite and most cherished cards were selected for our small number of top loaders.
If we knew someone's birthday was coming up, we knew it meant that that person was going to get a few packs of cards from his family members and we'd have a sleepover party. Sleepovers were great! It meant we got to stay up late, check out each other's collections, and show off our favorite cards no matter how many times everyone has seen them. Someone would have the latest Beckett or Tuff Stuff and we'd get excited if one of our cards was worth 75 cents. Everyone would work on their GM skills and try to work out a deal or two to improve their collections. Sometimes these sleepovers ended up in a wrestling match or regretting a trade, but these are some of my favorite memories as a kid.
As elementary school moved on, Pokemon became huge and we started getting busy with other things. We drifted away from collecting cards until it basically came to a halt before going to junior high. That group of friends has drifted apart as well, but we will always have those memories.
During my sophomore year in college, I made the 7-8 hour drive to Cooperstown with my family. This was the first time I ever visited the "Birthplace of Baseball." Baseball was always one of my favorite sports, but the trip to Cooperstown made me fall in love with the game all over again. While looking around the endless memorabilia shops downtown, I started looking through some baseball cards. When I got back home, I dug up my old cards and decided to get back into collecting. I bought a few packs here and there for a few years. The excitement of ripping open a pack in anticipation of what might lie inside; the hope of getting one of my favorite players; it all came back to me like I was a kid again. I started buying some cards off eBay and then found the endless amount of blogs. I never knew so many people were into collecting. I mean, I assumed, but never thought of the community of it all; this peaked my interest even more. I started my own blog and even made a few trades with fellow bloggers. Then, I found COMC. I bought a LOT of cards off of there. My collection quickly multiplied and in no particular order. Now that I have a "vast" collection. I say it like that because my collection is nowhere in comparison to many of yours, but it is mine! I am quite pleased with my collection, but it still has a long way to go.
I've now started the never ending process of organizing my collection. I have a number of good sized piles of cards laying around; some are in 100 count cases, some are in toploaders, some are in plastic sleeves, and some are just laying there naked. When I found COMC, I bought so many cards that there wan't any consistent goal. I was just building a general collection like when I was a kid; however, I am not a kid anymore. I cannot just have a big collection everywhere. I don't really want that to be honest. I'd like to reduce my overall collection of not having cards of just random players. I'd like to complete a few projects, which will be discussed on here, collect my favorite players, and that's it. My goal is to have my projects in cases or a couple binders with my player collections in top loaders. Will I ever truly accomplish this goal? Doubtful, but it's something to work towards!
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