Most of you don’t know this — I don’t talk about it much here, preferring to keep business separate from politics — but for many years as a kid I was an avid card collector, practically inventing the concept of prospecting (I like to fool myself into believing) one summer moment in Baltimore, 1981, when I realized I could trade my middling Orioles cards to neighborhood kids for the likes of Bob Horner, Paul Molitor, Rickey Henderson, Dale Murphy, George Brett, Carney Lansford, Fernando Valenzuela, etc., as well as established stars on their way to the Hall of Fame, from Seaver and Bench to Ryan and Carlton and Stargell and Schmidt.
These days, prospecting is a far more expensive endeavor, with a buy-in price — if you wish to really be taken seriously — of between $40K – $100K.
To give you an idea of why this is, consider: a Mike Trout Red autograph rookie card from the Bowman Chrome set, of which there were only 5 made, would — provided it is graded and encased to signify it’s “gem mint” status — be listed on eBay or other sites for between $50K and $75K. That’s each. And someone somewhere might just pay that for it.
Even at the lower end of the Bowman Chrome scale, prospects from the latest sets, in serialized runs of 500 to 1, will routinely draw anywhere from $25 for a raw (ungraded) /500 or /250 to $10K and above for certain 1/1 Superfractors or hard to grade perfect (graded PRISTINE) reds /5.
To that end, I’ve been cultivating my business as a high-end collector and seller, which has involved visiting certain places where other buyers hang out, be they “breaker” rooms or certain internet fora, where the tears flow as regularly as Oliver Willis’ liquid cheese snacks.
One such forum — the most popular, and yet the one also most despised — is Blowout Cards forum.
Today, having survived my time there with my skin still on, I offer this review, which I also posted on their facebook page (where, as with anything else they don’t like, it will meet history’s airbrush). Just as — surprise! — I did, though I spent money regularly, had perfect feedback, and was as both a buyer and seller very easy to work with.
So then. Here it goes:
What’s to review, really? They buy wholesale, sell retail, and give discounts when they get deals themselves, just like any other card outlet. What makes BO unique is it’s forum, which has devolved over the years into the personal fiefdom of several anonynerds who believe themselves to be new media personalities. The place is populated by petty tyrants, “professional case breakers” (who double as “moderators” and ban whomever they wish, often times their competition for sales), and nickel and dimers who absolutely HATE what they call “ballers” — those with higher end merchandise on offer. All in all, a gaggle of self-righteous, cheap, internet toadies who have nothing better to do than hang out and troll people who actually have and do spend money.
The site’s buying / selling sub-forum — which is what once made this a destination site — is these days glutted with an endless stream of garbage cards, and then patrolled by the kinds of people who would actually wait around to *buy* such garbage cards. On the rare occasion you see quality stuff for sale, its threads will be festooned around the comment box-edges by lowballers complaining about pricing, esteem-bloated shrills pointing to month’s old eBay sales as justification for OUTRAGE at the way you price your property, and people who are there for no reason anyone anywhere would *ever* be able to divine without a mountain and a set of stone tablets.
But the real fun starts when — given the opportunity (or nudged by moderators who go by super-hidey screen names like “houdini,” and who relish the “power” they wield as sportscard subforum moderators) — these self-same social lepers mob up and lurch at a moment’s notice to attack whomever the poor slob of the day is, that is, whoever they can find a pretense to flame — often in a barrage of barely intelligible English and with all the quality reasoning you’d expect from those who spend so much time either stalking such fora for “prey” or else filling the empty void in their middling lives acting as sportscard sub-forum hall monitors, deciding who can stay, who must go, and enjoying the power that comes with their lordship over a *freaking cardboard “empire.”*
Beware: speak your mind, or cross the wrong forum “veterans”, and you’ll ultimately be banned; then, once you’re shown the door on the whim of some surreally narcissistic fat dude who opens wax packs for a living, THAT’S when all the brave internet warriors come out to heap additional scorn upon you, puffing up like peckish cocks who believe they’ve earned themselves a hen’s attentions.
I spent time at the National Convention this year in Chicago (2015). As a fairly well-known high-end seller, I was introduced to others who carry higher end merchandise, and nearly to a man they each told me they no longer really ever log on to Blowout’s forum — that it’s become the dumping ground for life’s lottery losers trying to play at business magnate. The drama is constant. The ostentatious display of self-righteous anger backed by the mental acuity of a tree full of frightened lemurs is so offputting that it’s no longer worth whatever sales you can make there. Many of these people have hired others to list their wares and handle the maintenance of listings. Because frankly, to be there for any extended period is to feel the dignity draining from you just as assuredly as if you looked up one day and found yourself at a donkey show in Tijuana.
In short, it’s a small, sad, depressing place run by small (in the mental sense; physically, many are Mallow Pies with a keyboard and a pulse), sad, needy men whose sole life brightspot seems to be the ability to anonymously attack others from a Doritos-dusted, fat-fingered position of decided remove. Brave as any soldier.
If you are into cards but don’t much care for the kinds of lowly slugs who populate the bottom rungs of the “sportscard dealer” ladder, this is most definitely NOT the place for you.
If, however, you like shoveling out bucks while enduring a heaping bit of scorn from people who in the real world wouldn’t be fit to sniff your old Aunt’s moneymaker, this is your Heaven.
Well, this — or maybe a dominatrix service. But then, you’re probably too cheap and sad to afford even that. So stick with this. You may even get a 2013 John Denney base auto out of it for the low low price of $7 delivered.
AMEN!
So, not a fan, then?
Too obvious? I was going for nuanced.
Alas, I like many suffered the fate of many: My mom tossed my cards from the mid-sixties to 1972ish when I was in college. Now, my collection consists of a few complete Topps sets from the early to mid-eighties–think McGwire, Gooden, et al. rookies. I’ll let my kids deal with it when I’m dead.
Within my collection, I had a complete, full-season of the ’67 Red Sox in pristine condition [Jose Santiago, anyone?]
I gave it to my Niece / Godchild, telling her the collection was for fun, but, also, an investment [she was a highly intelligent kid].
Then she went to NYU, became a Bolshevik, then threw the collection away.
She’s married to a fellow Commie – who, BTW, is working within ‘The System’, making lots of money, but still loves him some Socialism.
Damn kid.
By the way: those two walked out on my elderly parents six years ago and wouldn’t speak to them for two years because my then eight-four year old father referred to a black man as ‘colored’ – they walked out and he went back to his job as Universal.
Bob, 1967 was the year my mom started letting me buy wax packs. I managed to assemble all the Cardinals by the time the Series rolled around. Cards in 7 over your Bosox. Good times. (In ’68, we lost to Detroit in seven. I still loathe Mickey Lolich.
It was a classic ‘The Sox Break Your Heart Again’ moment.
1975 was a Helluva Series, though.
I once has an odd set, a breakfast cereal “box top” promotion of mid-’70s All-Stars. I HAD to have it because it included Nolan Ryan, still my all-time favorite player. I last saw them around 1994 or 95. I kept them in a little metal box that fit snugly, so they were still in very good shape 20 years after I got them. I now haven’t the slightest idea what happened to them. :-(
I had those. Also had the 3D cards that came with Frosted Flakes, plus all the special Burger King series.
i recently learned that my brother has my meager late 60’s early 70’s baseball collection. well good for him and the scotch tape i used to mount them in the scrap book!
Baseball memories!
I was four years old in September 1964. My mother was ironing in our basement listening to the radio one afternoon, and I remember her yelling, “They won the pennant! They won the pennant!” It took me another three years to get totally hooked. (And yes, Belvedere, I’m still pissed about 2004.)
Found them on eBay. There’s a “Kelloggs 1973 Pro Super Stars” Nolan Ryan card for $25, and the whole set of 54 for $99 (and another for $150). They’re not worth as much as I thought, but at the same time, cheap enough that I’d consider it — but they aren’t mine, the ones I’d kept for years…
Making friends and influencing people? Tsk tsk. ;)
Coins for me. Nice, solid, shiny coins. And I can afford the fuckers now. HA!
So outta the way, sonny Jim, daddy’s on the way to a sale.
I never had a clue about trading the cards, since I hadn’t gotten “into” sports at that age. And eventually I went in search of better tasting gum. Except for a time when my brother would give me some money and send me to the store for baseball card packs. He’d let me keep the gum, but not the change.
When he discovered sex, drugs and rock and/or roll, he lost interest in card collecting. He once showed me a hit of LSD he’d acquired, and I think I know who he got it from — a head-shop hippie named Finney — and I suspect that’s where the cards went.
For a while I did collect Bazooka Joe comics, but they kept getting vacuumed.
I left all mine out in the rain. Every year, right next to my glove.
Well, not right next to…
Oh, I had cards. Shoebox full. Hank Aaron, Willie Mays rookie card (2), mMantle rookie, etc. etc.
It’s an old story. Boy collects cards, boy joins military, mom dumps cards.
Oh, mom. Mom mom mom, you DUMB BITCH! ARGH!
So: coins.
Likee?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/161791172371/?orig_cvip=true&rmvSB=true
Oh my. Look at you all you not cool people talking about baseball cards when you should be talking about somethiing cool like the original Kenner Star Wars figures
Greetings:
Collecting, schmellecting. Growing up in the Bronx of the ’50s and ’60s, collecting was for the retentives and I think you know exactly what kind of retentives I mean. We “pitched” baseball cards with mouths full of Bazooka or Double Bubble gum not that flat crap that came with the cards themselves. There was “closest to the wall”, pitching the cards across the sidewalk and hopefully interrupt some pedestrians. With four or five players, hearts and egos could be broken in a New York minute. “Wall drops”, where the card was held against wall and allowed to fall and hopefully cover or at least touch another’s former card was more for the girlie guys because, just like playing “Skully”, girls don’t pitch cards.
There’s no joy in the world like seeing your recently now former best buddy dragging his tail home with his shirt pocket totally devoid of baseball cards. And those tingles of anticipation on those dark days when Mom would ask, somewhat solicitously, “And where are all those cards I bought you yesterday.
Petty tyrants is why I stopped going to sci-fi conventions and joining clubs in general.
My wife and I kinda got into cards around 1988 but, lost interest when you realize that you have to take it seriously to get anywhere and I rather spend cash on other hobbies. Still have sealed boxes of packs but, I do not think they were good years.
OT: Came home and found the back door of the duplex open. I went upstairs to my place (door was still shut) and found my front door was also okay, but the front entry door was kicked in. My friend/landlord is now missing a TV and a Mac laptop.
My abysmal opinion of humanity is restored.
Loud LOL!!!
Thanks for this bit of writing. It has been far too long, and I’ve so missed it. Tears are running down my cheeks in pure laughter.
You really need to post more, Jeff. Even if it’s about “sad, needy men whose sole life brightspot seems to be the ability to anonymously attack others from a Doritos-dusted, fat-fingered position of decided remove.”
I still have all of mine. Mostly baseball sets from 1976 through 1981, but my pride and joy is the full set 1977-1978 Topps NHL cards. I actually collected them the hard way – spending every quarter I had on the packs. I can still taste the gum – it only lasted about 10 bites and then had the flavor of a candle…
I ended up with all of the cards except Clark Gillies of the New York Islanders, and I bought that one from a card shop for 15 cents to finish the set.
I promised them to my nephew, but he ain’t getting squat until I’m sure he’s mature enough. And that may be well into his 50’s…
Leave them to him in your will. That way if he messes up you won’t know about it (or you’ll be a transcendent being who doesn’t worry about such things).
I think my comments are appearing only to me tonight. Perhaps I’m hallucinating again.
Bicycle, trading cards, spring-loaded clothespins.
Some assembly required.
We used playing cards for that. Fortunately Dad wasn’t much of a card player.
Euchre and poker playing grownups.
No touchee playing cards.
I also collect playing cards.
Yeah? So?
Nuanced? I speak nuance.
Jive ass dude ain’t got no brains anyhow.