OT: What's your favorite baseball card?
Ricky Henderson Topps rookie card. He was my favorite player, for his combo of speed and power, his determination and longevity and the hilarious stories (eg john olerud)
Mine, too. I've always liked the look of the 1980 Topps, the blue back, the fun facts about the players (amazing how many sold insurance in the off-season), and nostalgia probably plays a part too.
Runner-up is the Billy Ripken "F*CK FACE" card. Great prank.
Same here, man. The Fort Knox Gold jerseys just pop, too.
You just know Ricky could have been a bad ass Running Back too. Dude was rocked up
I've always really liked the Henry Aaron 1954 Topps. A beautiful card.
Looks like an angel/devil on his shoulder. Neat.
Probably my Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card. Although when we were kids my brother and I would play this baseball game with a deck of cards. We would choose a team from our baseball cards and they were a mix of cool names and favorite players. I was always fond of the Oil Can Boyd card I owned. I know I liked to have Mickey Tettleton, Rob Deer, and Pete Incaviglia on my squad. I wish I could remember some more, but I'm too old and haven't looked at them in years.
1993SP Derek Jeter RC. I traded a rare Brien Taylor for a whole box of these. Pulled three Derek Jeter’s out of the box.
Found Mrs. Billy Ripken's account.
Edit: Oh, thanks to the reply up above I see the value of this card. Never heard about that. Ha! Oh, that Billy.
There is a whole story behind the card, several different versions were made and collectors love it.
1933 Goudey Babe Ruth #53.
Mine is definitely my Ken Griffey Jr. Upper Deck graded rookie card.
Man, I sure wish card collecting was as fun/affordable for kids these days like it was for me. I doubt my infant son will ever get into because of how much the industry has changed over the last 10-15 years.
I completely agree. $1.25 for like 100 cardboard cards or whatever it was. There was nothing better.
You are right, your kid will likely not collect little pieces of cardboard. Sigh, too much other entertainment options today
I remember when Upper Deck came out in 1989. Ten-year old Sleepy was appalled that a pack cost over a dollar.
And then Stadium Club the next year. I think they were like $4 a pack and you couldn't find them ANYWHERE. My friend's dad worked at a pharmacy and would buy a box when they were in stock. My friend and I would save up our allowance to buy the packs from him. I had about 90% of the complete set. A few years ago I looked to see what it was worth and if I should buy the remaining cards I needed. The whole set was like $30 (I had probably spend hundreds back in 1990)
Oo card collecting is still a big hit for kids, except instead of baseball cards, it's pokemon cards. Though my son (6) did trade his Charizard card for a Tom Brady card at school earlier this year.
I hope it was for a shiny Tom Brady GX.
My niece's T-ball card. Only year she played. She was missing a front tooth, so my brother and I nicknamed her Probert that summer. Around 1986-87.
Do kids still get their own card anymore?
I don't know if they still make them (probably), but you can literally have Topps make cards of your pictures...weddings, sports, whatever you want. Pretty cool (and not expensive, either).
Bo Jackson Future Stars Rookie Card
I remember a buddy having Bo's 1986 Topps Traded card. Even as little kids, we we completely dumbfounded by the size of Bo's traps--baseball players just didn't look like that back in the 1980s.
This 1969 card of Aurelio Rodriguez, then with the California Angels. It's actually a photo of the Angels bat boy, Leonard Garcia, and is famous in baseball-card-collecting circles.
I actually had it, in a dog-eared stack of other cards in a dresser drawer. After I moved out, it got thrown away in one of my mother's spring cleaning tirades. I don't want to know what it would be worth today.
Google says mint is like $35
1955 Hank Aaron...but not the late Don Mossi.
The entire 1969 tall boy set of the NBA cards are my favorite cards of any sport. The story behind them is very interesting. Pretty much all oversized rookie cards with no front of the jersey, if they wore the jersey.
https://www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/1969-70-topps-basketball-set-info-checklist/
I collected all four major sports cards and probably had all my fillings due to the sugar coated gum that was hard as a rock.
I've got that Abbott. I pulled a Topps Gold Nolan Ryan the first year they had that. My first-ever baseball card was a 1988 Tom Glavine. I thought his 5.35 ERA was a batting average so I held onto it when someone wanted to trade me a Harold Baines.
Definitely have an unknown quantity of that Abbott downstairs in the basement. My wife wondered if I wanted to sell the boxes and boxes of cards at some point -- I laughed, and explained to her that the local card store here in Charlotte has told me that they wouldn't even take the core of my collection ('86-early 90s, mostly Topps) for free.
Favorites:
1) my Dad's '55 Ted Williams, even though it's in terrible shape
2) my Jose Canseco '86 Donruss rookies ... because they were the bee's knees when they had their moment in the sun. And if there's any player -- and card of that player -- that typifies that whole era, to me that is the one. The ultimate fall from awesome to nothing.
3) related long story (and ties #1 and #2 together): I went to a card show in the summer of '87 and my little brother had a friend whose dad had bought a table at the show. He wasn't a card dealer, but he had enough cards that he thought it worthwhile. I was going to the show anyway, and gave him like $5 to have a small part of his table. So I set out my stuff, and among the items I had was a box of commons from my dad's cards in the attic. All dog-eared, really beat up. I had already found and pulled the Williams, a '54 (IIRC) Roy Campanella, a few other stars. Threw the rest in a box and let people pick through them for a buck a piece. So the guy who has the table I'm at takes a moment to paw through my stuff, including the box of oldies. He finds one he's interested in and asks if he can have it for a dollar. I say sure, and then he proceeds to prance around proclaiming victory because it's a '53 Eddie Matthews, and I had (at the time) never even heard of that guy (HOFer). Beckett said it was worth maybe $35 (and it was pretty beat up), but he's laughing at me in a way that brings to mind Harry and Lloyd in the hot pepper scene of Dumb and Dumber. Just being a jackass about it. So once he's done preening, I start back at him ... nice job, taking advantage of a kid. A kid who's supposedly a family friend, etc etc. Eventually I guilt him into giving me one (just one) pack of the super-special '87 Fleer box of unopened wax packs he had just triumphantly bought. Well ... a few moments later, guess who got the ONLY Barry Bonds rookie out of that whole box. Yup, sweet justice.
And now that Bonds card is (fittingly) worth approximately jack squat.
I had an Ernie Banks rookie card from my uncle. That got glued to a scrapbook page. My son has it now but it's obviously not in mint condition. What was I thinking?
My favorite site to go to was Joesportsfan.com and they would have made up funny stories about the pictures on baseball cards. They were absolutely hilarious. Sadly, the site is gone and I cannot find it anywhere. I was trying to find it a couple of weeks ago and had no luck.
I grew up and LOVED collecting cards in grade school back in the 70s and ate every stick of gum. Had hundreds of baseball and football cards. When I was an undergrad at U of M, my parents moved and they threw away my drawer full of cards...Le sigh...
"Tiger Big Bats" Kaline and Kuenn. From around 1960 or so. I'd show it here if my mother hadn't thrown it out with my Lionel Train and the rest of my stuff.
The "future stars" card with Tram and Sweet Lou side by side.
April 16th, 2020 at 10:41 PM ^
I actually don’t know that one — would love to find one!
April 16th, 2020 at 11:40 PM ^
Don't think it exists. 1978 Topps had them on separate "Rookie 2B" and "Rookie SS" cards. And they didn't start issuing Future Stars cards until either 1980 (multiple players on one card) or 1987 (single player).
2 HOFers + UL Washington who changed his habit of a keeping a blade of grass in his mouth to a toothpick because KC had artifical turf.
April 16th, 2020 at 10:52 PM ^
1973 Topps Roberto Clemente. I do not know where it is, but I know I have it somewhere.
I never liked baseball. But I did have a pretty sweet hockey card collection.
My best card was an Upper Deck Sergei Fedorov card that at one point was worth about $50, which was a SHIT TON of money to me back then.
1975 Topps Cards. Came in Regular size and mini.
