LA Angels Tuesday News Crash: Salary Projections

I was an avid sports collector in the late 80’s, vintage singles, buying and flipping cases of 1989 Upper Deck, 1989 Score Football and 1989-1990 OPC Hockey. Easy scores. Used to set up a table at the small/big conventions, selling away and seeing the stars come in for autographs, great times. Lucrative until saturation and hobby bottomed out around 1994-95.

I had the foresight to buy 1982 Topps Traded Cal Ripken cards, 3-4 years before he broke the record for consecutive games played. $3-4 dollars, flipped for $250. UD 1989n Griffeys flipped $7 to $50. These were all cherry picked, mint. Still sitting on a a large number of Gwynn, Boggs and Sandberg’s. Also, still have a brick of 1989 UD John Smoltz and Big Unit rookies all mint, ain’t worth much unless graded, even then, so-so. I was into buying second year HOFers, like Mays, Aaron, Clemente, Ryan, Rose etc….cheeper to buy and price steadily rose throughout the years. Made money, sold everything. Missed on Mantles. Something about vintage baseball cards that appeal to me much more that new ones with their manufacture scarcity, which turns me off.

My biggest oops was not investing in basketball. 1986-1987 Fleer Basketball, packed with rookies and with the prize, Michael Jordan. A wax box could have been had for $100 which now goes at auctions around $100-150K. I used to walk by tables at conventions selling boxes and could get cases through the mail (pre-internet). I should have swooped up on cases of that stuff. Shit. Jordan is the GOAT of GOATs. Shohei is definitely moving up.