Shelton Cobb

Dads and 90s kids, here's a fact: We had it so good with baseball cards and we didn't know it.... How could we? When we were kids they held promise, future fortunes and they cost .50/pack. You could hit up any grocery store, convenience store, pharmacy, 7-11 and... If you had a dollar in your pocket you were baseball card rich. Cards. Gum. Assets. You kids today have no idea. There were no box breaks or buy-ins or $49.99 or $99 packs or $1,000 packs or sets or streams to see other cards or dozens of different sets with holograms and refractors and subtle variations or uniform slivers cut inside... HELL NO. We had cardboard. And three ring binders. And plastic sleeves... We had a 4-pound Beckett guide that was our bible. We coveted like 7 rookie cards: Rickey Henderson Don Mattingly Kirby Puckett Roger Clemens Doc Gooden Mark McGwire Ozzie Smith And then, of course, we overloaded on Ken Griffey Jr... But for about 6 years we treated our card collection like it was our personal hedge fund. We'd trade cards in the school cafeteria like stock brokers... 3 Frank Violas and 2 Ryne Sandbergs for a Jose Canseco Rookie 1 Jack McDowell RC plus 1 Ruben Sierra RC for a Benito Santiago rookie We'd try to get lucky by loading up on Ellis Burks or Jim Abbott rookies. We took shots, cornering the market on random players with upside like Todd Benzinger and Walt Weiss or personal favorites like Oil Can Boyd... And on and on we'd go, thinking that once we had the rookie cards from the entire '94 all-star team or all of the rookie cards from the '92 Sox or Yankees or A's that we could then put our cards in a vault for thirty years... Then we'd open that vault up in 2023 when we were 40 and we'd... BE... RICH!!! We know now that it wasn't meant to be. But damn. What a time to be a kid. What a time to be alive. It was awesome. If you're nodding your head with Topps & Fleer-filled nostalgia, share this and follow me @Jon_Finkel. And be sure to sign up for my Books & Biceps newsletter for more columns like this and updates on my Macho Man biography (link in bio).