|
I should've collected more baseball cards...
 |
| One
year too late. This is not Darryl's Rookie card. |
What do Mike Tyson, Willie Nelson, Jim Morrison and Bobby Brown have in common
(well, three of them sing)? They're all baseball players. I discovered this
while rummaging through my long forgotten baseball card collection meticulously
kept in an old Boggle box. The Boggle box contains the cards I had deemed
worthless, mostly because I didn't know the players.
My cousin Sam, an avid collector, lent me his Sportscard Market Report book
so that I could see if I had any gems collected from childhood, squirreled away
in my old room in Hong Kong. I have long since taken my favorites back to L.A.
(various Pete Rose, Mike Schmidt, George Brett cards and my Mark McGwire
Olympic Rookie), so I didn't think I'd have anything worthwhile left in
Hong Kong.
These are the cards I found.
| Year |
Company |
Card
No. |
Player |
NM
MT 8 |
MT
9 |
GEM
MT 10 |
| 1980 |
Topps |
265 |
Robin Yount |
8 |
22 |
100 |
| 1981 |
Donruss |
1 |
Ozzie Smith |
5 |
15 |
80 |
| 1981 |
Topps |
254 |
Ozzie Smith |
6 |
20 |
125 |
| 1985 |
Topps |
660 |
Tony Gwynn |
5 |
15 |
75 |
| 1985 |
Topps |
7 |
Nolan Ryan
|
4 |
12 |
55 |
The best condition cards, given a 10 rating by PSA, fetch the big bucks. You
must get your card rated (appraised) and sealed, otherwise you'll get at the
most, the equivalent value of an 8 rating card. After seeing some of Sam's pristine
condition cards, I'm pretty sure the ones I found wouldn't even garner a 7...
Since it costs anywhere from $10 to $15 to rate each card, I'd be losing
money getting these cards appraised by PSA. At most, $28 is the value of
this childhood collection.
Unlike most kids, who used to jam these cards into the spokes of their bicycle
wheels, I thought I kept them in pretty good condition. Where do these 10 rated
cards come from?
When I get back to L.A. I'm getting the McGwire card rated. Even with an 8
rating, it's worth $140. With a 10 rating, it's worth $6000.
|
