The cardboard economy of childhood

Bob Dumas

“I knew when my career was over. In 1965, my baseball card came out with no picture on it.”
-Bob Uecker

When I was 10 years old, baseball cards were the currency of the realm. Forget Bitcoin or whatever mysterious invisible asset adults pour their retirements into now. Back then, value was measured in glossy rectangles featuring men chewing sunflower seeds and tobacco. A Tom Seaver rookie card could buy you lifelong respect on the playground. A Nolan Ryan? You basically owned land. And if you had a Dwight Gooden or Darryl Strawberry from the mid-’80s? Well, you were a Mets fan, so you knew to enjoy the fleeting happiness before life corrected itself.

Whenever I opened a fresh wax pack, the universe was full of hope: the little crinkly sound, the powdery film of gum dust, that single stick of gum as rigid as a 2-by-4 and only slightly less edible. I swear that gum could survive a nuclear holocaust. Generations after humanity is gone, a lone mutated cockroach will find that stick and refuse to eat it.

Transitioning from childhood to adulthood as a baseball card collector can be challenging. As a kid, cards were joy. As an adult, they are “investments,” which, for some, is Latin for “my spouse is quietly Googling lawyers.”

It changes slowly. First, you go from getting cards at the drug store to getting them from “a guy.” He’s in a strip mall between a vape shop and a frozen yogurt place. There is a hand-lettered sign that says NO TOUCHING THE MERCHANDISE UNLESS YOU’RE WORTHY. You nod respectfully because you just know that’s directed at you.

The first time I realized I had officially crossed into adulthood was when I purchased a “protective sleeve hard case archival-grade top-load magnetic UV-shielded” enclosure for a single card. I used to put them in bicycle spokes. Now I’m like a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, pondering humidity levels.

Being a Mets fan and collecting Mets cards is an advanced course in masochism. It’s like collecting coupons for expired milk. For every rookie card, I convince myself this player will be the one. And every year, the card becomes a tiny laminated reminder of how hope is just nature’s way of preparing you to be disappointed.

Non-Mets fans do not understand this. Yankees fans—who I suspect are grown in a laboratory beneath Manhattan where they are taught from birth how to say “27 rings” without blinking—buy cards from a position of smug stability. They’re like investors in gold. Mets fans invest in whatever the opposite of gold is. Tin foil? Driftwood? A small rock?

The industry has changed, too. Kids today don’t buy random packs. They buy “breaks,” where some guy on YouTube with a beard that could smuggle an owl opens a box on camera, and adults bid on teams. I tried a “break” once. It felt like gambling but sadder, because instead of potentially winning money, I was hoping to win a third-string utility infielder’s refractor parallel numbered 27 out of 799. Which I did. And I reacted like I had unearthed the lost city of El Dorado.

Then there’s grading. When I was a kid, “grading” meant hoping the gum hadn’t melted onto your best card. Now, you can pay a team of scientists to determine if a card is Gem Mint 10 or merely Near Mint, which is apparently the equivalent of a soggy lettuce leaf. The last card I sent in for grading came back “PSA 7,” which I think stands for “Probably Should’ve Avoided touching this with Cheez Doodle fingers, genius.”

I should stop. Any rational adult would. But I can’t. I used to stand in the card aisle of Target, surrounded by bewildered children who were just trying to get Pokémon cards, and I think that maybe this pack is the one. Maybe it holds the chosen card. The cardboard messiah. The card that redeems all previous Mets-based heartbreak and pays off like early Apple stock.

It never does.

The saddest part? I still love it. Not in a cool, ironic way like the hipster who collects vinyl and insists everyone appreciate the “warmth of analog.” I love it because for three seconds, when I tear open a pack, I am 8 years old again.

And so, I keep collecting. One day, maybe I’ll hit it big. Maybe the Mets will win the World Series again after a 40-year drought. Maybe gum will become edible again. Maybe adulthood isn’t just the slow realization that you’ve been storing your childhood in boxes and calling it nostalgia.

Until then, I’ll be here. With my sleeves and my top-loaders and my goofball optimism. Because baseball cards aren’t just cardboard rectangles. They are dreams. They are memories. They are a reminder that hope, no matter how irrational, refuses to die.

And that, I suppose, is worth hanging on to.

Bob Dumas is editor-at-large for Halston Media. He’s been collecting cards off and on since 1966 and he’ll happily show you his 2007 nearly complete Turkey Red collection and his Nolan Ryan rookie card.