Listen up, all you baby boomer guys! The time has come to forgive mom for doing the unthinkable: throwing out our baseball cards.
“Think about it, if our mothers didn’t throw out all those cards, today there would be so many of them that they would be worthless,” says Stu Sachs of The Villages Sports Cards and Collectibles Club. It holds a show Saturday from 9 a.m. until 2 p.m. in the Laurel Manor Recreation Center. It is free and open to the public.
There will be over 60 tables of cards, comics and other memorabilia. Dolly Konwinski, a former player in the All-American Women’s Professional Baseball League – made famous in the movie “A League of Their Own” — will be on hand to sign autographs.
The card-collecting hobby, like all those baby boomers, has had ups and downs over the past few decades. There was the big boom in the early ‘80s, when the little pieces of cardboard became almost like stocks and bonds.
Prices soared and adults took over the hobby from kids. Then came the crash of the late ‘80s and ‘90s. “The card companies overproduced and there was a glut of cards on the market,” Sachs said. “People were giving cards away. I gave away un-opened boxes of cards. Nobody wanted them.”
Slowly but surely, the hobby has been making a comeback. Kids, parents and grand-parents have rediscovered the joy of card collecting. And it’s not about money.
“There’s something special in seeing your favorite player on a card,” said Sachs, a die-hard New York Mets’ fan. “A baseball card is a great reminder of childhood. You look at the card, and you think of going to game with your father or just being a kid and watching your favorite team.”
The memories also include putting all those cards in shoeboxes and hiding them under the bed, or sticking rubber bands around the cards and stuffing them into a closet corner.
Unfortunately, when the boomer boys turned into men and were more interested in girls than cards, mom didn’t see the value of those little pieces of cardboard and tossed them. Before you could say Billy Ripken, stars like Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were torn into shreds and tossed in the garbage.
But a few of the rare cards did survive and can bring in obscene amounts of money. A few weeks ago on PBS’ “Antiques Roadshow,” a collection of 1871-72 Boston Red Stocking cards and signatures was appraised at $1 million. To see it on YouTube go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wACD_Nl8o4E
