While going through my old collection, I came across the crown jewel of most baseball card collections from the early 90s. A Ken Griffey Jr. 1989 Upper Deck rookie card.
Collecting cards taught me how to negotiate with friends and vendors at a young age. It also taught me how to make what seemed at the time like tough and sometimes emotional decisions. As silly as it sounds, I used to get very attached to cards in my collection. Last but not least, it helped to estimate the future value of an asset.
My preparation for baseball card shows would involve the meticulous process of building my “selling binder”. This binder would include the baseball cards that I wanted to try to sell to baseball card show vendors.
Collecting baseball cards is a lot like managing a stock portfolio. Each card or stock has a perceived value that the asset can sell for in the open market, it can increase or decrease in value, and it can go broke in a moment’s notice.
When you open a pack of cards and stumble upon a valuable card, it can be emotional to trade or sell it to someone else. That experience becomes a part of you. By trading away that card you are losing a small part of that memory.