How Friendly's changed my life.

Baseball has been and continues to be my favorite sport since I was very little. Growing up in the Beltway area in the 1980's convinced me that since I was a good baseball player I was going to be Cal Ripken Jr.'s replacement at some date. Even up until I was about 17 or 18 I was convinced that I would eventually be a shortstop in the major leagues. While that dream may have since passed into some nostalgic fantasy that is probably impossible (I have some hope yet), the side effect of obsessing over baseball brought about my waning and waxing obsessive compulsive behavior concerning tiny pieces of cardboard. One of my earliest memories as a child is actually opening my first pack of baseball cards. I don't know why, but I can still remember the cards I pulled from the pack.

 Hitherto this fateful day the best part about heading to the Crofton Center Friendly's was the ice cream combination you got as a kid after eating your meal. In my family you got that only after eating your entire meal. It was a difficult task to work through a grilled cheese and fries or some chicken tenders to get to the coveted ice cream sundae, but I was a determined youngster. On a side note, at Friendly's you used to be able to pick the combination in your sundae. You may still be able to do as much, but I haven't eaten at one in many years. A few years after this fateful incident my brother discovered his perfect combination: snickers and pineapple. The combination enraged me. I don't know what repulsed me so much about it, but the anger at this combination and the combination of flavors itself has burned into my mind's eyes almost as vividly as the day Friendly's changed my life. As I write this, I realize just how much that simple restaurant in Crofton, MD changed my life. While I salute you Friendly's and thank you for putting such a deep appreciation in me I do have to ponder whether first, my mother and now my wife have a such an affection for you.

That rabbit hole now successfully explored and escaped from, back to the task at hand - the beginning of my obsession. After the aforementioned sundae, the waitress placed a clear plastic wrapped pack of picture cards in front of me when she presented the check to my mother. Having never been exposed to baseball cards I had no idea what to do with it. I picked it up, examined it on both sides. On the front was a sliding Wally Backman with dirt flying everywhere. My interest was piqued. That looked like fun. I want to go slide in the dirt. However, that figure behind Wally looked like he was about to pummel him. That didn't seem too fun. On the back side was some numbers and words. Very much less interesting. I ripped the plastic away and much to my delight discovered that there wasn't a single card in there, but three. On top was the Wally Backman card that displayed some very fun and inspiring action. The third card, which I flipped over after opening was Jim Presley swinging a bat. I'm not sure why I did it. Maybe it was easier to open this way, but I opened the pack from the back - something I still do nearly three decades later. So I had discovered two cards - the Wally Backman that made me want to go play in the dirt and the Jim Presley card with some cool looking "M" in the top left corner. But, what was sandwiched in the middle, a hidden gem much like pineapples and snickers to other palates, was a Cal Ripken Jr. All-Star card. He was wearing a baseball hat much like mine. I squealed in excitement. We left Friendly's as a family, but I left changed. When can we go back to get more ice cream? When can we go back to get more cards?

Friendly's was the extent of my collecting in the early days. I don't know when I discovered that packs could be bought at 7-11 without having to eat your entire meal and then ice cream to get to the baseball cards. But when I did it was a great day for Topps because they became a duopoly in control of my $2/week allowance. There only competition was the arcade.

A few years later, when my family moved to Ellicott City I discovered the greatest thing ever in Chatham Mall. Flickers, the arcade was directly across from The Dugout, the baseball card shop. Since I was a bit older I was allowed to venture out to these two shops while my mom shopped in Caldor. While I enjoyed games that didn't provide tickets a bit more, when I found out that you could turn your tickets into gift certificates to The Dugout I was hooked. Now my quarter would become 10 tickets, those ten tickets would be accumulated until I hit 500 and those 500 tickets would be converted into $5 in dugout money. (If you do the math I spent $12.50 at the Arcade to Buy $5 worth of Baseball Cards, but that extra $7.50 was more than worth it in terms of joy).

This leads me now to the title of the Blog: "Cardboard Investments". There have been numerous iterations of my collection. I collected heavily from 1987-1994. The Baseball strike really angered me as a child. After a two year hiatus, the cards that had sat in the closet suddenly became interesting again when I went to middle school and my best friend was also an avid collector. He had over a hundred Ken Griffey Jr. cards, including the 1989 Upper Deck RC in a screw locked case. I pulled my collection out to compare. 1996-1997 was a flurry of investing to top one another. But in 1997 I moved to Indiana and by the middle of 9th grade I realized that nobody thought baseball cards were cool. Wanting to fit in, the collection went into the closet yet again. By the time I was a senior though I was confident enough in my own skin to enjoy my collecting once again. In 2001 I opened up shop on eBay and ran a pretty successful card business. But, by 2004 everybody was looking to get rich on eBay selling the cards they had stored in the attic for years and the values of cards became severely depressed. Apparently there wasn't a scarcity, just that everyone had put their collections in closets to fit in at some point. Plus, I was living in a very small room and had an inventory of over 2 million cards and had invested into game cards like Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokémon. Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokémon made me more money but there was no attachment to the cards. It was purely business. Even when I bought baseball cards for the sole purpose of flipping them there was still a connection, a joy, associated with flipping through them. I sold everything, including my personal collection. I regret that a little bit. I did make a nice profit. I sold even the infrastructure of the business and made some money. I know there is still money to be made in that market, but I'm not really interested in that side anymore.

I chose the word investment for the title because of its many uses. Baseball Cards can be an investment that turns a profit. Maybe someday my collection will turn a profit when I decide that I want something else more in retirement. I also chose the title to hopefully hook some people with similar interests to me into the blog so we can chat, trade, show off, compete against one another in a hobby that is meant to be sort of a community thing. But the way I think about the word investment is the time, energy and emotions invested into the art of collecting that I hope to convey on this blog through every post. I hope that if you like baseball cards and the art of collecting that this blog will be of some use to you. If nothing else, the blog will allow me to catalog my collection for my own enjoyment in an easy and searchable format.
-Chris