Friday, April 30, 2010

Baseball cards and me - trying to be honest about my waning interest in cardboard

I don't feel like I can relate to collecting baseball cards right now because I've just gotten too lazy [in life] to care about them and I have these things going on in my mind - where I'm ambivalent towards my collection of baseball cards. 

I think at times I say, 'I'm too cool for cardboard,' since I live within 30 minutes of a Major League Baseball team and going to games takes up most of my leisure time [tough life] - and perhaps any sort of spending money I may spent for actual baseball cards is used to pay for tickets / gas perhaps and food. 

Back when I first started to collect, 15 or 20 years ago, I could never have imagined to get my little pieces of cardboard signed by the players shown on the cards - now I've got cards to sorted out by MLB teams with some knowledge of getting them signed on somewhat regular basis [whether it is cards featuring a college player, professional player from the minors to the Majors and even some retired guys]. 

Collecting baseball autographs in-person [maybe through the mail, though sending requests has slowed down for me] takes some precedent over merely collecting baseball cards of players pictured - and it gives me an excuse to conveniently ignore collecting baseball cards for the sake of collecting them like I see through other baseball card / trading card blogs.

Perhaps I'm not so eager to secure something for my 'personal collection' and I'm not as enthused buy into the hype of new releases - I'm a fickle baseball card guy as far as budget is concerned and I don't need another fancy set-builder product like Topps Chicle with unopened boxes around $80. 

At times I feel nostalgic about collecting the cards for themselves - maybe I'm trying to find a way to enjoy card collecting again, even though most of the cards I'll be trying to pick up are ones I'm trying to get autographed.

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