The last bit on cards

I don't remember the year I talked my best friend into trading me a collection of cards, Mark McGwire included from his complete set of Donruss. Let's say that I was nine, though I may have been eight or eleven. The truth is it's hard to remember when I finally lost interest in collecting cards. Around the time I stopped collecting cards I'd become such an aficionado that I was primarily collecting minor league upper deck cards, hoping to cash in on the coming glory of guys in single A ball riding around on buses in the dead of night in Omaha. Like most people who delve too far into a pastime I'd needed increasingly esoteric cards to satiate my desire. This is the same reason people end up making drinks from the 1600's or smoking unfiltered cigarettes stolen from the grave sites of people from Jamestown. The thrill diminishes with increased exposure. Having four future star cards of Gregg Jeffries just didn't do it anymore.

But that's at least a few years past the time that I'm talking about. Whether I was eight or ten is kind of immaterial. You see, I knew, as most serious collectors knew, that a complete set of cards was worth a hell of a lot more than a set that was missing some. It would be like putting a crack in a diamond. Anyhow, my best friend would sometimes pull out his set of 1987 Donruss cards for the two of us to appreciate, and we'd go through and look at the Mark McGwrire rated rookie card and ponder the pre-android skinny McGwire, bat held over his right shoulder or was it his left, like a kid in little league, barely older than a kid himself then, though ten or eleven years older than us at the time and ten or eleven years younger than I am now, though the card itself remains unchanged like all pictures, reminders of misspent or even well spent youth.

The problem with having a complete set of cards is that the glory of having cards is trading them, moving product. After a while it becomes like the difference between starting at a woman in a magazine versus actually having one in the flesh and blood. It's hard to ever want to go back. And so, we'd stared at those cards all summer, brutally long and hot days, think wisps of clouds, more just there for show rather than to provide any real shade. And upstairs, in his room, we'd admire that set. I don't remember exactly how it happened, but it did. A few cards exchanged hands and suddenly the diamond went from being perfect to being flawed, and yet, in that flaw, it became somehow more real. I don't mean that as metaphorically as it sounds. I literally believe that cards are meant to be handled, traded, that G.I. Joes should not remain in their boxes to accrue value. (Note: We knew of this kid who's dad bought him a box of cards and made him keep it unopened, so it could go up in value, to which, wtf is that? How fun is it to be a kid who has some imaginary baseball cards in an unopened box? Answer: it isn't).

Okay, the strangest part about this memory is that I don't actually know if it's real. I don't know if I ever talked him into giving up the McGwire or Joyner or the Ripken. (though at that point in time nobody really gave a crap about Cal Ripken, he was just an above average shortstop rather than an icon) Look, what I'm getting at is the feeling of that summer, how badly I wanted him to trade me some cards from that set, how we'd sit cross legged in his room the box open between us, and I'd try to wheel and deal, entice him into giving up a card or two.

I don't know why I wanted those cards so much. I don't know if it was those cards themselves, the allure of breaking up the set, of talking him into something, of breaking up a perfectly good set of cards because all I'd ever been able to afford was one of those Topps Traded sets that only had fifty or so in them. Reaching back I could attach all sorts of significance to those distended afternoons, coming in sweaty from playing basketball, or playing sharks and minnows in the pool, point out the differences that seemed to accumulate between us as we grew up and became aware of them, but dammit, a big part of me just wanted those cards, and I've have stayed awake until 2 to get them.


And Brandon, yeah, I vaguely remember getting that Scottie Pippen from you, and I apologize. I think it was a rookie card. I probably traded you a Terrell Brandon and Mookie Blaylock or something for it.