Did I Do Good? The Best (or Worst!) Trading Card Flip of All Time!
The 1981 baseball season was over, and the 1982 season seemed an eternity away. More importantly it would still be a few months before new baseball cards hit the shelves. It was during dark times like these in prior years where what little in funds I managed to accumulate by hook or by crook went toward Rocky Road marshmallow candy bars and a product called Fun Dip, that involved dipping an edible utensil (the "dipstick") made of pure sugar into small pouches, each containing powdered sugar of a different color and flavor. A good time to be a dentist, perhaps, but a rough time to be a collector. Or so I thought!
One morning my mom dragged me along on some errands, normally a recipe for utter boredom, and we found ourselves at a now defunct drugstore called Newberry's. Though there was no reason for there to be baseball cards in early February, I always checked. What I found was something I'd never seen before, something awesome really.
Occupying an entire clearance display were large see-through bags of roughly 30 wax packs apiece, nearly the equivalent of an entire box of baseball cards. The bad news was none of the packs appeared to be baseball. There was 1979-80 hockey, 1980 football, 1981 football, 1980-81 basketball, and a movie or two—one was "Raiders of the Lost Ark." The good news, of course, was they were still packs of cards, hence would still be a ton of fun to open. Oh, and best of all, they were only $0.99.
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Whether I happened to have some money in my pocket that day or I managed to cajole my mom into footing the bill, we headed home with one of these mega-repacks, and an afternoon I might have otherwise spent playing at the park or riding my bike, if not coating my mouth with Fun Dip, turned into a couple hours of opening packs and sorting cards.
Apart from basketball, I can't say I knew the players well. I'd heard of one hockey player (Wayne Gretzky, of course) and only a handful of football players. Still, there was a thrill at that age in opening packs, whether or not you knew who the "hits" were or (in the case of "Raiders") had even seen the movie. I was even young enough to ponder "what ifs" like the possibility Topps might have accidentally goofed and put rare baseball cards into some of these packs. (Spoiler alert: Topps did not.)
To this point, you'd be forgiven if you didn't recognize just how life changing this purchase was. In fact, I wasn't yet aware myself. It was only the following weekend, spent with my dad, that I received the offer of a lifetime. My dad's friend had opened a pawn shop and was interested in buying as many sports cards as I was willing to sell for a penny apiece.
Well, here's the thing, if you haven't done the math yourself already. These Newberry's repacks had about 300 sports cards each and only cost a dollar! In other words, they were free money. Though neither of my parents had any faith that I would someday strike it rich off my card collection, my dad was unable to poke any holes in the logic that we should head straight to Newberry's and buy as many repacks as possible. An hour later, I was at his apartment with close to 30 of them.
One by one, I opened each pack, loosely organizing the cards into piles by sport. Though I enjoyed riffling through the hockey cards and occasionally spotted the Great One, I didn't care for any of them enough to hang onto. The result is my dad's friend got however many Gretzky rookies one might expect from about 120 packs of 1979-80 Topps hockey packs, all for a penny each! Even back then, that would have been quite the deal.
When it came to football, I was a bit more discriminating. I hung onto just about every player with an All-Pro or "Super Action" card, along with a handful of other players with gaudy stats on the back. To this day I still have large stacks of Terry Bradshaw, Tony Dorsett, and Walter Payton, not to mention Billy Sims, Ray Guy, and Alan Page. My dad's favorite player was Joe Montana, but that didn't stop me from sending the quarterback's cards straight to the sell pile.
The one sport I truly handled like a pro was basketball. I'd already completed a set when the cards first came out, but even then the Magic-Dr. J-Bird card was a playground legend. The result was I kept all six of the ones I pulled that day. (As for the Magic "solo" and Bird "solo" rookies, I let 'em go for a penny!)
Fast forward a few days, and my dad's friend was true to his word. I ended up with somewhere between $60 and $70, even after paying my dad back for the initial purchase. Though I might kick myself today for having sold possibly a combined two dozen rookie cards of Wayne Gretzky and Joe Montana for less than a quarter (total!), I still walked away with $60+ and a stack of Magic/Bird rookies I'd sell a few years later for $100 each. So as we collectors like to ask: "dID i dO gOod?!" 😊 You tell me.
What I can say for sure is that I'd entered that offseason a mere collector, and I exited it a trading card mogul. When you're 12 years old, you'll take that "W" any day of the week and twice on weekends. Now if only I could unload my late-1980s Donruss and Upper Deck for a penny a card! Did I mention there might even be some Kevin Maas and Ben McDonald rookies hiding in the stacks?
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Jason A. Schwartz is a collectibles expert whose work can be found regularly at SABR Baseball Cards, Hobby News Daily, and 1939Bruins.com. His collection of Hank Aaron baseball cards and memorabilia is currently on exhibit at the Atlanta History Center, and his collectibles-themed artwork is on display at the Honus Wagner Museum and PNC Park.