I got back into The Hobby(tm) at the beginning of this year. Well, I guess at Christmas. I've been collecting cards and other nonsense off and on since I was a kid, owning my first hockey cards around 1989 or so. Like with my other hobbies, I've always dipped in and out, but even when I dip out I know cards are something I will return to at some point later. It could be in a few months or a few years, but I find my way back. I don't worry about it too much. Just a little.
Being a lifelong card collector guy, at this point I know what works for me and what doesn't. I know what gets me the most value, costs the least amount of dollars for the most amount of joy. It's really the same advice you see all the time. Set a budget. Have a focus. Be patient. Enjoy the process. Collect what you like. I mean, you can apply this advice to a large swath of your life and it would be apt.
I used to really enjoy set building. There is fun in slowly completing a list of cards, adding them to a box or binder a bit at a time. One of other reasons I enjoy set building is that I don't necessarily care about having expensive cards, or stuff like that. I do like that stuff, but not because they are expensive. I also enjoy worthless cards, if there happens to be something about the card I like. Like the photography, the player, the design, just something. Building sets ends up being an excuse to collect a bunch of worthless cards and keeping them to a theme, which is the theme of the set.
The problem with set building is that you end up with a ton of cards. Like, a ton. They are difficult to store, to transport, and to sell if you decide you don't want them for whatever reason. It ends up being simpler to just select some cards you enjoy from each set and collect those. They don't have to be key cards or whatever. They can be anything you like. But there isn't much point in getting hundreds of cards when there's really only a handful of cards from a particular set that you really want.
The other thing with set collecting is that it is always cheaper to just buy the entire set. It costs a lot of money to collate a set a few cards at a time. The problem is that it is absolutely no fun whatsoever to buy a complete set that someone else built. Like, you get the set and think you will sit down and flip through it and enjoy it. But I find I never really enjoy it because it doesn't feel like "mine". I didn't create it. What I create belongs to me, and I have cheaply purchased someone else's joy at set building. You can't buy joy that way. It just doesn't work like that.
With that in mind, I decided to sell my 84 Topps set. It's the only complete set I owned by now. I had bought it complete in pages off Ebay a couple years ago or so. Owning it felt deflating. I had bought it because it's my birth year and I thought it would be fun to own the set from back then, and flip through it see what baseball looked like when I was a bouncing baby boy.
Yet, it wasn't fun. It just felt like I paid someone else to do the work of building the set for me. The pages sat in a binder for ages and I never looked at them. It's more fun to flip through these things with someone else who is interested in baseball from that year. To sit and flip through a binder of old Topps cards by myself makes me feel like I should be doing something else with my time. There is a difference between "collecting" and "collected". The hobby is about collecting, not about having collected.
I'm getting my collection down to a handful of cards on a few different themes, and then just focusing on those themes and that's it. So, like certain players, teams, stuff like that, with a focus on individual cards rather than completion. I like the idea of having a specific reason for each card I own and understanding why it fits into my broader collection. If I can't explain that, I can't own the card.
I listed the 84 Topps set on Ebay. It sold for $45, which is pretty cheap. It's in midgrade condition, but someone got a bargain. Honestly, I don't really care. I'm just glad someone else gets to enjoy it, since I wasn't.
Yet, there were a few problems. I listed it with free shipping, because if I had asked for shipping, I knew it would be ungodly expensive since I am shipping from Canada and the buyer is most likely to be American. In fact, the buyer did turn out to be American. What I didn't realize was that how expensive shipping would be. With the cost of shipping, Ebay fees, and the foreign exchange from US to Canadian dollars, my profit was $5 Canadian dollars.
Yes, $5 Canadian. That's like a wooden nickel in American money.
I should have just kept the stupid set, but I really didn't want it. I don't know where else to sell a complete 84 Topps set except Ebay. I know zero Canadians who want this. Maybe if I worked harder and posted the set on a bunch of Facebook groups for Canadian collectors, or took it to a card show I could have sold it. But that's a lot of work to sell something for just a few more bucks. I value money, but I value my time more.
What I should have done is not buy it in the first place. That's the lesson that sports cards teaches us, over and over again. That a fool and his money are soon parted. Often I buy stupid hobby stuff, be it cards, games, or comics, with the idea that if I decide down the line I don't really care for this item anymore, I can flip it and get my money back. It rarely works out that way.
These days, it's even harder in Canada because of the difficulty buying and selling with the US. And the Canadian market is quite small, so if I decided to just sell stuff to other Canadians, I honestly wouldn't do much better because outside of hockey there just isn't much interest. If I did find a Canadian buy who was willing to pay more, like I mentioned it would take me so much more time and effort that I don't want to be bothered.
I am a rich man, but unfortunately I am rich in life experience and not in money. I would rather it be reversed. What my life experience in the hobby has taught me is to be considerate and intentional with your purchases in the first place. The cards I enjoy owning the most are individual, unique cards that I may have even paid a pretty penny for, but I don't care because the joy of owning the card is greater than its cost. Owning fewer things in life with each thing you own being more intentional is a good way to live, be it in the hobby or any other aspect of your life.
So, my motto going forward is to keep it simple, stupid. Emphasis on stupid.
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