The Value of Collecting (Basketball) Trading Cards
Collecting, in general, is one of the oldest and most popular hobbies there is. Since it is virtually possible to collect anything it is a potentially suitable leisure activity for everyone. On the one hand, collecting is something you can do quietly for yourself, on the other hand, it could also become a competitive endeavor in terms of pursuing the rarest object, negotiating the best price, or assembling the most comprehensive collection. One might feel a rush from acquiring a long-desired item comparably to winning a sporting competition. It also provides sentiments of pride and ownership because of the notion that one’s collection is something special or even unique. But other than that, it can also be a way to further your education and lay a foundation of important skill sets. Abstractly, you might consider learning itself as a form of collecting, namely collecting pieces of information. Celebrating my 25th anniversary of collecting Basketball cards I would like to share my reasons for why I believe this hobby has brought me a lot of value through all those years.
Learning a novel sport: When I started in 1995, I was an eleven-year-old kid without any knowledge about the sport of Basketball. Shortly after I began my collection, I picked up the rules of the sport and began to play Basketball myself. It didn’t take long before I considered playing Basketball my favorite sports activity and I became a huge fan of the NBA and especially Shaquille O’Neal — the player I decided to mainly collect. Through the years, collecting cards even became secondary to being a fan of the sport itself which, however, has reversed in the past couple of years.
Improving a second language: Since almost everything involving trading cards — from the texts on the back to the monthly Beckett Price Guides — is written in English, the hobby helped me improve my language skills. I live in Germany and English was introduced as our second language at school just a few months before I started collecting. As my vocabulary was not yet sufficiently developed by then, I had to learn plenty of new words and expressions. The internet and the fact that essentially every webpage about the NBA was also in English further added to my reading and listening comprehension.
Building IT and organizational adequacy: Shortly after I started collecting, my parents acquired our first personal computer. Like most teen-aged kids, I spent the majority of my screen-time playing computer games. But besides playing NBA Live I also gained initial experiences in dealing with office software by organizing my collection in terms of Excel spreadsheets, creating diagrams about players’ statistics, and writing down in Word interesting trivia which I found on the back of my trading cards. I chose computer studies as an elective subject at school and learned basic HTML and Javascript skills which I applied to program a primitive Shaq fan webpage including a little Shaq quiz.
Developing negotiation skills: During the first couple of years, we didn’t have access to the internet. Moreover, there were no specialized hobby stores or card shows in Germany, just a handful of stores that happened to also sell packs of trading cards. Given the limited supply as well as the low budget, trading and haggling at the schoolyard was the most efficient way to add rare pieces. The more knowledge you could build and the more persuasive you could be, the better your trading results were. By thoroughly studying the content of the monthly Beckett magazines you learn to realize common patterns about the potential development of card prices. You understand how the level of circulation of new products, a player’s on-court performance or injuries might influence future pricing. It was also important to know what your respective schoolmates collected and how to persuade them to transact with you what you needed. Often such transactions involved some kind of third-party pre-trades. As in any negotiation, you will learn that the trading outcome ideally is fair for both parties because our trading card community was very small and the last thing you wanted was to build a bad reputation for bamboozling your peers.
Practicing restraint and patience: There is another paramount trait to acquire — the one that separates a collector from a hoarder. Even though I started with collecting Basketball cards in general, I specialized very early on collecting Shaq cards. Given the lack of alternatives, I had to open lots of packs in the early years and thus compiling great quantities of cards that were not part of my core collection. As the internet emerged, I was able to focus my resources and tried to acquire every reasonably priced Shaq card available on eBay Germany. With increasing opportunities to conveniently transact internationally I further narrowed my focus to mainly 90s and early 00s Shaq cards. To keep the space requirements manageable, I started selling my collection of non-Shaq cards. In addition to limiting your space requirements, you also want to keep your financial expenses in check. Selling non-core parts of your collection might help with the funding. Especially with trading card prices currently soaring I find it necessary to stick to a budget and practice patience. Looking in alternate marketplaces, researching the price history from different sources, and bargaining with the dealer to obtain the best price possible are important parts of the hobby to me. That, unfortunately, means that often you will have to let something go as opposed to acquiring it at any cost.
