General Forum

Thanks for all of your thoughts. I'm relatively new and this is my first post that's gained anykind of traction. It was fun getting the notifications in my inbox. Have about 35,000+ more cards to enter...I think!

I think it is more along the lines of just having filler cards in packs that will superficially look like something cool to a kid who is only really interested in collecting current players they like. Most adults understand that these types of cards arent anything special, except there probably is some confusion, probably intended by manufacturer, by putting these cards as serial numbered, "relic", and/or signed. If there is a relic of retired player, I think its nonsense to think it was actually game worn or that it has any significance other than just being a card with some fabric on it (its a piece of an authentic replica?). In theory, it could be of a historically signficant game but then its hard to believe the player or anyone would have kept whatever it is (jersey, bat, etc.) and then decided to effectively destroy it by cutting it up into little pieces -- it would be more valuable to keep it intact (either monetarily if the player really wanted to get money from it, or sentimentally to player or whoever ended up with it). I would have a really hard time thinking that a player would have just kept some random jersey or ball from a game unless it could be tied to some unique game (last game, first game, world series) and in that event the card should be able to specify that.  

Signatures on cards of retired players probably can straddle the line of being something of value to a collector, but I personally think of this as the equivalent of just having a player's signature on a napkin or anything else as opposed to a collectible trading card (and if player is still alive, who knows how many signatures have been signed and will be signed by that player). The only big exceptions would be ones in the early 90s of Reggie Jackson, Ted Williams, Mickey, etc. given they were the first ones of their kind and no signed cards during their playing days. 

I think it would be fun to try and put together a proclamation of what is or is not a legitmate collectible sports trading card and see how complicated it would get to try and fit in all the types of cards people have some interest in, like "the card shall be of a player actively engaged in a sport and has yet to retire from playing the sport, or who retired but subsequently unretired, except cards of retired players shall be permissible in current sports-related positions provided that it is of a set, subset, or insert set that includes all other individuals in the same or similar sports-related positions irrespective of whether the individuals played professionally. This includes, but is not limited to, sets of current sports announcers with announcers who never played the sport they cover, professionally or otherwise."

I'm sitting here on a lazy Tuesday afternoon updating my want lists. I've been working on Alex English, a member of the Pro Basketball Hall of Fame. I am currently the #1 collector of his on TCDb. He has 102 listings  as an active player. He has 1527 current listings in the database!! That means 93%+ of his listings are post retirement. 

I mentally already exclude those cards from my thought process. Gorman Thomas for example is one guy I collect. His last card was in 1987 in my mind.

I believe Ted Simmons may fall in this category.

I had the same thought so I checked. Ted had 377 cards pre-retirement and has 572 post-retirement.

In the category of "same only different", Dylan Crews has not played one game above Double A and has 540 cards..

In Hockey, Ken Dryden has less licensed cards post-retirement, basically by choice.  He even stopped Upper Deck from putting out cards of him.  Thus why there is no card #23 in the 1999-00 Upper Deck Century Legends set.  He's only been in a handful of sets since retiring.   
He has a bunch of cards in the Leaf sets but that's not NHL licensed.  And I don't think he has an autograph in any of those sets.

Are there other Hall of Famers in sports that have basically eschewed the hobby?  

This is why it's helpful that the only cards I collect after 1950 are Topps base sets. I essentially only have cards of players during their playing years, unless there's a 25 Years Ago subset or something. I perfectly confent with the result. I confess that I collected Topps Gypsy Queen for as long as those lasted (RIP), and I loved the cards of Ted Williams and Babe Ruth and Lou Brock or whatever. They were fun to get. But then Topps made all of those cards short prints, and I stopped getting them. So that ended before Gypsy Queen, itself, died. 

In the end, I agree that it's absurd that there are so many post-playing day cards. But I'm not too stressed about it, because I just don't collect them. 

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