F_R_N_V,
I'm glad you brought up the educational side of collecting. I did the same thing with my nephew when he the age of your son. After my sister left active-duty in the Navy to finish her college degree, she and her children moved in here for a couple of years. My niece was still a toddler then, but my nephew was a good age for teaching him things. I used cards to help teach him numbers, colors, organization, etc.. I gave him many of my duplicate cards of NFL Panthers and NASCAR drivers and some of my MLB Cardinals cards. I later added a notebook with some 9-card pages and let him sort them how he wanted to do it. Anything I gave him that was pretty nice was protected in some other way (toploaders or hard cases). The older he got, the more he wanted to sort his bigger collections by person or team. I taught him all about year/brand/card # and so on. I even made a few trades for him on another trading site. A couple of those trades got him most of his favorite cards. He even has a vintage Lou Brock STL card that I gave him when I upgraded slightly. I only gave it to him b/c I thought he would like having a card that is older than I am and he has never removed it from that case/team bag. A few years later now and he excels in math at school! I'd like to think the card collection helped him learn numbers faster! Even though he is more into the TCG cards now, I think he'll come back to sports card collecting when he gets older. Either way, he learned a lot before he started school and that was the biggest investment I could have made to his knowledge.
I wish I could have made as much of a difference in my niece's intelligence when she got to the same age, but they had moved out on their own by then. However, she always tells me that I am her favorite Uncle and she includes her Great-Uncles in the list too. I think she remembers some of the time we spent together when she was only 2 and 3 years old. She is the first child that I ever had to change a diaper for and I will never forget about her telling me "how Mommy does it" while I was changing her for the 1st time! One of the grossest things an adult ever has to do is completely funny to me now b/c of the first time I was in that situation. Her remarks actually helped too! Back to cards, most of her collection is female NASCAR drivers but many cards of Jimmie Johnson too.
NO PWE's EVER!!! PLZ PM me 1st before sending any offer. ONLY selling cards as of March 2024. No trades or purchases right now.
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Largest total PC card collections by Team, then Athlete (as of 3/22/24):
STL Cardinals (MLB) - 8810; Carolina Panthers - 2888; GB Packers - 1790+ cards
Mark Martin (NASCAR) - 2038 cards; Jimmie Johnson (NASCAR) - 1875 cards; Jeff Gordon (NASCAR) - 1594; Ricky Rudd (NASCAR) - 839; Ozzie Smith (MLB) - 707