General Forum

So I was wondering if anyone else has a card or set, that has more sentimental value than monetary value to them? A holy grail of your collection so to speak, but not worth much more then the cardboard it is printed on.

Mine is my Walter Payton rookie card. The card is in bad shape. Not worth hardly anything at all. But I love that card. Growing up in the 80's, me and my friend would trade cards and dream over the high dollar card prices in Beckett while riding the school bus. Walter Payton was my first favorite player. So naturally his rookie card value was one of the first I'd look up whenever we'd get a new magazine. It would show prices in the $300 dollar range, which to a 6th grade kid, that was like millions. How would I ever get such a card.

  One day, when dad and I went to town to the American Legion. I walked down to the local card shop and there it was in the case. A Walter Payton rookie card. The first I had ever seen in person and it was only $17. Surely this guy is a fool, this card is the most valuable thing on earth and he only wants $17! But I only had a few bucks. So I ran back to the American Legion as fast as I could, begged my dad for the extra money. I remember telling him how this guy made a huge mistake on pricing. After all, Beckett said poor condition is half the mint price. So this card is worth at least $150. With the help of some of the other guys at the Legion, I got the money and ran as fast as I could back to the store. Luckly it was still there and I got it!! I hid it in my coat walking back, because I was sure someone would try to steal it if they saw it. 

     I look back and laugh now, the card is rough. Years later, my dad said when he went into that shop asking for a donation for the Vietnam Veterns of America fund raiser he was doing. He asked the owner about that card. He remembered the card, saying he thought about throwing it out at one time because of the shape it was in lol. I still have it, and have never once thought of upgrading that card to this day, since each time I look at it I go back to that day and it feels like yesterday.

nice story, thanks for sharing

my late uncle bought me a 67 Clemente when I was a kid.  poor condition, one of a kind all star variation (hand written stars on front)

still have an makes me smile when I come across it..

mark

I have a similar type card but not a favorite like that. I have a 1971 Terry Bradshaw rookie. It has soft corners and a light crease. I picked it up at the first card show I ever attended. It was $5 and at that time the only Bradshaw rookie I could ever afford. I still have it today and will probably never part with it.

I don't know if this card qualifies, and I don't have a heart-warming story. But I bought a lot of old cards from a kid up the street when I was about 14 (circa 1979) and the "kid" was about 10. Five bucks for around 100 old cards. In it was 1970 Pete Rose that I dutifully put with my 70s and never actually looked closely at. Years later, I was looking through my cards and noticed that someone had written his name on the card in pencil. That someone appears to be Pete Rose. I do not know if the autograph is authentic. I suspect it is. I do not care. His autograph isn't worth too much because he's probably signed more things than anyone in history. But I do love that card. It's on display just behind me, even as I type. 

v3

Mark, I have a couple cards my grandma bought me many years ago, that still make me smile when I look at them.

Thanks for sharing guys. Must be the nostalgic in me. But I enjoy hearing the "back stories" from different collections. 

I think in this day of, "how much is it worth", "what's it graded at". Sometimes those old memories help remind us of why we got into this hobby.

I have a crinkled '66 Topps Willie Mays, a '65 Topps Joe Morgan RC with corners which fuzzy doesn't even begin to describe, and a '39 Play Ball Harry Craft RC, he's the first ever Houston manager, and it's been trimmed and his name is written in pencil on the front, but neither one of those holds as much sentimental value as the following. 

In fact, mine won't be found on TCDB ever since the 3-card set is homemade - my son created them when he was maybe 7 years old. I found it in a stack of cards he said he didn't want anymore a few months ago - he's 30 now - and I found among other things an '85 Topps Montana, but near the bottom of a stack of about 20 cards were these depicting a few characters from the video game Sonic drawn in pencil and in penny sleeves.

I was actually thinking about them earlier today and considering putting them in a display for him on his next birthday. Right now, they're mine.

Mine would also have to be a card that would never get listed here.

It's a Joe Garagiola card, that looks like a 1976 Topps card. He was a celebrity spokesman / commercial actor for some car rental company back in the late 1970s/1980s. The father of one of my good friends worked for the same company, and got to meet him. Joe autographed these cards and handed them out. The guy knew I collected baseball cards, so he gave it to me because he figured I'd enjoy having it more than he ever would.

It sits in the top-center slot in a page in my "Retired Favorites" binder, between the 1951 Bowman card and some early 1990s Action Packed card. Those are the only 3 cards I have of Joe. It's because of having that card that I have that page in that binder.

I also have several other cards that were given to me over the years (including the 1951 Bowman Garagiola), but I think that one would be the coolest one to me that has little to no monetary value.

An example of it:

Back in the mid-90s (before ebay) I was selling a group of 1994 Classic Draft "Women of Hockey" insert cards.  The winning bidder turned out to be Andria Hunter, one of the members of Team Canada featured in the set.  She was collecting as many of those cards of her & her teammates as she could find.  After the "official" sale, I managed to round up another batch of those inserts from LCSs & struck a deal.  In exchange for the additional cards, she sent me a thank you note & three personalized, autographed photo print-outs.  I still have them all displayed in a binder page, along with her University of Toronto - Department of Computer Science envelope, on which she also printed her name.  So, technically not a card, but definitely high in sentimental value.

Speaking of "technically not a card", my new profile image is of an actual card I pulled from a pack of Upper Deck.  The back is printed properly & even has an intact hologram sticker, so I don't know where in the production process this card met its horrible fate.  It is funny on several counts ...the photo itself, in which it appears he is taking refuge on the bench to avoid the card ripping ...the "Left Win" position (as the right side has been "lost") ...and his name is Randy Wood, one of Austin Powers' favorite players, I imagine.