Collecting sports cards over a long period of time can leave a person with a mountain of regrets. There are a host of bad deals, good deals that never happened, or a stack of cards long forgotten and lost. Here is one of my nightmares over the years. Feel free to share yours!
Ah 1987, what a year for sports card collecting. We had 1987 Topps baseball, which in many ways was the beginning of the end for the “golden years” of collecting. 1987-88 Topps and O-Pee-Chee Hockey, which featured some wonderful rookies, and of course 1987 Topps football, which also carried a significant rookie class. When I think back though, I can’t help but feeling sick to my stomach when I think of 1987-88 Fleer Basketball. It had a lot of what current collectors would desire; Low print runs, a nice clean looking design, rookies aplenty, and a second year of Jordan not to mention a nice sticker set as an insert.
One day, while my mother was shopping at Honey Baked Ham, while looking for respite from the boredom of a ham shop, I stumbled into a candy store down the way. I wasn’t looking for cards, just some entertainment and a sugar high to kill the time. I walked in and gandered at all of the sweet treats. Low and behold, on the bottom shelf, stuffed away in the corner, were packs of 1987-88 Fleer basketball cards.
I can’t say I ever got to see basketball cards much. Maybe here or there at a show, but sealed packs for some reason, not very often. Today though, they were the only packs in the store. For a mere 45 cents each, I bought a handful of packs. I took them home, and after analyzing a checklist, I realized the set was fairly small. I was going to build the whole set. I kept going back to the store and grabbing more packs, until finally one day I just bought a whole box and then another and another. They took over my card collection. I had multiple 800 count boxes full of them. I had easily 2-3 full sets and plenty of doubles. This is where the happiness leaves the building.
I took a set to a card show and sold it for $20. I got to talking to the gentleman and told him about my new addiction. He said, “Hey, I will be back here next week, bring me another set and I will buy it!” This guy knew something. He was all too happy to part with his $20 bills for these sets. So me being the business man that I am at age 13, decided to take all of my basketball cards to him the following week. 2 more sets and many doubles. He bought them all for three crispy 20’s. Thats right, $80 all in for my 1987-88 basketball cards. I was rich!
If memory serves me correctly, I had around 8-9 Michael Jordan 2nd year cards, multiple Jordan stickers, and several of each rookie card, not to mention the other stars in the set. Needless to say, the street value on all of that now is far more than eighty bucks! The Jordan’s graded PSA 8 currently sell for $300-$400! That’s a nice loss for this guy.
While we chalk this up as a loss, who knew 1987-88 Fleer basketball was going to hold any value? I will tell you who, that guy that bought them off me without even haggling! That should have been sign #1 that I wasn’t thinking this through.
Oh, you may be wondering what I did with that crisp $80? I turned around and walked two tables over and bought three boxes of 1988 Topps, which had just been released and was all the rage after the huge 1987 season! You can literally buy sealed boxes of 1988 Topps now for the same price they sold for then. Zero appreciation and one huge fail!
As always, thanks for reading! Feel free to share your fails in the comments below! By the way, I have current fails too, here is one to read about in your free time!