The Underground Insight 12.31.07: The Impossible Hobby
Posted by JD Koziarski on 12.31.2007
The days of a jumbo pack of 35 cards for two bucks is gone. Now you have to shell out a couple hundred dollars for a couple of cards, and even then odds are you’ll never get all the cards you truly desire. Collecting has changed over the past fifteen years, and not always for the better.
Exercise in Futility
Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. Any second now it's my turn to fire away. The countdown tells me I have a minute left. I turn down the music (at the moment some sort of angry white girl screaming about how much guys suck ) because I need to concentrate on my target. Forty-five seconds and I take a quick sip from my drink and steady my hand. As the clock winds down to half a minute, I double check everything and wonder if I am aiming high enough. Maybe too high this time, but I've already committed myself.
Fifteen seconds and I start to count down in my head. Ten, nine, eight. Not yet. Seven, six, five. Ready now. Four, three. Fire!.
In bright red letters, my computer screen reads, "Sorry, you have been outbid." How could it be? Somebody just sniped the sniper - the term used for waiting until the final seconds of an auction before bidding so nobody else has a chance to counterbid.
This one stings a little more than most eBay auctions I unsuccessfully and obsessively watch until the final seconds. The card was pulled from the new 2007 Upper Deck Black set and was one of just 10 in existence. So what's so special about a baseball card that's rarer than a sober Britney Spears?
The card itself is pretty darn cool. It features my personal favorite player, the new San Francisco Giants center fielder, Aaron Rowand. A handful of years ago I had decided I would try to collect all of Rowand's baseball cards. Seemed like a fun little hobby, and since then I've added a handful of players to that. I'm not a hardcore collector who spends thousands and thousands of dollars. In fact, Rowand is the biggest star on my list. I saw it as a side hobby and a way to retain a precious part of childhood.
I don't remember cards like the Upper Deck Black cards when I was a kid. A hobby box of these cards comes with just two packs. Each pack has one card. One. It's not a gyp, every card is serial numbered to 99 or less and they all are autographed. Some of them have box scores from games, others lineup cards, and some even have pieces of game-worn jersey attached to the card.
According to one popular wholesale sports cards site, a box of these cards – two whole cards – will run you almost $200.
The Upper Deck Black set is hardly the only one out there with nearly impossible-to-find cards. Over the past half-decade or so, sets are increasingly putting out harder to find cards that makes collecting everything from one player about as easy as hitting a homer off Johan Santana
The cost of the hobby has driven away many collectors, but a person can still find what they want for a pretty good deal. The grail I sought recently sold for less than $25 after shipping costs were added. That's not so bad considering that pack was a $100 pack. Sites like BidVille and NAXCOM open the door to purchase single cards you want for reasonable prices. These sites are especially good for picking up those commons you need to complete a set.
But more often than not, the hobby turns away collectors by saying, "You can't have what you want." Understanding all the principles of supply and demand, that is simply bad business. Collecting is fun when everything you could possibly want is theoretically attainable. Maybe you can't afford that prized rookie card, but you know you can get it once you stash away enough coin. But what happens when the other guy on the block just shelled out a few Benjamins for a quadruple patch autographed DNA card personally spit on by your favorite player? There's only one of these cards, and now you will never fill your collection.
In the meantime, I'll keep chugging away trying to get what I can. Even though I know some of those elusive cards will never come into my possession, the thrill of childhood remains every time I receive another card on my list. And as I look for another one of those 10 UD Black cards, I'll try to figure out how to pay the bills when my bank statement consistently reads: PAYPAL INST XFER WEB.
