bybrandonbrown Admittedly, the Paul Skenes Debut Patch marketing from the Pirates is what pulled me back to the hobby. What a neat concept these debut patch cards are, and the offer from the Pirates really makes it special. Would I take the offer? If I were about $500,000 positive in net-worth already, maybe. Raising a family is expensive, so I would probably throw that one to an auction house if I was blessed to find it. It has already brought me a forgotten joy- how fun it is to get a pack and rip in.
There Are so Many Things to Know About Baseball Cards Now
Were they always like this? Topps Chrome Update 2024 sounds like something we would have seen in a Call of Duty skin package 10 years ago.
Sidenote: The first purchasable skins for Call of Duty were made available in November 2012 for Black Ops 2. Also, the game’s story no longer takes place in the future, but the current year of 2025.
This has been the hardest part of the hobby for me to pick up so far. Superfractors and wavefractors, green, gold, and red parallels. I don’t want to admit how long it took for me to pickup that “auto” meant “autographed version” of a card. Then there’s Rookie Cards, but also True Rookie Cards, Debut Rookie Cards, First Bowman Cards, and then they all have chrome and other variations of themselves.
I thought the Collections on MLB The Show were just a way to gamify an area of the experience to keep people playing. I had no idea they had real world paralells.
Where I’m Starting
Simple. Keep it simple and enjoy the experience of a hobby. I am a lifelong New York Yankees fan, so I started with a goal of collecting the entirety of the 2024 team in different Topps variations so I can also learn what to get from where and when - Holiday cards are a thing, too? Be it Topps, Bowman, or Allen & Ginter, I want to have a card of every player that played for the Yankees in 2024.
Of course this has led me to have cards for every team so far, and even some Dogs and Musician cards thanks to A&G. With such a late start on the 2024 cards, I’m hoping to complete the set of Yankees as soon as possible, and then my next 2024 teams will be the Cardinals and Pittsburgh for sentimental reasons.
That right there is why I’m excited about starting this as a serious hobby. Every card is a snapshot of at least two moments in time- when the photo was taken, and what I was doing when I opened the card. There are a lot of possible memories and moments tied to this hobby, and I’m hoping to pull my youngest into it with me - maybe I’ll get lucky and some of the older teens and young adults will join in, too. Plus it will make future birthday’s and Christmas easy on the kids - “Dad is happy with some baseball cards, just pick those up” or “hey your dad has been chasing these specific cards for years, keep an eye out.”
The Romance of Baseball Returning
There was a time when I lived for nothing but baseball. Right up to high school I wanted nothing less than to play first base for the Yankees. I was a consistent presence on traveling teams, local All-Start teams, and had a love of the game you can’t train into people. I can now see, looking back at life with 40 years of perspective and a few friendly psychiatric diagnosis to help, that depression, anxiety, and ADHD all piled in at the same time and managed to push me away from the game.
This timed up with the end of the Evil Empire dynasty, and the Yankees “slumped” to the point where I lost my excitement for following them. October baseball could pull me in, but it was always tough watching the game I knew I was supposed to be a part of, but couldn’t understand that my brain had re-wired against it. To be fair to my brain, this is back when BMX was anti-helmet and I took my fair share of falls that would have been less worrisome if I had only worn the helmet.
This is what I’m truly thankful for to the Pirates and their offer of the Paul Skenes card - it brought baseball back to my life. Okay and the 2024 Yankees World Series run, even with that 5th inning, was a sight to see. God I hope we get a rematch with an Aaron Judge there to prove a point. We want an Ohtani vs Judge World Series slugfest, and we want it now.
With this love of baseball returning, I’ve been devouring books, stories, movies, documentaries, and the memories others share through the story of the card they just pulled. It brings me back to my grandfather who the one connection we always had was the Yankees. I’m so thankful I got to experience the 00’s dynasty with him and can look back on those teams happy in those memories again.
A Hobby to Age With
One of the things I’ve lost the last couple of decades were my hobbies. I feel selfish in a sense to spend time and money on baseball cards as a 40 year old father to a moderately large family. That money could be saved, spent on something fun for the kids, or even just an extra meal here or there, but I am coming to learn that while being a father has been one of my most favorite parts of living, I still need to let myself live for me. This hobby feels like it’s the start of me finding who I lost, making the inner-child happy and all that, but I hope it winds up making me a more well-rounded person and a stronger father-figure through the process of letting myself be consumed by something I love. I hope baseball and card collecting are things I’ll get to sit and share the experience with one day as a grandfather as mine once did with me.