Addicted to Packs

Fifty cents meant a pack of 1987 Topps with that smooth wooden boarder. Three dollars meant a pack of 1985 Topps as I chased that Eric Davis rookie or Mark McGwire Olympic card.

Books became stuffed with 1986, 1987, and 1988 Topps as I transferred the cards from packs into those nine cards plastic pages.

Forget Toys R Us Mom, let's go to the Card Connection or Coins Plus and buy a box of 1991 Topps Stadium Club.

At 13 I remember a friend saying he was going to use $10 to take his girlfriend to the movies instead of buying packs of Fleer Ultra. I thought he was nuts.

Two years later I spent $20 on a pack of Topps Finest. It felt wrong.

I felt like I was no longer collecting, I was gambling. Opening a pack felt hitting on 16 in Blackjack hoping the dealer gave me the refractor five and not busting without an insert.

It seems like I wasn't the only one leaving the hobby. Maybe people were realizing that those thousands of cards from the late 1980's were over produced and not worth anything.

Maybe people were tired of paying $10 for an eight card pack hoping to land a patch of game worn jersey.

Maybe people just didn't know what do to with cards besides sticking them in a box? For the price, other memorabilia showed much better in man caves.

Whatever it was, watching local card shops closing felt like my childhood was also closing.

I had gone away from the hobby until a few years ago when I bought a few cards hoping to get autographs on my way to Camelback Ranch.

Tommy Lasorda ended up autographing a 1985 Topps on my first day of spring training.

When I got back to Los Angeles, I visited a local card shop in the valley. Packs of 1985 Topps were only $2.50.

Oh no, must show restraint. Must not relapse on packs.

I knew these cards were not worth much. Part of the fun of collecting was thinking about handing the collection down to my son knowing that the cards would be worth enough to pay for his college.

Surely in 2010, that 1987 Topps Jose Conseco would be worth hundreds of dollars. Looking in the glass cases, it was priced around a dollar.

Obviously these 1985 Topps cards are not worth much, I must show restraint and walk away.

Wait, packs of 1983 Fleer were also only $2.50? "I'll take two".

Even walking to the parking lot, I thought "this is a one-time thing and I'll stop when I don't get anything in these few packs".

On the first pack, I pulled a Tony Gwynn rookie.

Houston we have a problem.

I went back to the store a few days later. The owner had cheap packs of Topps, Donruss, and Fleer from the early 1980's. I couldn't afford those packs when I was a kid, they were five dollars and that bought 10 packs of 1988 Topps.

"Give me two from 1984 and two from 1982".

Warm memories from childhood flooded back at the nostalgia of opening wax packs. Whether it was trading cards with neighbors after the 1994 earthquake or that smell of cigarette smoke as we walked into my favorite card shop, I felt rejuvenated with every pack I opened.

While I did go to the shop almost weekly for the first part of the season, I slowed down as the season wore on. Tony Gwynn rookies were not showing up nearly as often as Greg Brock rookies.

The nostalgia had started to wear and I did not want to start buying newer cards with their inserts. It did not feel right paying $5 for a pack without bubble gum where the only cards worth anything were rare refractor or game used jersey inserts.

I did buy a few cards for autographs on my way to spring training again last year, but by no means was I relapsing over these new cards.

Yasiel Puig screwed it all up.

I knew his stats were outrageous, but lots of rookies have had amazing springs only to flame out in the regular season. Who can forget Jerry Sands or Billy Ashley?

Seeing him in person, I knew he was different. He was huge and showed blazing speed on the practice fields, a Cuban Bo Jackson I thought.

Must buy packs, must load up on Yasiel Puig cards.

I could have gone on eBay and bought his cards outright, but I was addicted to packs. That feeling of pulling his card from a pack was like no other.

It took awhile, but I finally pulled a few. I've hit four of a kind a few times on a video poker machine, pulling a Puig from a pack gave me that same feeling.

After a few Puig rookies, I stopped buying packs at the end of the season.

On Thursday a math problem came up in my 7th grade math class about baseball cards. I hadn't thought about packs in awhile, but I was sure Topps was getting ready to release their series one set for 2014.

Memories started pouring in for a few seconds before I asked my class "how many of you collect baseball cards?"

Nobody raised their hands.

Regardless, I stopped at Target on the way home to see if the 2014 Topps series one had come out. Sure enough there were regular and rack packs.

Grinning at the rack pack, I brought it to a teenage boy at the register.

"Wow I haven't seen anybody buy one of these yet. Sad the hobby is dead".

Maybe to him, and to this generation in general, collecting baseball cards is a dead hobby. But I hope one day it will bounce back and I hope I will always be able to buy a pack or two of Topps each spring as I head to Camelback Ranch.