Before I turn 30

Somehow, I'm turning 30 on Saturday.

A lot of you who've been here for a while probably know me as "the kid" in the blogosphere - I started this blog when I was 19! - but believe me, the prospect of being a thirtysomething is just as perplexing to me as it might be to you. If I ever realized my one-time dream of becoming a big-league ballplayer, I'd be securely classified as a "veteran" right now. It's strange.

My collection changed a lot during my 20s. I went from having little interest in vintage to being obsessed with it, from treating "book value" as gospel to not caring a wink about it. I now own cards I never thought I'd have in a million years. And while I don't think it was a conscious effort on my part, I've made a bit of a push to squeeze a few long-wanted cards into my collection as my 20s near a close.

It's great fun scavenging the corners of the internet for dime and quarter cards, but with a little extra money in my pocket sometimes you just have to go ahead and make a big splash - or whatever qualifies as one for me. I've been chasing a '61 Juan Marichal rookie for years, but unfortunately it's a prime intersection of a dream card that usually goes for gobs and gobs of money. I stumbled upon a relatively affordable copy on eBay about a month ago, and decided enough was enough.

At $75, it's the most I've spent on a single card in a while (and probably one of my top five or ten most expensive purchases ever), but definitely a thrilling white whale to finally harpoon before I hit the inevitable 3-0.

One thing that hasn't changed about me is that I still see "big" cards as anything that costs more than five bucks - only now I'm way more willing to spend that kind of cash if need be.

These biggies came from a combination of Twitter, eBay, and Sportlots - the beauty of that '63 Brock, for my money, blows his '62 rookie out of the water, and it's an immense relief to have a couple more scary '72 high-numbers out of the way.

Took 29 years to get my first Transogram cards, but here we are.

Any of these in nice condition go for more than I'd ever wanna spend, but thanks to the shaky hands of some '60s kid, I snagged these of perennial Dime Boxedonia favorites Rico Petrocelli & Denny McLain for about $10 together.

I'm also way, way more into oddballs than I was in the early days of this blog - the number of Kellogg's & Hostess collection has multiplied exponentially over the past 10 years or so.

The Oliver is a treasured alternate-universe '78 Burger King oddball - in that it's an altogether different card than his regular '78 Topps issue - and the Buhl is a fantastic regional oddball that was issued on the backs of milk cartons in Wisconsin in the '60s, which talk about a card I never thought I'd add to my binders!

While I mostly avoid Twitter sales and breaks and giveaways like the plague, there's a fun little vintage sales thread every Wednesday that's been a boon to my collection lately. 

There's a lot of high-end and/or graded stuff that I can't afford/don't care about, but once in a while I find someone selling vintage Ernies for insanely low prices.

These Drysdales have seen better days - the '63 Fleer is noticeably smaller than normal and possibly trimmed - but for $5 a pop they'll get a good home with me.

I find it incredibly cool to know I can interact with Andrew Aronstein on Twitter, son of Mark Aronstein who you might know as the "MA" from the legendary "TCMA" brand.

Better yet, I even bought a couple oddball sets from him recently - always love those All-Time Greats TCMA sets, and the other two came from a five-card set that was only sold at the Baseball Nostalgia card shop in Cooperstown in 1983 to acknowledge that year's HOF inductees (not pictured: Don Drysdale, Pee Wee Reese, Luis Aparicio).

I paid a whole $15 for those five cards, but given that my dream trip to Cooperstown still looks to be at least a few years away, I couldn't let 'em go.

Forked over $20 for this pair of well-loved Robinsons, but even with a bit of water damage that excellent '64 Stand-Up alone will probably run you a couple times that anywhere else.

The Gwynn & Mattingly kinda ruin the surprise here...

...but these are all real, glorious OPCs!

For whatever reason, I've run across a bunch of people selling cheap OPCs on Twitter lately, and no matter how much I try to resist, I can't help but fall for their allure. The light backs, the French text, Joe Morgan's floating head, all of it.

I never planned on owning an '84 OPC Mattingly rookie - the Topps one is hard enough to find at a decent price - but thanks to a small crease you can barely see, I figured why not?

When I was 20, the prospect of owning a complete Topps run of Clementes seemed about as likely as being shot onto Jupiter.

Yet somehow, after securing this pair of '60s high(ish)-numbers for decent prices (good lord that '63 is beautiful), I'm just three cards away from completing that unlikely run. Two of the last three are '61 & '67, which are pricey but definitely attainable. My goal is to have both of those within the next year.

The other one, of course, is a '55 rookie, which I may need to sell a couple organs to afford - but who knows what kind of surprises my 30s have in store?

It's hard to pick a single card I'm most proud/relieved to have finally knocked off the block, but if I'm pressed for an answer it's probably this long-awaited '60 Yaz rookie.

This is a card I've salivated over many times over the past decade, always catching my eye underneath those dastardly glass cases at card shows. But each and every time, a quick peek at the price told me no chance. It's just not a card you see well-loved copies of very often. But thanks to a small tear at the top of this one, I finally managed to secure that hallowed Yaz rookie for about the same amount of cash as the '61 Marichal. An unthinkable sum for my 20-year-old self, but these days I know it's money well-spent.

And so I sit and wait for Saturday, waiting for that inevitable flip of final page that brings the binder of my 20s to a close - but given everything I've showed in this post you can't say I didn't end it with a bang.