One Thousand Eight Hundred Pennies.
When I was a little kid I collected hockey cards. It was not so much that I really collected them but more like I bought them. It was a winter ritual to buy the dime wax packs of my cardboard heroes. Most of my friends at school also bought hockey cards and our schoolyard card games, card trading consumed all of our recesses and lunch hours. Quite a bit of my free time before and after school was also spent trying to complete all of my checklists.
I just had to have every tiny box checked off.
By winters end my hockey cards would be well worn from a full season of daily handling. Creases, stains along with fuzzy corners were the norm and most of my cards would be discarded or thrown away. Some would end up on my bike spokes and a few of my favorite players were put safely away in between the pages of my bible. Once the hockey season ended many kids switched over to baseball cards. I never bought baseball cards since I was not much of a baseball fan back when I was in grade school.
Topps was by far the big sports card manufacture. Back in 1958 the O-Pee-Chee Company which was a Canadian chewing gum manufacture entered into a marketing agreement with the Topps Company of the United States. O-Pee-Chee promoted annual trading card sets in Canada which quickly became very popular with kids. The standard pack included a stick of bubble gum with a small stack of picture cards. During their first year of operation O-Pee-Chee produced both NHL hockey and CFL football cards.
Once I started high school hockey cards became less of a novelty and I hardly ever bought them. I never saw any other students with hockey cards at high school. I guess we had all outgrown our childhood passion, we were now teenagers and we all had other passions. It would be many years later when I was in my early twenties before I would once again be reintroduced to my childhood passion. I had a work colleague who would always attend card shows in the Toronto area and he always invited me to join him, but I would never go.
I actually thought he was crazy spending a buck or more on a card that we had spent just a penny on a dozen years earlier. He would always have his newly bought cards stored in clear hard plastic toploaders. Cards with dings, creases or that were off centered were no longer wanted or collected. His reason for attending card shows was simple. He was now able to handpick the cards of players he wanted to buy and collect and he was willing to pay a premium based on the condition of the card and the investment potential of the player.
Although it seemed like a nickel and dime hobby to me, card collecting was slowly becoming mainstream. Sportscard collecting was soon to become a multi-billion dollar worldwide business.
Eventually, one Sunday afternoon I succumbed and I attended my first card show with him. It was at a small hotel on Lakeshore Avenue in Toronto’s west end and most of the early card shows that I attended were at this same venue. There was no admission and Bobby Hull was a regular special guest signing autographs for free. For the most part I would just walk around and browse. I still found it difficult to pay hundreds or even thousands of pennies more for the exact same card I had once paid just a penny for.
Wayne Gretzky was dominating the NHL back in the early 80's. He was by far the most popular Canadian during this time and it would be Wayne's rookie card that would eventually become my first card show purchase.
I spent an astronomical one thousand eight hundred pennies and I was now hooked. I began attending more shows and I started visiting various card shops that were now opening up all over the city. There were now over a dozen new card shops in the Toronto area and my job afforded me the opportunity to visit many of them weekly. Gradually I began to purchase more Gretzky rookie cards along with all of his other O-Pee-Chee cards. I scoured the monthly Sluggers price guide and the Gretzky rookie card began to soar in value rather quickly. Almost overnight it had now become a twenty thousand penny card and it was just continuing to rise in value.
I now had multiples of all my Gretzky cards, I never sold or traded any of them and the most I paid for one of Wayne’s raw rookie cards was ten thousand pennies. It was a top dollar card, the nicest one that I owned and it was a perfectly centered mint card. I also purchased the complete 396 card set from that rookie year in near mint condition. I now owned the complete set plus I had an additional ten Gretzky rookie cards put away in toploaders. My total Gretzky investment had now peaked at fifty thousand pennies.
I also started buying many other complete sets from the 70's and the 80's all with the now much coveted clean checklists. Our old schoolyard checked off checklists were now much less desired by serious collectors. As well I started to buy other star player rookie cards in the best condition I could find. My collection was growing rather quickly and I was buying a wax pack or two almost daily on my ice cream route. The packs now cost a quarter and they had fewer cards per pack, but the powdered pink stick of stale gum was still in each pack. I stored all of my new cards in boxes specially designed for card collectors and I had a couple of completely full 5000 card boxes.
My most valuable players were always slipped into plastic toploaders just like my old work colleague had done many years earlier for extra protection. They were all kept in separate boxes away from the lesser value players. For the most part my card collection consisted of ten investment star players and ninety commons (worthless non-star players) for every hundred cards that I owned.
Still, I never sold or traded any of my cards.
By the late 80's card shows as well as card shops were literally everywhere in Toronto. Both shows and shops became outlets for the selling of various other sports memorabilia instead of just cards. Old magazines, programs, calendars, pucks, jerseys, sticks and professionally framed autographed photos were now becoming very popular with collectors. Finding an old original six item in good condition was sure to be a big cash windfall. Vendors could not get enough of those vintage items and would often pay a premium for your newly found garage sale treasures.
However, everything began to change in 1990. Greed would slowly begin to erode into the sportscard industry and new card companies began flooding the market with their mass produced overpriced products. Gone were the good old wax packs, now replaced with new sealed tamper proof packaging. It was a well-known fact in the hobby that unscrupulous vendors would open wax packs and replace valuable star player cards with the worthless common players. It was too easy for them to rewrap the pack then heat the wax paper wrapper sealing it with a sandwich iron. You could not tell if a pack had been opened and resealed.
Cards were now much more vibrant, the photos and cardboard stock was far more superior than the old O-Pee-Chee’s I had grown up with. The industry was attracting a whole new wave of collectors eager to spend up to five bucks for a tamper proof foil pack of trading cards. Money was being made hand over fist. I even found myself visiting various wholesalers in the Toronto area, buying boxes of cards for the same price that the vendors would pay. I literally opened hundreds and hundreds of packs of hockey cards. I was no longer buying the O-Pee-Chee’s that I had grown up with since they had now taken a back seat to the likes of Upper Deck, Pro Set, Fleer and Score.
I also dabbled a bit in baseball cards with card companies now offering factory sealed complete sets for the casual collector who just wanted a set as an investment.
The wakeup call for me began when O-Pee-Chee introduced the Premier set back in the fall of 1990. The beautiful 132 card set included many potential Hall of Fame rookie cards. The glitzy gold foil packs were selling out everywhere and the variety stores on my ice cream route sold me everything they had. I could not find any more packs and they quickly sold out at all the wholesalers. The 1991 O-Pee-Chee Premier edition was red hot. The thirty dollar, thirty-six pack box with each foil sealed pack containing seven cards was fetching three hundred bucks plus at the shows. Individual packs were selling for ten bucks or more.
Still, I never sold or traded any of my cards.
Instead I decided I would make up complete handpicked sets. I made up ten complete 132 card sets all in pristine mint condition and each set I wrapped, boxed and put away. It was like printing money and I also had multiples of all the star rookie cards. My fifty thousand pennies investment in 1991 O-Pee-Chee Premier cards was now easily worth 10x as much based on monthly guide prices and the overwhelming demand for the product.
The year 1990 would be my last year that I would buy any packs, boxes or cases of hockey cards. Greed had now taken over the market and there was just too much product; the market was flooded with all sportscards. You could buy cards everywhere and even gas stations began selling hockey cards. New vendors at the card shows who had no knowledge whatsoever of hockey let alone hockey cards only saw the dollar signs and they too were now setting up tables to sell cards. Collecting sportscards was no longer a childhood hobby because greedy adults had completely taken it over.
For me it just became too ridiculous and too expensive buying hockey cards. Eventually prices started to plummet and card shops began closing as fast as they once opened. The sportscard industry began a slow and painful death although it would never die completely. Unpopular card manufacturers went out of business. Boxes of hockey cards that I had once paid thirty bucks for at the wholesalers were now being cleared out at Walmart for just a buck. It was abysmal to say the least.
Still, I never sold or traded any of my cards.
I always believed it would eventually come back, but it never really did. Collectors instead now began to focus on individual rookie star players and vintage Hall of Fame player's cards. New high tech printing technologies made counterfeiting cards very easy and buying older cards as an investment became very risky. You just never knew if the card you were getting was the actual card or a reprint because the printing was that good.
Enter sportscard grading.
Now various grading companies would become a force in card collecting. A graded card sealed in a plastic holder would forever hold its grade. Anything between a 1 (poor) and a 10 (gem mint) would if not anything else insure that the sealed card was indeed real and not a fake or reprint. You could now buy vintage cards again with confidence. As well the internet helped boost the resurgence in sportscard collecting. Large auction sites like ebay allow collectors to purchase graded cards at the price they are willing to pay with recent previous sales serving as a guideline of any card's true value.
The marketplace is now once again strong.
All the cards that I collected in the 80’s are no longer in my possession. I have sold all of my raw (ungraded) Gretzky O-Pee-Chee rookies at a huge profit. I then reinvested those profits back into buying the graded Gretzky rookies.
By winters end my hockey cards would be well worn from a full season of daily handling. Creases, stains along with fuzzy corners were the norm and most of my cards would be discarded or thrown away. Some would end up on my bike spokes and a few of my favorite players were put safely away in between the pages of my bible. Once the hockey season ended many kids switched over to baseball cards. I never bought baseball cards since I was not much of a baseball fan back when I was in grade school.
Topps was by far the big sports card manufacture. Back in 1958 the O-Pee-Chee Company which was a Canadian chewing gum manufacture entered into a marketing agreement with the Topps Company of the United States. O-Pee-Chee promoted annual trading card sets in Canada which quickly became very popular with kids. The standard pack included a stick of bubble gum with a small stack of picture cards. During their first year of operation O-Pee-Chee produced both NHL hockey and CFL football cards.
Once I started high school hockey cards became less of a novelty and I hardly ever bought them. I never saw any other students with hockey cards at high school. I guess we had all outgrown our childhood passion, we were now teenagers and we all had other passions. It would be many years later when I was in my early twenties before I would once again be reintroduced to my childhood passion. I had a work colleague who would always attend card shows in the Toronto area and he always invited me to join him, but I would never go.
I actually thought he was crazy spending a buck or more on a card that we had spent just a penny on a dozen years earlier. He would always have his newly bought cards stored in clear hard plastic toploaders. Cards with dings, creases or that were off centered were no longer wanted or collected. His reason for attending card shows was simple. He was now able to handpick the cards of players he wanted to buy and collect and he was willing to pay a premium based on the condition of the card and the investment potential of the player.
Although it seemed like a nickel and dime hobby to me, card collecting was slowly becoming mainstream. Sportscard collecting was soon to become a multi-billion dollar worldwide business.
Eventually, one Sunday afternoon I succumbed and I attended my first card show with him. It was at a small hotel on Lakeshore Avenue in Toronto’s west end and most of the early card shows that I attended were at this same venue. There was no admission and Bobby Hull was a regular special guest signing autographs for free. For the most part I would just walk around and browse. I still found it difficult to pay hundreds or even thousands of pennies more for the exact same card I had once paid just a penny for.
Wayne Gretzky was dominating the NHL back in the early 80's. He was by far the most popular Canadian during this time and it would be Wayne's rookie card that would eventually become my first card show purchase.
So how much did I pay for the 1979/80 O-Pee-Chee #18 Wayne Gretzky rookie card?
I spent an astronomical one thousand eight hundred pennies and I was now hooked. I began attending more shows and I started visiting various card shops that were now opening up all over the city. There were now over a dozen new card shops in the Toronto area and my job afforded me the opportunity to visit many of them weekly. Gradually I began to purchase more Gretzky rookie cards along with all of his other O-Pee-Chee cards. I scoured the monthly Sluggers price guide and the Gretzky rookie card began to soar in value rather quickly. Almost overnight it had now become a twenty thousand penny card and it was just continuing to rise in value.
I now had multiples of all my Gretzky cards, I never sold or traded any of them and the most I paid for one of Wayne’s raw rookie cards was ten thousand pennies. It was a top dollar card, the nicest one that I owned and it was a perfectly centered mint card. I also purchased the complete 396 card set from that rookie year in near mint condition. I now owned the complete set plus I had an additional ten Gretzky rookie cards put away in toploaders. My total Gretzky investment had now peaked at fifty thousand pennies.
I also started buying many other complete sets from the 70's and the 80's all with the now much coveted clean checklists. Our old schoolyard checked off checklists were now much less desired by serious collectors. As well I started to buy other star player rookie cards in the best condition I could find. My collection was growing rather quickly and I was buying a wax pack or two almost daily on my ice cream route. The packs now cost a quarter and they had fewer cards per pack, but the powdered pink stick of stale gum was still in each pack. I stored all of my new cards in boxes specially designed for card collectors and I had a couple of completely full 5000 card boxes.
My most valuable players were always slipped into plastic toploaders just like my old work colleague had done many years earlier for extra protection. They were all kept in separate boxes away from the lesser value players. For the most part my card collection consisted of ten investment star players and ninety commons (worthless non-star players) for every hundred cards that I owned.
Still, I never sold or traded any of my cards.
By the late 80's card shows as well as card shops were literally everywhere in Toronto. Both shows and shops became outlets for the selling of various other sports memorabilia instead of just cards. Old magazines, programs, calendars, pucks, jerseys, sticks and professionally framed autographed photos were now becoming very popular with collectors. Finding an old original six item in good condition was sure to be a big cash windfall. Vendors could not get enough of those vintage items and would often pay a premium for your newly found garage sale treasures.
However, everything began to change in 1990. Greed would slowly begin to erode into the sportscard industry and new card companies began flooding the market with their mass produced overpriced products. Gone were the good old wax packs, now replaced with new sealed tamper proof packaging. It was a well-known fact in the hobby that unscrupulous vendors would open wax packs and replace valuable star player cards with the worthless common players. It was too easy for them to rewrap the pack then heat the wax paper wrapper sealing it with a sandwich iron. You could not tell if a pack had been opened and resealed.
Cards were now much more vibrant, the photos and cardboard stock was far more superior than the old O-Pee-Chee’s I had grown up with. The industry was attracting a whole new wave of collectors eager to spend up to five bucks for a tamper proof foil pack of trading cards. Money was being made hand over fist. I even found myself visiting various wholesalers in the Toronto area, buying boxes of cards for the same price that the vendors would pay. I literally opened hundreds and hundreds of packs of hockey cards. I was no longer buying the O-Pee-Chee’s that I had grown up with since they had now taken a back seat to the likes of Upper Deck, Pro Set, Fleer and Score.
I also dabbled a bit in baseball cards with card companies now offering factory sealed complete sets for the casual collector who just wanted a set as an investment.
The wakeup call for me began when O-Pee-Chee introduced the Premier set back in the fall of 1990. The beautiful 132 card set included many potential Hall of Fame rookie cards. The glitzy gold foil packs were selling out everywhere and the variety stores on my ice cream route sold me everything they had. I could not find any more packs and they quickly sold out at all the wholesalers. The 1991 O-Pee-Chee Premier edition was red hot. The thirty dollar, thirty-six pack box with each foil sealed pack containing seven cards was fetching three hundred bucks plus at the shows. Individual packs were selling for ten bucks or more.
Still, I never sold or traded any of my cards.
Instead I decided I would make up complete handpicked sets. I made up ten complete 132 card sets all in pristine mint condition and each set I wrapped, boxed and put away. It was like printing money and I also had multiples of all the star rookie cards. My fifty thousand pennies investment in 1991 O-Pee-Chee Premier cards was now easily worth 10x as much based on monthly guide prices and the overwhelming demand for the product.
The year 1990 would be my last year that I would buy any packs, boxes or cases of hockey cards. Greed had now taken over the market and there was just too much product; the market was flooded with all sportscards. You could buy cards everywhere and even gas stations began selling hockey cards. New vendors at the card shows who had no knowledge whatsoever of hockey let alone hockey cards only saw the dollar signs and they too were now setting up tables to sell cards. Collecting sportscards was no longer a childhood hobby because greedy adults had completely taken it over.
For me it just became too ridiculous and too expensive buying hockey cards. Eventually prices started to plummet and card shops began closing as fast as they once opened. The sportscard industry began a slow and painful death although it would never die completely. Unpopular card manufacturers went out of business. Boxes of hockey cards that I had once paid thirty bucks for at the wholesalers were now being cleared out at Walmart for just a buck. It was abysmal to say the least.
Still, I never sold or traded any of my cards.
I always believed it would eventually come back, but it never really did. Collectors instead now began to focus on individual rookie star players and vintage Hall of Fame player's cards. New high tech printing technologies made counterfeiting cards very easy and buying older cards as an investment became very risky. You just never knew if the card you were getting was the actual card or a reprint because the printing was that good.
Enter sportscard grading.
Now various grading companies would become a force in card collecting. A graded card sealed in a plastic holder would forever hold its grade. Anything between a 1 (poor) and a 10 (gem mint) would if not anything else insure that the sealed card was indeed real and not a fake or reprint. You could now buy vintage cards again with confidence. As well the internet helped boost the resurgence in sportscard collecting. Large auction sites like ebay allow collectors to purchase graded cards at the price they are willing to pay with recent previous sales serving as a guideline of any card's true value.
The marketplace is now once again strong.
All the cards that I collected in the 80’s are no longer in my possession. I have sold all of my raw (ungraded) Gretzky O-Pee-Chee rookies at a huge profit. I then reinvested those profits back into buying the graded Gretzky rookies.
How much is the most I have ever paid for a graded Wayne Gretzky rookie card?
An astronomical eight hundred and sixty thousand pennies or almost five hundred times what I paid for my first Gretzky rookie card purchase back in the early 80's,
I am pretty confident that I will do very well if and when I ever decide to sell my graded cards. I am very happy with what I now own in my collection. I have focused a lot less on cards and I have concentrated much more on other vintage hockey memorabilia.
As I write this memory I am still amused when I look back at how I once scoffed at my work colleague who always invited me to card shows. I never thought I would ever have gotten caught up in the sports collectible craze like I have. I have spent literally close to ten million pennies since my first Wayne Gretzky rookie card purchase. I now own just one of those 1991 O-Pee-Chee Premier sets, a factory set that I will always keep. It will forever serve as a reminder just how crazy card collecting can be. And how much money can potentially be lost by not selling into a hot market. A card is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.
Period.
I did eventually get my investment back on all my Premier cards, but just. To think I had a box that I could have easily sold for $5000 back when the 1991 Premier set was red hot and I just let it slip through my hands. However, I did sell all my raw Gretzky rookie cards for a lot more than $5000 and I ended up doing extremely well on that investment.
An astronomical eight hundred and sixty thousand pennies or almost five hundred times what I paid for my first Gretzky rookie card purchase back in the early 80's,
I am pretty confident that I will do very well if and when I ever decide to sell my graded cards. I am very happy with what I now own in my collection. I have focused a lot less on cards and I have concentrated much more on other vintage hockey memorabilia.
As I write this memory I am still amused when I look back at how I once scoffed at my work colleague who always invited me to card shows. I never thought I would ever have gotten caught up in the sports collectible craze like I have. I have spent literally close to ten million pennies since my first Wayne Gretzky rookie card purchase. I now own just one of those 1991 O-Pee-Chee Premier sets, a factory set that I will always keep. It will forever serve as a reminder just how crazy card collecting can be. And how much money can potentially be lost by not selling into a hot market. A card is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.
Period.
I did eventually get my investment back on all my Premier cards, but just. To think I had a box that I could have easily sold for $5000 back when the 1991 Premier set was red hot and I just let it slip through my hands. However, I did sell all my raw Gretzky rookie cards for a lot more than $5000 and I ended up doing extremely well on that investment.
I guess card collecting turned out to be more than a nickel and dime hobby afterall.
