Today is
question day:
If you left the hobby, what brought
you back?
I quit
collecting in 1987 and returned in 1993, it was the Shaq Attack that brought me
back. I had two friends that weren’t really in to collecting but were also
excited about Shaquille O’Neal and someone had told one of my friends that 1992-93
Stadium Club was the set to get. We went to two different cards shops,
Northwest Trading Cards (still open in Federal Way and online) and another shop
in Tukwila (long time closed) and would buy whatever packs we could get our
hands on. We each eventually got a Shaq RC and I was hooked.
I never left the hobby but I did leave the NBA from 2006-12. I was just in a bad place, and wasn't enjoying it. To me it was more about the gimmick of the week than properly documenting the sport. While it's even worse now, I'm able to look past it now and appreciate what I can. Back then I couldn't. What brought me back to the NBA was a combination of the finals where the Mavs won the championship, (the first basketball I had really watched since before Christmas 2006) but more importantly was remembering all the fun I used to have with my NBA cards when I entered them all into my collection on the Trading Card Database.
ReplyDeleteNot particularly interesting but I'd say eBay brought me back. It just made it so easy to find lots of stuff. My first purchases had to do with my baseball idol, Ron Santo. I fell in love with collecting certified autos. First it was Ron and then it moved on to others.
ReplyDeleteI was out of the hobby for almost 30 years, starting around the start of the "junk wax" era, oddly enough. Mostly I got into collecting records instead, although eventually many of my records were damaged in a flood. What got me back was receiving a free box of cards from Freecycle. Almost all junk wax, but it was fun to go through, and in the process of trying to learn more about what I had (like, why are there two different 1989 Donruss sets with the same front design but different back designs?) I found the card blog community. That got me interested enough to go to the local show.
ReplyDeleteMoney. I left in 2001 to pay off my debt and save up to buy a place. By 2008 I was making enough money where I felt comfortable spending money on pieces of cardboard again.
ReplyDeleteI went through a similar cycle between 2003-2006. I was just starting to really feel the effects of some of my health issues so I was seeing a lot of doctors and having a bunch of tests done and I could not really afford anything more than a pack here and there.
DeleteI stopped collecting in 1993.. just got more interested in music and girls. I got my collecting fix by hunting down bootlegs of my favorite bands. I started checking back in with the current state of cards in 2012. I thought Topps Archives was a neat product, new cards with familiar designs. But really, I think it was the blogging community that really got me to go all-in with a return to the hobby. I previously was an admin on a couple tight-knit band-specific message boards, and after they fell apart circa 2011, I missed being a part of an online community like that. What I saw with card bloggers, sharing their love of cards and helping each other with trades and the like.. well, I thought it was very cool and wanted to be a part of it.
ReplyDelete