[Mutton Chop Yaz]

Late last year, I checked back in to see what was happening in the card world and was shocked. I'd long considered expanding my collection to include a small group of the most consequential players who played both pre- and post-war, integrated baseball, and emerged as stars from the immediate post-integration and westward expansion era, but I thought I would be able to do that down the road at a leisurely pace. Not so! Cards that I thought I could find any time for $125 were suddenly $500 or more. Jackie Robinsons and Satchel Paiges were quickly becoming unaffordable. Star cards from the 1950s were now going to have to be star cards from the 1960s.

I recognized that it might be a bubble. I also recognized that premier cards have tended to hold or increase in value over the long term, and my intention was for my cards to be permanent parts of my collection. So, I thought about whose cards I wanted and what qualities were important to me, investigated card issues I hadn't considered before, made a plan, scoured the listings, and overpaid for everything. Some of my constraints (e.g., an attractive design and image, good centering, and an absence of prominently featured racial caricatures, if possible) made my search a little trickier than I'd anticipated, but I'm happy with the way it turned out.