I recognize that MVP Clemente in the OP, but hadn't thought about it in forever. I had it and can recall that as my only Clemente and possibly the oldest-seeming thing I owned, it got prize positioning in one of the 2 or 3 scratched up top loaders I had accumulated second-hand. (I displayed my best stuff out on a bookshelf.)
This was pre-internet or at least pre-internet ubiquity, and not living in a big city or a particularly sports-inclined region, I only had access to new packs in the grocery store check-out aisle and the toy/sports section of the JCPenny mail-order catalogue. I didn't have a whole set so must have traded for it somehow.
At some point I found a place called 'Collector's Corner' in the phone book and convinced my mom to drive an hour across town to this place which was like Eden to me. I bought my first 'real' Clemente there: a 1962 with corners so rounded, fluffy paper particles were practically wafting off of it. But it was a real contemporarily-issued card and now mine. I suspect at that point something in my mind switched over and I haven't looked back since.
Since then my collecting is limited to playing years. While I can't know exactly why that is, it feels like something to do with a sense of scarcity---like that the playing-years issues feel real and now limited, whereas 'best-of' and 'All-time' type reminiscence cards can be made year after year endlessly.
While I can appreciate why others may enjoy them, they are largely meaningless to me, even that TCMA issue that was my first. And I'm guessing that's probably a healthy thing, since I suspect there's a fine line between collecting and 'hoarding'. There's clearly too much product out there for any of us to have everything. And so anything any one person can look at and have no desire at all to accumulate, must indicate they're still on the sane side of the line?
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