Hey all:
I remember a thread a little while back that discussed this topic of what to do with all of those cards of Greg Gagne, Tom Henke, Rudy Seanez, and Todd Hollandsworth, or Fat Lever, Shawn Bradley, and Bimbo Coles if we're talking about basketball. I couldn't find the thread, but I mentioned briefly what I did with mine.
Anyway, my brother and I would go to card shops as kids (mid 90s), and amassed many cards of no real monetary value --- as I am sure many of you did as well. They now either make our parents upset, or our wives, as they occupy space in bins or boxes, because we simply can't throw them away. In WI, where I grew up, some of the card shops would have raffles, and many of the prizes included boxes that would hold 750 cards (fun for kids, but I remember really being a kid that paid attention to "Beckett" prices, and noticed that they literally removed every card that was a RC or any type of semi-star). We probably won 20 over the course of a few years.
We also would acquire any cards found by my dad, who at the time owned 13 inner-city properties that he rented out. We got bins full of them. I'm now in my 4th year of teaching (music) at an inner-city school which happens to be one of, if not the toughest elementary school in the county,and I brought all of those cards to school a couple years back and still have a few thousand here (I probably had 8 or 9 thousand baseball/basketball/football cards that I brought from home).
The kids love them, and it has helped to completely turn around some of the students' behavior. It's a behavior incentive program I use for certain kids in my class, as well as how they behave in their normal classroom. Entire classes will also frequently get them if they had an especially good day in my classroom. I'm rather tough though, which you have to be here, so if any kid asks me for one, I say no. The idea is always having to earn it, never getting what they ask for or want. The students absolutely love it, from K-5. They ask all the time. I'd like to be able to give them to various classroom teachers, and have done so, but I run out quickly when I start doing that. I'd like to have more to give away.
If you are interested in donating cards (nothing of any value), the only thing required would be to ship them to me in any type of box, and they do NOT need to be neatly arranged. They can be stacked, piled, unwrapped, and condition does not matter at all. The only reason why there would be a need to organize them would be to include as many as possible in one shipment. School closes June 6th down here, so they would need to be shipped before that so that I can bring them to school and not have them sitting at my house!
If you're at all interested, contact me at with the header of "WRES Sports Card Donation" along with your name:
the.cards.of.our.pastime@gmail.com
P.S. If you donate cards, I will take a picture of them at their home within my classroom to offer some finality to your donation. I want to make sure you know they went to their destined place!