Conundrum Looming
 

I have been collecting baseball cards since 1976. I am a player, team and set collector. I am closing in on finishing a number of sets from the 1950s and 1960s. Here is where the issue comes into play. There is one star from the 1950s and 1960s that I do not like and played for a team that I hate. I have never intentionally bought any of his cards specifically, only those that have come in collections I have purchased. So, I have a number of his cards in my sets already. I am having trouble getting past my dislike of the player to spend hundreds to thousands of dollars for each of his cards that I do not have in the 1950s and 1960s. I mean when you spend 1K on a card - most people would like to be happy about it, right?

Anyone else ever have this problem? If so, how have you resolved it?

(Player and team have been intentionally omitted, although many could probably figure it out easily, do to desire not to offend any other board members.

I’m a life long Met fan and consider myself lucky that I don’t have to worry about adding certain iconic players/cards to my PC. I’d make an exception for Gehrig but don’t feel particularly compelled.

For me it was the umpires in the 55 Bowman set. Not only are they umpires but they are the most expensive cards in the set besides a couple mega stars and a super star rookie.

I bought them to complete the set but honestly cringed when I bought most of them.

Man you gotta get over this hatred. Let it go !
Finish up your sets.

Scott,

Generally, I would agree with that. But I came by my hatred honestly, as my dad had the same issue with the player and the team in question.

As a Mets collector, it bothered me to pay for Nolan Ryans early cards. Not because I dislke him, I just feel his cards are way overpriced. My collection was not complete without them so I bit the bullet.

I'm selling much of my collection but not everything. My problem is I'm a quantity over quality type guy. I have two or three pieces that I ought to keep above all else, but then my collection would be quite small. I think I'm a type collector, but don't want to believe it. I have a money figure I'm hoping to reach as a goal, and I can sell a lot to get there, or just a few items. So I understand you not wanting to spend a lot of money for a player's card you don't like, and wanting to be happy with your collection.

In my case, I have a 1921 Ty Cobb exhibit. I collect Tris Speaker and I've chosen to keep his items; 1 item is the 1921 Speaker Exhibit. Ty Cobb would look awesome next to Speaker on the shelf. Especially if I could pick up a Speaker/Cobb type 1 photo. But I also collect Reds items, and I'd have to part with my most favorite Reds' items to match how much Cobb is worth in order to get to my ultimate goal.

Decisions decisions.

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When I was 16 I hated everyone. Now I'm 74 and I love everyone. Collect everything forever and let your heirs sort of out.

This has been discussed here a few times and my feelings have always been the same. As a set collector I buy the cards in the set, no matter who they depict. I'm not a Pete Rose fan and I'd rather not own cards of OJ Simpson and a few others, but I have cards of both in multiple sets.

Does it bug me to lay out cash for a card of someone I dislike? Sure. Last week I spent $50 on a '67 Rose and it wasn't nearly as much fun as buying the Clemente for example, but the alternative is an empty slot in the binder and then why collect the set at all?

There are some really good reprint cards out there. Maybe just spend a little scratch on a reprint and put it in your set.

An alternative would be to buy a lousy/altered/worn/marked up/trimmed copy of the card, and put it in your set. Maybe you could even find a copy of one where some kid drew a moustache on the player, or glasses, or ripped it in half. That way you've got the card that completes the set, but you've not spent nearly as much of your resources on the player. And in comparison to all the other cards, it would be a misfit.

And why do you hate Brooks so bad? ;) He's really a nice guy, and a pretty good ballplayer to boot.

I've always been a fan of the old "pencil jabbed through the eyes" especially if it's combined with other odd additions.

Bury the hatchet...in their skulls.
 

I dunno, if I were in your position, and really eager to complete a vintage set, I guess I might just hold my nose and buy the card(s), assuming it was within the budget. All of those players you hated are gone now, anyway - right? Luckily for me, I completed most of my sets back in the early '80's well before Mantle and other Yankees became way overpriced.;)

If you don't like the guy don't buy his cards. It's your set, why be pissed off whenever you look at it?

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I like the “reprint” idea. You can even draw in a fake mustache if it makes you feel better! :D

I dont collect sets, so I don't have any great advice.
However I do sympathize because I am such a huge yankees fan it pains me to buy anything Red Sox.

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The reprint idea that other's have mentioned is something I like. I'm not much of a set builder, so I can't definitively say how I would handle this. I will say though that over time my views on cards have certainly changed. For the longest time I didn't like the 53 Bowman Color Set or the 55 Bowman TV Stand Set and now I've warmed up to both of them.

At the end of the day, your collection is exactly that, your collection. If you don't want to add those cards you don't have to.

if it is who i think it is, I did exactly the same thing, and i happen to like the team in question, i just (1) could not stand the smug jackholes who were fanboys of his and (2) thought his cards were way overpriced. I ended up capitulating and buying what I could afford several years ago and resigning myself to never owning his key card or his RC.

It's simple really
 

You need to decide if honoring your hatred of said player and team by not purchasing any of his cards individually is a higher priority than finishing your sets.

An option - per your statement you have purchased groups with his card in it in the past and felt better about that, so maybe consider buying groups with his card in it for the ones you are missing and sell off the rest of the group!

The above presumes the issue has nothing to do with spending hundreds to thousands on a card.

LOL - about the Brooks comment.

I have thought about both of those ideas before.
Right now I have reprints or modern versions of the players cards in a few of my sets. I have thought about buying "Authentic" versions. Less expensive may be what makes it palatable to me.

Thanks to everyone who shared their opinion! I am glad to know that I am not alone with this problem. I am really starting to think about going the Authentic, or bad condition route. The reprints just seem out of place in my binders. Although, after I get a vintage version, I may then take out any frustrations left by drawing on the reprint!!!

As a Dodger collector, my only complaint is either when a huge star made a very brief appearance on the team or in the card of the Rose rookie, it also contains a Ken McMullen RC. it is not that i dislike Rose or any of the major stars, but it raises the price significantly for me. thankfully I got most of the key cards before prices steadily rose. I am missing a 50B Robinson and most of the 52 High numbers and will probably never own them due to the cost. I also do not have the Rose rookie, which is probably the most frustrating hole in my collection.

I can't image a hatred for a player so deep that I would not want to collect a card of them. I mean, I might stay away from the really pricy copies or I might not expand the collection to include certain cards for budgetary reasons, but never because i just didn't like the subject.

I kind-of feel that way about the LA Dodgers and Oakland Raiders of the 1970s. I grew up in San Diego, and was an absolute die-hard Padres and Chargers fan, as well as a "card-carrying" Dodgers and Raiders Hater! I absolutely could not stand anyone connected with either of those two teams.

Later, in the 1990s-2000s, as I had grown older, I actually collected team sets of all the Dodgers from 1958-1990, and Raiders from 1960-1990, and have completed all of them.....I still have them, along with all my Padres and Chargers team sets. I find that it just reminds me of an earlier time when I cared so much about my favorite teams, that I completely despised their biggest rivals (who normally kicked our butts! :mad: ). Now, I miss those days.

Steve

Sort of this (granted, taken a bit out of context). My advice is to forget about set collecting entirely: come to the other side and become a player collector.

(much more fun and mostly eliminates your problem, unless your guy is on a LL card with the other guy, but at least in that scenario you have a much stronger justification to tell yourself).

All this just makes me wonder who, and why he's hated enough that people don't want to buy his cards...

Well, Rich is obviously an AL (East) guy based on his avatar. Probably in his early/mid 50's based on the statement that he started collecting in 1976. And that this guy's 1950'-1960's cards cost hundreds to thousands of dollar each. He also stated that he hated the team that the player played for.

If I'm an Orioles fan, there's one team at the top of my dislike list. And one player on that team that has expensive cards in the 1950's - 1960's.

You've got three guesses and the first two don't count.

Did I say that I hate it when conundrums loom?

My meaningless advice to the OP: It's your collection, if you don't like the card/player, don't buy it. Spend your money on cards you want.

+1 Brian Powell

Although it doesn't fit the time frame or narrative, the OP's scenario makes me immediately think of O.J. Simpson. I (and I'm sure a crapload of other people) will never spend a dime on any of his cards.

And here I thought I was being circumspect! :rolleyes:

Rich

Ok, that makes some sense.

Being a Red sox fan*, I'm not big on some other teams...
And to me some players are perhaps slightly overrated...

But it's hard to actually hate a great player though, even if he did play for the "wrong" team.

Oj is an odd one for me. I totally get why people don't want his card. I already had most of them, having started collecting in late 73. (Mostly)
I try to separate what someone does on-field and off. I do like a player better if they seem to be good off the field too.



* My wife is from just north of DC, and is an Orioles fan Our deal is that I have to be too, unless they're playing the Red Sox. The reverse also applies.
So I actually get to be a fan of two teams (same for football. But not Hockey or Basketball):)

A century of frustration...
 

This thread seems to have evolved into an open-ended discussion, so my two cents shouldn't offend anyone. The identity of the "mystery" team in question seems apparent. As a Cleveland sports guy, I can easily empathize with any fans of other American League teams that have suffered at the hands (bats, gloves, sign-stealing techniques, etc.) of the most successful team in the league over the past century. My team has appeared in a total of five World Series in that time and lost three of them. Not counting the St. Louis Browns history, the OP's favorite franchise has appeared in six WS and won half of them. The Orioles have lost just twice ('96 and '12) in postseason play to the Pinstripes. We don't need to go into the history of that dasdardly topdog organization,:rolleyes: but two of its other long-time punching bags...er, opponents, seem to have a stronger claim to Gotham envy than O's rooters: The White Sox have triumphed in just one of the last 100 WS played. Likewise, the Washington Senators - no relation to the current champ Nats - while winning just one and losing two WS in the first forty years of the last century, managed to win two out of three WS appearances in their reincarnation as the Twins. Minnie supporters have, however, suffered more greatly under the NY yoke than other AL teams in recent competition - losing six times in post-season play since 2003.:eek: So, maybe the upshot of all this BB angst is - why do Twinkie fans suffer in silence here?:)

Can we all agree that this may be, could be, the most overrated ballplayer of all-time? A great ballplayer, yes, but maybe not the greatest thing since sliced cheese? It's like my dad, who was a Great Depression/World War II kind of guy, always said...out of all the great bands, Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw, who would've guessed that Lawrence Welk would be the one who made it into TV and last the longest? Why are this guy's cards so darned valuable? It's not that they are any rarer or fewer of them than any other ballplayers.

Bill James had Mantle number ten in career win shares and number three at his peak three years. I don’t know that Mantle the player is overrated but a few of his cards are. Call it Yankee mystique, racism or whatever you want but his cards have been at a premium ever since I can remember.

When I was a kid collecting cards, and when playing pee wee, junior league, and neighborhood baseball, his cards were quite popular, and his name was in the discussions. Then as time went by and baseball cards started to become worth real money, what was it, 1980s? Early 1990s? His cards were always at the top.

Bad condition is my vote. Fill the slot. Pay little. Have a sucky card of the sucky player to finish set.

Growing up in the mid-1960's in East Tenn. this guy was the favorite. Even though his career was winding down due to injuries. Everybody on my street loved him.We all tried trading for his cards.Cincinnati was our closest team until the south finally got the Braves in 1966.I had amassed 15-20 1966 Topps #50's at some point and then lost them all to housecleaning later.Even if you liked another team this guy held a special place to most kids I knew.

Dave, Bluejacket66 on YouTube and Stone Pony I believe here (Hi Dave, if you read...) is a Mantle collector and I know has said on YouTube there are certain cards he has not bought yet simply because he doesn't like the card and doesn't want to pay up for one ('55 Bowman, and '62 Topps, I believe).

The point being there is no right or wrong way to collect. You can consider your sets complete without him, or with a reprint, or with a beater version of the card.

Interesting discussion on collecting vs. being a fan. I'm a Cubs fan for 30+ years, so naturally I hate the St. Louis Cardinals. But I have found this is mostly only when I watch tv, not when I'm going over my collection. I started collecting cards as a kid before I became a Cubs fan, so in some strange way my hatred of the present day Cardinals does not affect how I feel about Stan Musial or Bob Gibson cards.

Is Mantle overrated / are his cards overpriced? Yes and no. People who don't understand the Mantle mystique by now likely never will. With the cards - in short, he was at the perfect apex of hobby and time. The baby boomers who took the card hobby from a geeky, hotel show underground thing in the 1970's to a mainstream, card shop-on-every-corner thing in the 1980's had one main baseball hero in common, and that was Mickey Mantle. So that is why him and his cards in comparison to others had a boom and a subsequent unique following ever since the early 1980's. Yes, there were better players, but Mantle had a mystique about him and New York and the 1950's that nobody else from that era really hit just right on the head like that.

future?
 

Hi John,

Thanks for your post. To play devil's advocate - If what you said about the Boomers creating the Mantle price premium is accurate (and I believe there is a lot of merit in what you said); what happens after all of the Baby Boom collectors pass on to the Great Ballpark in the Sky? Do Mantle prices go down and revert to prices equivalent to stars like Mays and Aaron? Or, do they stay at the same high levels due to the price premium becoming ingrained in the Hobby for 50 odd years??

Rich

No. Once you are in the stratosphere I think you stay there. Have Ruth or DiMaggio prices gone down...ever? And in fairness even as Yankees, they don't have the same wide appeal that Mantle does. Mantle fans who saw him play passed down that love to their kids, many of whom collected in the 80's. I just don't see the hobby attitude around him ever changing substantially. My LCS dealer always keeps lower grade Mantle cards in the case just because fans who are not even really collectors come in, and he can always move them. People want to be able to say they own a Mantle card, even if it's beat up. The days of collectors who actually saw him play will end, of course, but I think that mystique is transferable. None of the marquee vintage players - Cobb, Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mays, Williams, Aaron, Clemente, Koufax, etc. etc., et al. have ever really seen their card values go down, in the last 4 decades of this hobby anyway. The time may come where no collector who saw any of the dead guys play knows any better - but I believe he will still be regarded as special.

I've expressed this before, what makes a top collectible in any field isn't any of the things that are usually thought of, at least not on their own.

This hobby has a number of great examples, the 52 Mantle being one of them.
Is it "rare"? Not exactly. It's a double print, so as part of the 52 high numbers it's one of the three most common.
So why don't any of the other 52 high numbers even get close?

It's got all the other factors.

It's not common, but also not so rare that someone who wants one can't find one.
The subject is very popular.
There's even a great story, that the 52 high numbers are "rare" because the remainders were dumped in the harbor/river/ocean

And that really all it takes.
It doesn't hurt that the set it's from is a great looking set.
Or that his popularity is in NY, one of the larger cities.

It shares those things with some of the other very expensive collectibles at the top of their respective hobbies.
The Wagner T206 of course
The inverted "Jenny" airmail stamp
The "CIA invert stamp -- although less so, because it's newer and not a particularly good looking stamp.
The 1804 Silver dollar
And maybe the 1913 liberty nickel (although it IS rare, it also has the great story/mystery)

I would agree it's a great story, but it's dubious at best. There are Topps employees who said they never heard tell of that from Mr. Berger until he was a much older man, and even then it was a wildly inconsistent story when he told it. Supposedly someone went to the trouble to track down a few other Topps employees who had been there when the event was supposed to have happened (1960 or so) - and none of them remembered anything like that at all.

I suppose we'll never know for sure - which of course makes the story attractive because it was possible - just adding to the mystique of the '52 Mantle. :)

Wouldn't it be great if they found a bunch of '52 highs just sitting in a warehouse somewhere? Release those babies, flood the market, and drive down the price so that people like me can afford one! Of course those who have forked over big money for #311 wouldn't be too happy about that, and I couldn't blame them.

Dream on...
 

Hmmm, a warehouse that no one had thought to enter in sixty years - I wish there were one of those in my neighborhood. Even if such a thing could happen, how many new cases of high numbers would be required to drop the asking price of those cards? The only such find that comes to mind is the hoard of Topps Red Backs that someone uncovered back in the '80's, and I don't recall that the market value of that issue was much affected by it, perhaps because there wasn't much anyway. But, who knows - maybe that incident was in the news when Berger sat for the interview in which he made the notorious claim and it inspired him to spin an imaginative tale.;)

I would add to that the fact that I suspect a lot of people just want one to be able to say they own one. Pure demand with no reason other than the desire to own one because it is THE THING to do. Maybe it is someone scraping enough together to afford their top card or someone who has money to burn and realizes that people will drool all over a nice copy if they buy one.

For exactly those couple of reasons you state that the card should NOT be that much more valuable, or at least the other 52 High numbers should be worth more than they are, proves this to me. The demand for the card, regardless of what the price rises to is never satisfied by the supply so the price continues to rise and rise, yet so many other cards are harder to find and cost considerably less. The Pafko is another example of a card being "worth" way more than it should be worth.

.

Agreed. I've always thought that card was way over-hyped. The rarity in it being #1 is totally related to condition, but should have nothing to do with the card's production. It's not a scarce high number. I'm ok with truly great condition, NM Pafko's going for a premium, but there isn't really anything special about G and VG copies.

Not saying that this is your guy, but here's an example of a card that might fit the bill to fill that hole in your set. It's been hanging around the 'bay for quite some time and has grown a 'rona beard while looking for a home. Personally, I think the card is still waaayyy overpriced.

Love the "Rona" beard! LOL

The 1952 Topps Jackie Robinson has also jumped into the thousands for even the beaters.