[Exhibitman]

Some of the hospitals here in L.A. no longer accept cards unless they are unopened material.

I stopped buying packs as a kid in 1981, so that is the end of the era where I have any feeling for the new issues that relates to my childhood. I have thousands of worthless post-1981 cards that I purchased over the years as an adult after I returned to collecting. I tried to sell them at a garage sale but was only able to get rid of one 5,000-count box for $20.

I've actually decided to keep the pre-steriod era baseball players from the 1980s sets. They are so worthless that there is no harm in just putting them in 9 pocket pages and enjoying them simply as the well-produced items that they are. The card companies came up with some compelling designs and decent looking cards during the 1980s, especially after Donruss raised the bar with the 1984 set, which has some beautiful cards in it. There are some great cards in the shiny crap era [1989-] too but the taint of PEDs so ruins that era for me as a fan that I am just not interested.

I also have kept some of the abundantly overproduced 1991 and 1996 boxing sets. Cheap as dirt but they offer nice looking 'rookie' cards of fighters who are in the HOF classes of the last several years.