Trading cards

Who collects trading cards? I have about 200-300 cards from saisons 89/90, 92/93, 93/94...buying them in local stores was difficult so we had to buy them from a US guy that lived in Austria and coached youth teams...he brought packs with him...then there were cards with English and German texts that were also sold in Austria.

Anyway, I wanted to have a complete collection of my fav season because of NBA Live 1995...I found a complete collection of sleeved Upperdeck 94/95 cards stored in a map...360 cards for just €30. According to a friend old cards are not worth anything apart from a couple of Euros/Dollars. He collects current cards and says his Doncic rookie card is worth $1,000. Why? Are current cards more precious?

Do you still collect cards or used to?

I am happy with my complete set and the additional 200-300 cards I had before buying the set...and I also bought a Ewing collection with about 36 Ewings (fav player, fav team).

Unfortunately, the 360 cards are randomly numbered, but not in team order...I want to have players of the same team to be next to each other...so I have to put out 360 cards, sort them alphabetically (teams first: Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicaco...), then sort them alphabetically for each team (name of players)...then put them in the sleeves in the map again...oh so much fun! Not...

I used to collect basketball cards back in the 90s. I pretty much stopped at the end of the 1998 season, though a few years back, I found some unopened packs from 1991-1998 on eBay, and decided to indulge my nostalgia. I've also picked up a couple of loose cards on eBay because they were going cheap, and in one case, completed a collection with the one Larry Johnson card I somehow managed to never get from a pack back in the day.

As far as being valuable, it depends. There are a lot of old cards that aren't very valuable, though they can fetch inflated prices on eBay if someone is eager enough to complete a collection. We all expected trading cards to increase in value - I remember my cousin and I joking about selling our collections for a fortune when we were older, which neither of us have done - but as it turns out, not everything we collect becomes a collectible. With some of those old cards, even the rarer ones compared to the rest of their set were still quite common in the grand scheme of things. It's the same as comics, stamps, and other collectibles. Only some things become suitably rare and significant enough to be valuable years later.

To that point though, the same thing goes for modern cards. A mint condition Luka Doncic rookie card that's been graded may fetch over $1,000, but not all cards will be that valuable. A mint Michael Jordan rookie card can go for tens of thousands of dollars, so it's an example of an old card that's far more valuable than a newer one. In that sense, a blanket statement that old cards aren't worth anything compared to new ones isn't accurate, but it is true that not all old cards are valuable just because they're old, and new cards can also fetch a high price. It depends on the rarity, the significance of the player, and of course the condition that it's in.

I've been thinking of selling a few doubles of potentially valuable cards, but apart from that, these days I'm actually quite happy to hold onto my collection. There's a lot of nostalgia in it, and it reminds me of fun times as a young basketball fan in the 90s. I've also learned from trying to sell some other things that I thought might be collectibles that increase in value, and didn't, that a big profit is hardly guaranteed. So, suffice to say, I'm not pinning all semblance of financial stability on my basketball card collection!

The uk buying market for trading cards was non existing in the 90's the only thing we did have was pinni sticker books just like the football ones which is why as they were made by the same people so you could easily find packs in your local news agent, we literally had 3 years of 12 players per team like opening night rosters to collect then that was it, discontinued

Frankly I'm too shy to share this outside of family and friends, but I do have a separate youtube channel showing off my card collection, which I started last November:

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I only collect repacks and base sets for now due to my budget, but I am more than happy with what I have so far. I have yet to show off my latest additions (around 43 cards), but I plan to upload very soon.

Nice work on the videos!

Interesting stories, thanks!

There are huge differences between cards in my opinion. I prefer boring backgrounds (back of cards), but with stats you can actually read without a magnifying glass. Hoops 89/90 are great. Action photo on the front, stats on the back. I have Kemp and David Robinson as rookies.

Upperdeck Collector's Choice are the worst..layout, colors...

I got this entire set, Upperdeck 1994-95, 360 cards:


You can't read the stats well, but the layout has a gold font effect which looks awesome...the photo does not do it justice. The font glitters when you wiggle the card...gold effect on the player's name, gold lines on the ball and the Upperdeck logo.

When it comes to stats, I'd prefer averages and not totals. 300 rebounds? Ok, but it's about the average.

I used to play many games when I was young... e.g. a 3 on 3 game with stats and a die...based on the attributes, a player passed, shot, went for steals and blocks...I kept rolling the die for hours to get statistics. Basically, an analog type of a video game.

Player x has the ball...what does he do? Pass or shoot? I rolled a die...if he passes, the defender could attempt a steal. If he shot, the defender could try to block it...then I rolled if the player made the shot...if not, I rolled the die to see who would get the rebound.

Nice work on the videos!

It means a great deal to hear that from you Andrew, thank you!

Nice work on the videos!

It means a great deal to hear that from you Andrew, thank you!

Yes, you put so much work into your videos! Awesome!

I used to play many games when I was young... e.g. a 3 on 3 game with stats and a die...based on the attributes, a player passed, shot, went for steals and blocks...I kept rolling the die for hours to get statistics. Basically, an analog type of a video game.

Player x has the ball...what does he do? Pass or shoot? I rolled a die...if he passes, the defender could attempt a steal. If he shot, the defender could try to block it...then I rolled if the player made the shot...if not, I rolled the die to see who would get the rebound.

Sounds like fun! It's basically what they did with NBA Jam Session, the official NBA board game.

Yes, you put so much work into your videos! Awesome!

I really appreciate the compliment, thanks Leander!

Sounds like fun! It's basically what they did with NBA Jam Session, the official NBA board game.

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Whoa! I never knew there was an official NBA board game. That's awesome

Really? I love board games! Didn't know...will check it out!

In a way it's a forerunner to MyTEAM, only tabletop and without microtransactions.

I just uploaded another unpacking video, albeit very delayed:

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