i wouldn't say 1985 was the year we collected the most cards. Either 1989 or 1990 would be our peak years. 1985 is when we started seriously collecting.

I remember walking up to the Little Bucky on the corner of 103rd and Wood and paying 25 cents for a pack of 12 cards WITH a stick of bubble gum included (about two cents per card). Or we'd go to that catch all shop on 103rd one block south of Longwood Drive and get our cards there. I remember buying our 1985 Fleer cards from that store.

Nowadays you're lucky to pay $3 for a pack of 5 cards with no bubble gum. (about 60 cents per card a three thousand percent increase from 1985, not double the cost, not triple the cost, but 3000 times the cost. that's sick.)

sure cards nowadays are super fancy with their luxurious gloss coatings, and funky die cut shapes and premium cards with uniform pieces fused to the card. That's all fine and dandy. As a graphic designer, I am very interested in what these card companies can do.

But i want to collect cards that are printed on basic card stock with simple photos and none of the extra print production frills. I know i can't pay 25 cents for a pack of cards any more. But i want to pay 50 cents for a pack of 10 cards. is that too much to ask? i want to collect card for the sheer fun of it.

yeah! Topps should release a series of cards printed on that old brown cardboard paper called "the fun series" with the sure purpose of making these cards not worth anything. It's just for the fun it. Come to think of it. The newspaper should just print cards in the paper. Sometimes they print a full color spread of a player, which is kinda neat. But it would be cool if it was like a comic strip feature where each day in the newspaper in the corner was a "baseball card" that you can clip out.

Actually, these newspaper baseball cards might even become worth something, because how many people out there would actually cut and save the cards printed on newsprint? Not many. There would be limited supply of cards that exist. Yet many many people would know about them, because they would run in a highly circulated paper, like the Chicago Tribune. This idea is GOLD! Now if I could only work for a newspaper...