u/AStrangerWCandy

My boomer father has recently retired and has been struggling with what to do with himself and feeling bored and useless. Something that he’s always enjoyed was collection cards but he stopped basically right at 1989 when my sister and I were young kids and in retirement he has picked up card collecting again and I’ve been doing it with him as a way to bond and engage, he just took his grandson (my nephew) to his first local card show this weekend. His collection is rather large and extensive with cards from the 50s to 80s with some rather impressive vintage rookies but it’s been in storage for decades and he’s been slowly going through it to organize, catalogue and display it. I still don’t know the full extent of everything he has.

Today after I told him I was putting together a playing days Topps base set of Don Mattingly starting mostly with cards I picked up as a kid, I had 87, 89, 90, 91, 92, and 96. I said I was perusing eBay for a deal on an 84 Mattingly rookie but I was surprised at how bad the centering and cuts were on most of the ones I was seeing even when they were in otherwise good condition. I showed him the binder pages and I knew he had a Mattingly rookie in his binder so I wanted to see how it was centered. He showed me and then said “Hold on I have doubles of this one”. I had recently given him some of my HOF junk wax era rookies to add to his collection and for Christmas got him a Pujols rookie as he’s a Cardinals fan. He pulls out this ancient long card holder box and hands me this pristine well centered 1984 Mattingly like it was nothing and said since I had given him some rookies it seemed like a fair trade. Just such a fun heart warming father and son interaction that kind hit me in the feels even as a 40 year old.