It’s no wonder why many of us collect cards today: Nostalgia! We may have collected as kids, and have come back to the hobby years later.
 
Let me explain. I walked away from collecting back in 1993-94ish, and came back about a decade later. It’s like I had left right when the magic was starting.
By that time, everything had changed. There were shiny cards, serial numbered cards (lower than 10,000…gasp!), autographed cards you could pull straight from packs, and even cards with pieces of game-used relics. Jeesh!
 
Over the past several years, I’ve found great joy in simply taking pictures of cards I’ve come across, and writing about them.
 
This picture showcases the 2nd wave nostalgia I’m talking about. Years ago, after I sold my main collection and started picking up only cards that I loved, I took this pic – a number of vastly underrated Score parallels that I never really paid much mind to since they weren’t “grail” status.
 
Years ago, I decided to focus ONLY on grail cards, and sold these. Once I uncovered this picture I had taken from about 5 years ago, I felt my second wave of nostalgia, and embarked upon getting these again. They may not be super valuable / grail status cards, but goodness gracious, I think you’d be hard pressed to find prettier parallels.
 
I know as collectors, we tend to get caught up in the superfractor-jumbo-patch-barrel-knob-1/1 craziness, but if you really sit down and look at the beauty of collecting as a whole, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised that great joy can be found in not-so-grail cards – what a wonderful hobby we have!