By Tyce Dishman
The plastic crinkled in his hand. He slid one shaking hand under the crease of the pack and tore away the plastic. He shuddered his hand into the pack and took out the fresh, mint cardstock cards and shuffled through them ferociously with wide eyes. Just when he thought his eyes couldn’t get any bigger, they did.
He pulled a Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card.
“I was Christmas shopping somewhere with my dad, and they had a wax box,” business teacher Mr. Andy Lewman said. “I spent about five dollars a pack on two or three packs and ended up pulling a Ken Griffey Jr. rookie. That was a really neat feeling.”
Lewman is one of very few Delta High School students and faculty that collect or have collected sports cards.
Back in the day sports cards consumed American teenage boys’ youthful years. Now it’s a very niche item to collect. More specifically the most popular sports cards to collect were those of baseball players.
This is because finding information on your favorite player before technology wasn’t as easy as pulling your phone out and going to Google.
The way that kids found out information was going to the store and buying a pack of 10 cards for 10 cents. On the back of the cards were the player’s stat line and a short biography.
Lewman collects a large amount of baseball cards and others including basketball and football. However, he is unaware how much his total collection is worth.
While he was trying to figure out how much it was worth; he went to Generations, the card shop in the Muncie Mall, to get an appraisal on a few cards he owned.
“I took a few cards to be looked at. They were not graded by PSA (Professional Sports Authenticator), but I wanted to see what they were worth,” Lewman said. “I didn’t realize how harsh they were while they appraised them because I had maybe touched that card twice since I was 16.”
Lewman’s experience at Generation shows how serious, cruel and detailed the card collecting world can be. But he is not the only one at Delta who enjoys the hobby.
Junior Keegan Irwin has also built his own sports card collection over the years. However, Keegan’s main focus of his collection is basketball cards.
Keegan started collecting cards in 2021 after watching Youtube videos of box openings and finding them interesting.
Since that day, any chance he sees a good deal on cards he grabs a pack and rips it open. However, his mindset is unique.
“If you get your hopes up and don’t pull anything, it’s disappointing so I try and expect the worst,” Keegan said.
With this mindset Keegan has put in over $600 into his collection and now his collection is worth significantly more than what he originally invested.
Through low expectations, smart trading and holding on to certain cards as their value increased with a little bit of luck he has seen his collection steadily grow over time, reaching a value of $2,500.
Even with his collection being worth so much, he still doesn’t want to sell.
“I am collecting for the future. I try to get good rookies now but you still want some value back,” Keegan said. “So you hope they pan out to be successful in the future so their card price goes up and so does your collection.”
While Keegan represents the modern era mindset for collecting cards, Delta communications teacher Mr. Tim Cleland offers a different perspective.
Nearly 50 years ago, Cleland collected sports cards regularly, especially baseball, when the hobby was more about the love of the game and finding information rather than market prices and turning a profit.
Cleland collected in a time where the cards were valued more for the information on the back rather than the design on the front.
“Virtually every kid—especially every boy—in the 1970s collected baseball cards,” Cleland said. “ It’s hard to understand now, but without the internet or constant TV coverage, you didn’t know much about players from other teams.”
Today, Cleland doesn’t collect nearly as much as he once did. However his experience demonstrates how sports card collecting has evolved from a simple pastime into a business investment.
“I think the key thing is back in the day, it was the only way we could really feel connected to the athletes that were on our teams, that we cared about,” Cleland said.
Today fewer teenagers rush to corner stores for wax packs. The card-filled binders that were once so commonly found on the shelves of bedrooms have been replaced by screens.
Sports cards no longer captivate a generation the way they did in the 1970’s.
But even in their declining age they serve as a reminder to simpler times, when 10 cents would buy a dream and a piece of cardboard was king.
