By Dan Gladstone aka gladdyontherise
Most everyone who enjoys collecting sport cards collects a certain player. Mine isn’t the most exciting or unconventional way in the world but it is interesting nonetheless!
I joined Sports Card Forum back in December of 2007. I was a naive collector who never thought about collecting a specific player. As I noticed on the boards most everyone collected a certain player(s). I had to think about it for a little while and came up with the decision I would collect Justin Verlander, a Detroit Tigers starting pitcher. Verlander is my favorite player in the league so the choice was easy for me.
I became a super collector meaning I was attempting to get one of each card produced of Verlander. Impossible? Probably, but the fun of collecting is trying to do the impossible! As my tenure on Sports Card Forum grew I stumbled upon many different player collections. As a then 15 year old kid I changed my mind often, trying to feel out which guys I wanted to collect. It varied in basketball, baseball and football. Players such as Brian Westbrook, Curtis Granderson, Dontrelle Willis, Glen “Big Baby” Davis, Jared Dudley, Arron Afflalo, Rodney Stuckey and many others. However, throughout all these experiments, I stuck with my Verlander collection as it was by far the nicest collection I owned. However in December of 2008 I came to a point where I needed money so I did the unthinkable and sold off my Verlander collection.
At the point when I sold off my Verlander collection his prices were at an all-time low and I didn’t get as much money as I could of earlier or later than at the time I did. Up until then I had been collecting Al Jefferson for some time but it had grown old on me and I had realized I didn’t enjoy collecting players from other teams that weren’t from Detroit. I then decided to stop collecting Jefferson but restarted collecting Verlander. Today I am at 152 different Justin Verlander cards!
Since basketball is a sport I really like I felt obligated to start a new PC, but I didn’t want to rush my decision on who to collect. I waited sometime but just recently the Detroit Pistons signed Charlie Villanueva to a nice five year contract. Knowing Villanueva would be in Detroit for a good period of time I began to start a collection of him. He is a low-end player who is the type of guy I enjoy collecting and will be a challenge but that is the fun of collecting!
I wasn’t set on just collecting Justin Verlander in baseball though, Miguel Cabrera, also a member of the Detroit Tigers, is also one of my favorite players. He is defiantly my favorite position player in the league and very underrated in my opinion. I began to collect him as well and I am already at 121 different cards! However Cabrera will be a huge challenge as he has nearly 6,000 cards already produced!
In conclusion, that is how I came to collect the players that I do. I finally realized that collecting my favorite local players was the right thing for me to do!
