Busting Wax

I’ve recently taken a pretty hard and serious look at my collecting future. I need to figure out where I want to be with this hobby, what I want to do and how I will derive the most enjoyment from it. I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m more or less in my third trip down the hobby road. My love for cards started when I was a kid, up through high school (1985 – 1992). I started buying wax again in 2001 but that phase only lasted about a year. This most recent phase started a couple years ago but hasn’t been consistent. So I had to decide where I was and where I was going.

The first step was to decide what I really wanted to collect. Up to this point I’ve mostly bought wax from all three major sports from pretty much all the different brands. It was pretty scatter-shot and unfocused. I have countless boxes in the basement sitting there, unloved and gathering dust.

(As an aside: I am somewhat of a neat-freak that hates clutter. I know this can be somewhat at odds with collecting anything but it’s especially bad for a card collecting. Along with focusing my collecting habits, I also plan to figure out what to do with everything else.)

So first I started with which sports I want to collect. While this hobby is dominated by baseball cards, I haven’t really followed baseball close enough to be interested in collecting baseball cards. This is actually ironic, because I would estimate that 90% of my collection pre-2007 is made up of baseball cards. I need to figure out what I’m going to do with those. So baseball is out. That leaves me with the two sports I actually follow — football and basketball.

From those sports, I am first and foremost a fan of both Cleveland teams (the Browns and the Cavaliers) and of the Ohio State Buckeyes. I will focus on collecting those player cards. Of course any LeBron James card I can get my hands on is my at the top of my list. Those will mostly be out of my price range, so hopefully I’ll be able to get an occasional LeBron hit from a box or a pack. I’ll concentrate on former Buckeyes in football, like Chris “Beanie” Wells and Ted Ginn, Jr.

That still doesn’t define how I want to collect. At the heart of it, I still like to Bust Wax (hence the blog name). But busting wax without a “purpose” is a no-win situation. So what’s the purpose? Everyone is trying to hit that in-demand autograph or that rare relic. EVERYONE wants to hit a valuable card. I’m no different. Sure, if I happen to get a nice hit of a player I’m collecting or I like, great. But if it’s a rare Babe Ruth relic or Michael Jordan autograph, than all the wax I’ve busted up to that point becomes worth it. Literally and figuratively.

So while I will continue to collect certain players and continue busting wax, I want to have a purpose. I’m a sports fan. I am also a capitalist. Most collectors, though they’re loathe to admit it, are too. Why else would we buy cards, if they held no value? Yes, there’s the noble ideal that we all collect for the love of collecting. But there’s also the cold hard reality that there are people willing to pay for cards of athletes they are fans of. And I’d like to facilitate that transaction.

So I’m setting a goal and starting a bit of a project and a new direction for this blog. I think most collectors would like to get “more” out of their hobby-related activities. I want to see if it’s possible to make a few bucks while enjoying the act of collecting cards. I’m far from an expert but I think I’ve done enough collecting, reading and observing to know how to approach this from a regular collector’s point-of-view. I’m not going to change much in the way I collect. I don’t plan on busting high-end cases of product and I don’t plan on laying out a ton of cash. I’m going to keep doing what I’ve been doing, with the hope that I can at least break even, if not make a few bucks. It will take work, it will take perseverance and it probably won’t be worth it. I may even upset some people’s sensibility. But if I can came make it work, then anyone came.

I hope you’ll stick around and see what happens.