The Topps 25 is a celebration of 25 years of baseball card collecting.  The oldest baseball cards that I collected as a kid were 1986 Topps cards.  I stopped collecting baseball cards in 1993 for no particular reason.  I guess baseball cards just started to get too expensive and confusing, and as a teen, I had better things to spend my money on.

Sorting through my childhood baseball card collection

Recently, I brought my collection back from storage and went through it.  I remembered how fun it was collecting the cards before everything got so complicated.  I went out and bought some new cards.  Then I went on eBay and bought some old cards.  The feeling was awesome, and the idea for this blog was born.

What I hope to accomplish with this blog is to relive those childhood days of blowing 50 cents of allowance money on a pack of cardboard, and enjoying it all along.  I also feel a deep need to catch up on the hobby and update my collection.  And of course, I also want to have fun along the way.

Baseball card collecting has become an extremely expensive and complicated hobby over the years.  That is unfortunate, because it has led to the decline of the hobby as fewer and fewer kids are able to enjoy collecting baseball cards.  This is why I’m setting some ground rules:

1. I am only collecting regular Topps cards

I just felt all the baseball card “investors” cringe.  Everyone knows that regular Topps cards are worthless!  That’s exactly the reason why I’m collecting only regular Topps cards now.  They’re (relatively) cheap and (relatively) uncomplicated.  For me, collecting baseball cards is all about enjoyment and shouldn’t be about trying to make a few bucks.

2. I will only buy one hobby box for each year/series

This way the size of my collection is limited.  I’m not setting up a hobby shop, so there’s no reason to collect a whole lot of cards.

3. I will buy hobby boxes gradually over two years

This is so I don’t take a big sobering financial hit that will turn me off from baseball card collecting once and for all.  25 years of baseball cards is a lot of cards, and they’re starting to get expensive.

That said, I will open a pack of baseball cards each day and share its contents on this blog.  The baseball cards will come from unopened packs from 1986-2010, spanning the latest 25 years of Topps baseball cards.  We’re gonna have a lot of fun over the next couple years