Chapter 1.3
Somewhere along the line, I started collecting other types of cards…football…hockey…basketball…soccer…yo mtv raps…marvel cards, etc. After…maybe…5 years of collecting, I realized I had an obsession, and I didn’t like it.
There was a rich kid who lived down the mountain who admired my tenacity in collecting sports cards. I remember I had another card that was worth quite a bit…a Charles Barkley 86-87 Fleer rookie card. It was worth around $100 at the time but had a huge crease across the middle. He came over one time to take a look at my collection and said to me ‘I’ll buy your whole collection for $300.’ At the time, $300 was an incredible amount of money for a 9 year old kid…I got a $10 a week allowance at the time and had to put in a lot of work to get that $10 allowance, so $300 was astronomical.
I remember I deliberated…I talked with my parents…I stressed back and forth for a few days…and then he gave me an ultimatum: “This offer is only good for one more day.” I didn’t like how obsessed I had become, so I said to him “OK, but I’m keeping the Berra card.” He agreed and the next day, his mother drove him over to my house and I packed up everything and I said goodbye to my cards.