Starting a PC from scratch is only half the battle

It's a lifelong chase that may never end

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You open a few boxes. Put certain cards to the side. You keep putting cards to the side. Months or years later, those cards become part of your Personal Collection, or PC.

But how did you get there?

For me, I’ve been collecting Derek Jeter cards since 1996. I was a 16-year-old girl in high school who loved nothing more than the Yankees. I remember reading a Sports Illustrated article featuring him and Rey Ordonez and how New York had two great young shortstops.

I was sold.

Like any collector, I use cards as a way to feel closer to a player. Whenever I opened a pack of cards, I always stashed the Yankees away. Now, I was looking a lot closer at the name of the player.

My love for Jeter hasn’t changed – and many Yankees fans are in the same boat – and more than 20 years and 2,300 different cards later, I’m still collecting his cards. While I’m a Yankees fan, there hasn’t been another player that I felt a connection to like Derek Jeter. Perhaps it was that he was so young, just six years old than me, or that the Yankees were on the rise or that the 1996 season culminated with a World Series title and a unanimous Rookie of the Year award for Jeter.

He was my favorite player and the best way for me to show that was through my card collection.

I don’t currently chase cards of many other players, though I do still enjoy opening packs of cards. If I pull an Aaron Judge or Gleyber Torres, I put them to the side. However, for me to chase a player, I need to feel a special connection – one so strong that I want to spend my money growing that collection. Money is a big motivating factor for me.

When Judge was a rookie, I was interested in collecting his cards. I was at his debut game where he hit a home run in his first at-bat (Jeter and the rest of the 1996 Yankees were honored that day). I added that Topps Now card to my collection. Even early in 2017, I bought Judge’s autographed cards because they were affordable, meaning I didn’t have to dig too deeply into my card money.

But as the season went on and Judge kept hitting monster home runs, his cards started to hit another level on the secondary market and I couldn’t justify having two PCs of expensive players.

I still have many Judge cards, but if I’m choosing between Jeter and Judge, Jeter wins out.

I have collected other players over the years such as Kevin Kouzmanoff. I started that PC because of his heritage. His family is Macedonian, which was part of the former Yugoslavia – similar to my parents’ heritage. There aren’t many players from that area of the world playing in the Majors.

For me, it was too much of a personal connection that I added a new PC.

Jeter and Kouzmanoff both haven't played in the majors since 2014, and while new cards of Derek Jeter are consistently released, new cards of Kouzmanoff have dried up.

There aren't many baseball players from the Balkans, but basketball is a different story. Sometimes, I’ll grab an auto of an NBA player who came from that region – except Luka Doncic. I was too late for that one.

This is why being a player collector is tricky, especially when you collect a player like Jeter. I’m never going to own all of his cards. It’s impossible considering the sheer number of 1-of-1s and low-numbered cards that will likely never see the light of the day. When some of his most expensive cards were released, I didn't have the money to collect them. And even though I have more money now, a high-end 1993 SP Rookie Card, at $8,000-$10,000, is a bit out of my price range (I have a lower-grade version).

When you look at Beckett’s price guide, it lists Jeter as having 18,366 different cards, which means I have 12% of his listed cards and I’ve been collecting them for more than 20 years. There are also numerous Jeter cards that aren’t listed in Beckett.

It’s impossible for me to collect them all, and yet it’s a chase I’m willing to continue. One that I know will take a lifetime and I’m not sure there’s room for any other major PCs in my collection.

Do you have a PC? Leave a comment and share what you collect.

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Topps Allen & Ginter Presidential Pins Get My Vote

Topps Allen & Ginter Baseball has been around for more than a decade. It’s a set that is usually either loved or hated by hobbyists as it contains lots of weird and quirky cards.

Despite having baseball in the title, it’s not really a baseball product. Previous sets have contained cards of a Ferris Wheel or a Revolving Door or Cryptocurrency and even an Egg. Celebrities tend to be the big draw year after year as collectors want to know who from outside of the baseball world is getting a trading card.

However, neither the base cards nor the autographs in this year’s A&G caught my eye. The Presidential Pins got my attention. These cards contain an authentic pin from a presidential campaign embedded in them.

Presidents on the checklist include John F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Dwight Eisenhower and others. What I love about this set is here is a piece of memorabilia that can be had on the secondary market for less than $20. Topps put a nice design together, threw some cardboard around it and the pins are now worth HUNDREDS.

It’s amazing, and I don’t mean that in a negative way. I love these cards. This is the exact thing that keeps Allen & Ginter fresh, year after year.

I love what this set also represents – and I’m not talking about adding history to cards. It shows Topps can take a concept and change it up enough to make something even more collectible, even if manufactured scarcity is involved. Most of the hobby is built on that manufactured scarcity anyway, with the vast number of parallels that exist.

This is no different, but it works.

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