Casting a wider net

This 1975 Hostess card from Brewers pitcher Billy Champion cost me $8 – just over $10 including shipping.

The card has a small crease in the corner and the pitcher, despite being one of the biggest names in the sport, was an average performer in the 70’s, otherwise known as “a regular.” But it’s a short print.

The champion arrived not long after the card of his former teammate, Robin Yount. The Yount is a short print and it is also his rookie card, but it only cost a few dollars more than the Champion, probably because there are a few issues with it (although nothing bothers me in the least when it comes to Hostess cards).

I’ve returned to trying to finish this set after getting frustrated with it last year. I haven’t encountered the kind of price increases I see on ’75 Hostess when I completed the 1976 and 1977 Hostess sets (1976 completed in late 2021 and 1977 in mid-2024). But I still have about 17 SPs to get for ’75 Hostess.

Going the other way has also made buying packs of the current product pricey. Prices have increased in almost every configuration. Sure, it’s fun to draw a colorful numbered parallel, like I did with Shota Imanaga, from a hanger box, but it’s a little shocking when I see the price increase at the self-checkout.

I don’t need to tell any collector reading this that the hobby has become more difficult — whichever way you look at it — for collectors in my situation, which I would call “Traditional Collector on a Budget.”

I don’t have the money to throw into a hobby box with the current product, and in most cases I wouldn’t want to. I also don’t have the money to pay the high prices for vintage cards that have skyrocketed in almost every area over the past five years. I’ve been collecting since long before the last hobby boom, and…

I remember thinking, “Well, at least I have Kellogg’s cards to collect. Nobody wants those.”

Then I said, “At least I have hostess cards to collect.” Nobody wants that.’

So, what now? No, I don’t want to collect 1988’s Donruss again.

For me, it means casting a wider net as I try to save money for those special sets, like ’75 Hostess and ’75 Kellogg’s, that I really want. A budget man like me looks for other, cheaper ways.

There’s a giveaway on BlueSky where you can sometimes find vintage – for absolutely nothing. I recently purchased a 1970 O-Pee-Chee Sal Bando and the kind donor — Andy — threw in an unexpected 1966 Rico Carty! This budget collector likes it for free!

That same lot included a 1985 Dwight Gooden Leaf rookie! Yes, I still need the Donruss version, which I will definitely have to pay for, but the Leaf version which looks almost identical was free, baby!

The blog version of searching for vintage deals is Time Travel Trading at Diamond jesters. For the final round I picked up three vintage cards. All three have seen better days, but there is no sunshine here for nine months of the year, so it will never be bright enough to see that.

For me it’s a hoot just knowing that I have about 55 cards from the 1966 Topps set and about the same for 1968! I never thought I’d have either set over the Dodgers, and neither are favorites. And if you knew me as a kid, cards from the 1960s were the epitome of “old.” (Forget the maps from the 1950s, we didn’t even know they existed).

I also traded in three 1988 Topps football cards in the same lot (again, the Bosworth is not freshly packaged). The Roger Craig showed up the day he was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

All this only cost me cards that I already have in duplicate. (I kind of buried Matt in the 1979 Topps football, which unfortunately no one seems to want, which baffles me. Maybe Matt can start collecting the set, he said hopefully).

And speaking of football cards:

I love Topps football from 1976. I got the first cards from packs (I don’t remember how many packs I bought that year, but it wasn’t much, maybe three?).

As I’ve said before, I have no real plans to complete this set because I know the Payton rookie will come after me at some point. But when you collect on a budget, you find what you like and if it’s cheap enough, you grab it.

And that’s where I am now. I hope that one day prices will come down on some of the things I really like. Heck, it would even be nice if prices dropped on the cards sold in stores. But I doubt that will happen.

Just know that if you price things fairly – i.e. don’t price every current Shohei Ohtani base card at $2 or more for no reason – I will find you and give you my business.