20 Jan Veselys

Last fall, I invested in my first box of basketball cards, something that was supposed to be a quick lark and a way of pretending to be serious about this blog. A month later, I followed that up with two more boxes of different types of cards and suddenly found myself a couple of hundred dollars poorer with a ton of cards with basketball player images on my hands. Not knowing what else to do with these things, I posted my thoughts on the overly optimistic descriptions on the backs of the cards last December as a way to distract myself from the Wizards' miserable start to the 2012-13 season.

After my December basketball cards post and knowing I am a recovering collector who sometimes relapses, I had a conversation with my friend Mike that went something like this:

   Mike: So you are collecting basketball cards now?

   Me: No, I just bought some.

   Mike: So you are collecting basketball cards.

   Me: No, honestly, I'm not. I just bought a few. Really.

Well, ten months or so after my first purchase, I think Mike's right and I can say I have a pretty good collection of basketball cards focused of course on the Washington Wizards.

When I was a kid growing up in England, I collected football cards. And I'm talking real football (translation: soccer), not the NFL. Just about every kid in England is obsessed with football and so pretty much everyone collected football cards. We saved our allowances to buy these wax sealed packs of cards with a brittle stick of pink gum inside hoping we would get one or two Liverpool players (back then it seemed like every kid was a Liverpool fan) or something worth trading so we could get some cards that we really wanted from another kid.

When my family moved to the United States in 1979, I continued to collect cards but this time it was baseball, football (NFL football this time) and hockey cards. No basketball for me at that time. No interest at all, ironically. These cards came with the same brittle pink gum in the wax sealed packages as my cards in England but instead of collecting one series of cards, I now had to divide my allowance a quarter at a time among three seasons, carefully rationing out my precious savings so I could cover all three sports reasonably well. I continued to collect cards for a few years until I lost interest and moved on to other pursuits (probably Dungeons and Dragons and other role playing games) before buying some football cards in college when I was absolutely maniacal about all things New York Jets.

That was about 25 years ago and I hadn't given collecting cards much thought since then. But a couple of years ago, Panini America, the same company that made the football cards I collected as a kid in England, bought the rights to manufacture cards for the NBA and I followed them on Twitter about 15 months ago. From there it was all downhill and I can honestly say I am no longer in recovery. I've definitely relapsed.

This year, Panini America will release 26 different basketball card sets and until they announced the impending release of their second to last issue Flawless series, which retails for $1,250 per ten card pack, I made sure I bought at least one (OK, more than one) of each card set featuring a Wizards player. We can stop for a second if you want; the previous sentence does not contain a typo in the numbers. $1,250 is the correct price for ten 3" by 4" pieces of cardboard. Admittedly, this card set features actual diamond and emerald embedded cards but come on, some people have way too much disposable income on their hands. We have definitely come a long way from me buying baseball, football and hockey cards for 25 cents a pack.

I always thought of collecting sports cards as something that kids did, but the prices in the previous paragraph and some of the secondary market prices of these cards is astounding. And the amount of variations and unique numbered cards makes it even pricier. When I was writing this post I did a quick search on ebay and found a Damian Lillard National Treasures Rookie Platinum 1/1 card with a current tally of 42 bids and a price of $2,100. And the bidding wasn't even closed. Are you kidding me???

OK, so some of these cards are pretty cool and they are going to make or have made high quality and extremely portable items for autographing (much more on that other collection later, I am sure). Over the past ten months, I have acquired thin cards, thick cards, cards with pieces of jersey in them, cards made out of acetate or leather or wood, die cut cards, autographed cards, cards with prismatic qualities, foil embedded cards and other sorts of cards that I never would have imagined would ever exist when I was buying their predecessors for a quarter a pack at Franklin Pharmacy in Glastonbury, CT. And it seems at every turn that I have Jan Vesely versions of these cards, whom I desperately want to succeed this coming year to provide some stability in the frontcourt off the bench. Just tying things back there.

So what's the point? I have no idea. I've spent an insane amount of money on these things (not $1,250; not even close) and I think I have fulfilled my yen for this year. I will never pledge to buy one of each series of cards ever again. But I think I'll continue to buy on a budget and I am genuinely intrigued and love the graphic quality of some of these things. I really believe there is real design in some series that is very appealing. I think the first 2013-14 sets start coming out in late October. Until then and appropriately enough since EuroBasket is in full swing right now, enjoy a portion of my collection of Jan Vesely cards. Trust me, these things will be worth a fortune when Ves breaks out and takes the league by storm. Everyone will be saying Blake Griffin is the American Jan Vesely. That's all I have on this one.