Return of Tales From FDR Sportscards

In the earlier days of writing this blog, I posted a few stories from my favorite LCS that has long since closed, FDR Sportscards. Those few posts actually garnered some of the fewest views of any post published so I put the idea of making it a series on the shelf. Tonight, I decided to revive it for one more shot. As previously written(though not read by many), I spent a lot of time(and money) at this shop in its day. I have a lot of stories that I think are great and I pulled a lot of decent cards there. So, in the interest of sharing some of those cards(and stories) that I had already scanned in preparation for the shelved series, here is a quick single card post, just because.

The year is 2000. I'm in my early 20's, working FT and going to school. Unlike many, at this time, I am in prime collecting mode. Unfortunately, I had even less control and focus on specific collecting goals than I do now. Topps flagship has just hit the shelves and for no reason in particular! other than it is the new product on the shelf, I decided to bust a few jumbo packs. I had done no preparation and had no idea what the big draws of the product were or even much about who was in the checklist. After liking enough of what I saw in the first two packs, I decided to keep going and rip at least a third jumbo on the afternoon. Somewhere tucked in the middle of that third jumbo stack was this:

Twenty something me didn't have as great an appreciation for baseball history as present day me, but I knew who Eddie Matthews was. At the time, this was probably one of the 'best' cards in my collection. However, on multiple occasions, I seriously considered selling or trading it. In fact, had I been more eBay savvy or of a few trade negotiations went a little differently, I would not have his card today. Fortunately, I was not very inclined to learn enough about selling on eBay and the few trade partners I tried to push this on were not willing to give as much as I wanted at the time. I'm glad things worked out the way they did. Otherwise this great auto of a HOF player would be just a memory. Man, I'm really am glad younger me isn't running this collection. He didn't know what he was doing! Thanks for reading.