A Collection Acquisition

Recently I acquired a collection of cards from some friends. The cards were the collection of their son, who is about 20 years younger than I am (somewhere between 18-22 years younger. He is late 20s). I understand that it might be just some of the collection, but it seems like they found most or all of the collection. If there were, there wouldn't be much more. I feel a little bad about it because the son doesn't know his old card collection is now gone from their basement unless they have since told him about it. He moved out from their home a few years back didn't take it then and is now married. I think the wife wouldn't allow the collection in their home if she even knew about it. She is a strange one.

As expected the collection is mostly early 1990s mixed card companies/sets. The height of the "Junk Wax" years. It is pretty much from 1992 to 1995 maybe a 1996 card or two. The bulk of the collection is in a card sorting/storage box that has two rows of five sections for cards (like this one, or rather exactly this one), the bottom of the box has finger holes at each section so you can push the cards from underneath to take the stack out of the box.

There were also three binders/albums. One was baseball cards sorted by team mostly (if not all) just 1993 Topps, the order seems random maybe it is by favorite team at the time, or standings order. Another binder is football then baseball cards sorted by player, apparently in some sort of favorites order. The last binder is Mostly football sorted by team, again maybe in favorite team order, and then a page or two of multi-sport.

In the box it is mostly cards I don't collect much of - Basketball. Then there is some football and baseball plus about a dozen Sports Illustrated For Kids multi-sport cards, which of curse come from the magazine (some were separated well, others, not so well). There are some non-sport cards which include: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Marvel Comics/X-Men, Pacific Desert Shield (looks like he had gotten a couple of packs and those packs were exact duplicates), and some cards I NEVER EVER NEVER in a Zillion years wanted to ever own New Kids On The Block (only about 5 so maybe he just got a pack to see what they were like). Gee maybe I should chase that set? /sarcasm.

Water damaged cards and TMNT stickers/puzzles (sticker removed)

Some of the Ninja Turtle cards were the puzzle backs from the stickers with the stickers removed. Unfortunately there were also a few water damaged cards in the bunch. The dad admitted he one time spilled water on the box or the box was exposed to a washing machine flood or some such accident involving liquid. More likely he spilled some beer. Some of them will be OK for filler cards. There were some I tried to save that were stuck together but of course when separated they ripped and tore, so I might just recycle those few. OH why couldn't it have been the NKOTB cards?

I've only done some minor sorting by sport and a basic overview and orienting them the same way. Some of them I will add to my PC, others I might try to sell or trade, maybe give away. The Non-sport cards are still mixed up, not separated. I am in the process of sorting the Basketball eventually into team lots. Right now I have them somewhat sorted by card maker then year. I will put what I have up for trade on my Trade Stuff page.

I am surprised by the basketball ones I plan on keeping, because other than the Bullets, I will be keeping some Team Logo cards from 1994/95 Hoops. That year they made team cards for all the teams with the Team Logo on the front in front of a colorful background with a team related trivia question on back, they also made an NBA Logo card that had the answers to the trivia questions on its back.

These are the Team Logo Cards I need from 1994/95 Hoops Basketball:

395 Cleveland Cavaliers
403 LA Lakers
404 Miami Heat
405 Milwaukee Bucks
407 New Jersey Nets
414 San Antonio Spurs
417 Washington Bullets

Man it is fun going through this stuff. I don't mind going through medium sized collections like this and would like to get more of this type of thing from time to time, preferably ones that are older and mostly baseball with little or no basketball. Maybe some older non-sport collections that have NO NKOTB, or Magic The Gathering/Pokemon type games.