Recently, I wrote a Monday blog post here discussing the mundane aspects of life in “preparing to move” mode. Entitled Cats & Comics, it briefly touched on the task of selling my vintage comic book collection on eBay—a process of diminishing returns, to put it kindly.
Since then, I’ve increasingly moved into a phase of dispersing old trading cards, an even less rewarding experience. I mention football and basketball in today’s headline because those are the most popular cards, but even these offer little in the way of remuneration. Customers complain even when a card has been safeguarded within a plastic bag, protected by two pieces of custom-cut cardboard, and shipped in a brand new bubble mailer. In short, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. My eBay days will (mercifully) soon be over.
As for the aforementioned Partridge Family…well, if you’re under 60, you might not even know who they were. Back in the early 1970s, Shirley Jones and her step-son, David Cassidy (along with the delightful Susan Dey) combined the wholesome star power of the 50s with the youthful exuberance of late 60s/early 70s pop culture in a TV show that was part visual entertainment, part radio-friendly schmaltz. Like other media entities of the day, they ended up on baseball card-like trading cards, alongside the Brady Bunch, Star Wars, and the rock group Kiss.
I have some of these cards, and they aren’t particularly valuable, but I still have to check on eBay to see whether it’s worth the effort to list them. As my wife and I get closer to our inevitable move across the globe, these little curios must disappear piece by piece. And with them, my nostalgia for a simpler, yet ironically, less acquisitive time.
