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Thank God for this Hobby! Baseball Cards actually helped change my life

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EricTownsend88

New member
Jun 13, 2014
48
0
There's a lot of reasons people collect baseball cards. Nostalgia, love for the game of baseball, love for the aspect of collecting something, some to make a profit, ect. Many different reasons. Like most people my age I collected cards as a kid (I'm an 80's baby and if you didn't collect baseball cards when I was in school you were considered weird.) I loved baseball cards as a kid, I was the kid who would save up his allowance for weeks to bust a box of cards instead of buying the new super nintendo game. I was famous among my friends and schoolmates for being able to tell you the Beckett book value of any card off the top of my head. Our school Library even had the newest issue of Beckett available to check out right next to all the educational magazines. My how times have changed. Anyway - also like most people my age as I got older I stopped collecting and spent my money on boring things a car and school as opposed to cardboard.

When I was 19 (2005) I was in a terrible accident that could of been a lot worse. The short story of it is there is an awkward light close to my house where often two drivers will both have a green light. I was the passenger of the vehicle that had the right away and was hit head on by an out of state car who didn't know she didn't have the right of way. I spent a lot of time in the hospital and in physical therapy (I had four surgeries in a short period of time) but I made a full recovery. Awesome right? unfortunately the story didn't really have a happy ending until several years later. As you can probably guess I was prescribed quite the bit of medication over a long period of time. Quick little rant here then back to the story - at the time (2005 through 2006) I was NEVER warned by any doctor or specialist I saw the risk in taking pain medication. Not once. And at the risk of sounding stupid I did not know the dangers of them myself. In my mind I was just following my doctors orders. As I talk to people about this now, he excuse is "doctors did not know then what we know now about pain medication" something that I do not buy for one second. But anyway...

I had become addicted to pain killers and when the prescriptions stopped coming in the withdraws started and I stupidly went the illegal way of obtaining them. As my tolerance built up my bank account went down and soon I was working 50+ hours and still could not save a dime because it all went to my addiction. At the height of my addiction it was easily a $150/day habit. I tried a million times to quit but my mind would use any trivial thing to go back to the disease. Somebody hurt your feelings? Relapse. The Indians blew a 3-1 lead to the Red Sox in the ALCS? big time relapse. There came a point in my life - and trust me this could be a whole another story itself - that I was at absolute rock bottom and knew I had to change my life. After 4+ years of putting that poison in my body - the first half of that time unkowingly and the later part fully knowing I was throwing my life away - I had my last pill in June of 2008.

So how does all this tie into baseball cards though? Hopefully none of my fellow collectors on here have the displeasure of knowing how an addicts mind works but I'll try and explain the best I can...when getting sober probably the most important thing to do is to somehow keep your mind busy. If not those terrible thoughts will creep in and drive you crazy - and probably eventually get you to give into them. For the first 17 days I couldn't do anything. Couldn't even turn the computer or t.v. on. It was impossible to focus on anything. All I did for 17 days was lay in bed and be sick. After getting out of that phase I physically started to feel "normal" but my mind was still off. It was complete an utter torture like the first 17 days were but something was still way off. I could focus a little bit at this point - I started to watch T.V. and get on the computer but I couldn't find anything interesting enough to keep my mind at bay. That is until I broke out that old cardboard I had in the closet from when I was a kid. Stuff I hadn't looked at in so many years.

Now my collection wasn't anything to write home about. The stuff that amazed me as a kid and were the "prize possessions" of my collection were cards that you would dream about finding in pack back the 90's but can get for a few bucks now on eBay. Things like Greg Maddux first day issue, Thomas and Griffey Elite's. I had a Chipper Jones purple crusade that was the cornerstone of my collection back then. A Cal Ripken CC gold signature, ect. It was an ok collection but not great - the point here being though...I had box among box among box of something that I loved to go through. I spent the next few weeks sorting thousands of cards - first into tiers of players. I put the top guys of the 90's in one group - Griffey, Ripken, Thomas, ect. Then I'd put the Bonds, Maddux, Piazza's, ect. into another pile. I had maybe 6 or 7 tiers until I got to the huge pile of thousands of junk wax commons. After this phase was done I sorted the piles by player. Then each player by year. Then I struck up a deal with the owner of my local LCS - I don't know why he did this as I don't imagine he made any money off of them but he agreed to give me 2 boxes of the Ultra Pro one screwdown holders (25 cases in each box) a few packs of team bags and one nice three row box. I gave him all of my commons - or 6 boxes that probably had 5,000+ commons in each box. What he gave me was only maybe $60ish worth of supplies but I don't know what the heck he did with all those commons. Probably just put them in the dumpster behind his store. I always rode my bike there as a kid and had a cool adult/kid relationship with him when I was younger. In my mind I feel like he was probably just doing me a favor. I've since tried to make a deal with him that is obviously lopsided in his favor to pay him back for this but he's never accepted. Anyways - now I had 50 one touch cases some team bags and a nice three row box.

I hammered out another few days putting all of my "good" cards in the one touch cases. I'd fill the team bags with the base cards of all the star players I had. I put all my Cleveland Indians cards into books I already had from when I was a kid. I sorted all my Albert Belle stuff my year and put them all in top loaders I already had. This ate up a lot of time. By the time I was done organizing this mostly worthless collection I had ate up about a month worth of time where my mind stayed occupied - busy with the task at hand of organizing through probably 50,000 baseball cards. After I had everything organized and no more cards to sort through I went through old becketts and made myself a "Collection Goal List" filled of cards from the 90's I always wanted as a kid but never got. I wanted to get myself a good job and slowly but surely start getting some awesome 90s inserts to add to my collection. This took a few days to do as well and I now had over two months clean and finally felt "normal" both physically and mentally. I'd been a mad man going through all that cardboard and my mind never had time to think about relapsing.

Shortly after this I got a job with the State of Delwaware. My bank account slowly started to build up. Eventually I got my own place and got my life back on track. I found that even with bills to pay and gas to put in the car and groceries to put on the table - having a good job and not spending an insane amount of money on drugs that I still had some "spending" money to play with. I started to get the cards on my Goal List - slowly but surely. When I'd get a mail day in I'd open up the yellow package and put the cards into a shoebox. I wouldn't put them into my "collection" right away. I knew I would have bad days - and the corny "once an addict always an addict" phrase sadly is true. 99% of the time bad thoughts never enter my mind but there is that 1% when the demons call your name. On those days I know what I have to do - keep my mind busy. And I always have a shoebox with some really cool 90's cards that I can fill my night up with and keep my mind on something I love and enjoy. Even 10 cards can take hours to properly organize if you aren't in a hurry.

If it wasn't for baseball cards would I have found something else to occupy my mind and help my recovery? I don't know...maybe. But I'm glad I never had to find out. In my eyes - the love I have for our hobby literally helped save my life. Who would have ever thought that old 90's junk wax could of done any good all these years later? I've got almost 9 years clean now and there are still those days I have to take everything out of the boxes and books and organize from scratch. Thank God for this hobby!!
 

swish54_99

Well-known member
Dec 12, 2012
1,160
221
Nice read, thanks for sharing your personal story and CONGRATULATIONS!

I had a small addiction to Excedrin at one point and didn't realize it. I started getting headaches and found the only thing that would help was that. After a while, I found out I had high blood pressure which was originally causing the headaches in the first place. Started taking blood pressure medicine and then had to stop taking the Excedrin. Spent an entire 3 day weekend curled up in bed under the covers with the worst migraines I've ever had until it got out of my system. I know it doesn't hold a candle to your situation, but just wanted to let you know you certainly aren't alone.
 

gitarst182

Active member
Sep 17, 2011
719
73
Washington
I recently sold my Donruss Crusade Chipper Jones rainbow to pay for the Guardian ad Litem in my custody hearing. It helped get my son back with me and safe. So really, my prized collection saved both our lives.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Freedom Card Board mobile app
 

Lancemountain

Active member
Apr 11, 2009
8,313
5
Philadelphia
thanks for sharing! I wish you well and strength going forward. We're all here, even late at night if you ever wanna chat or show some cards off


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 

Juan Gris

Well-known member
May 23, 2013
2,222
106
Columbus, OH
That was an excellent read. You and I are the same age and I can also relate to reading Beckett in the school library! It seems you have a strong grasp on what has and hasn't worked for you personally and I applaud your use of this great hobby.
 

jbone17

Active member
Sep 26, 2008
6,756
42
The Riverlands.
What an incredible and inspiring story! This hobby has more ways than one to connect amazing people. I had a pretty life changing moment myself the other day. I belong to a through the mail and in-person autograph board. I came across a fellow member who's wife is a school teacher out west. She has a 6 year old student who is a die hard San Diego Padres fan. The little fella has been given a bad break in life as he has muscular dystrophy. This is a disorder that can impede one's ability to perform normal functions such as walking. Almost 90 percent of the time, he's committed to a wheelchair. So, I saw tons of members donating to his elementary school. I decided it was my time to help.

I really hope the worst is behind you and I'm glad this hobby has found you well :)
 

Pinbreaker

Well-known member
Aug 7, 2008
10,131
287
Laguna Niguel, CA
What an incredible and inspiring story! This hobby has more ways than one to connect amazing people. I had a pretty life changing moment myself the other day. I belong to a through the mail and in-person autograph board. I came across a fellow member who's wife is a school teacher out west. She has a 6 year old student who is a die hard San Diego Padres fan. The little fella has been given a bad break in life as he has muscular dystrophy. This is a disorder that can impede one's ability to perform normal functions such as walking. Almost 90 percent of the time, he's committed to a wheelchair. So, I saw tons of members donating to his elementary school. I decided it was my time to help.

I really hope the worst is behind you and I'm glad this hobby has found you well :)

Please send PM me his info.. I would like to donate some cards to him. My previous wife had Limb Girdal Muscular Dystrophy for 16 years before she passed away so I know the struggles he must go thru..
(even though there are about 80 different types of MD now)

Thanks,
Kevin
 

fordman

Well-known member
Feb 22, 2013
3,190
32
Ohio
WOW! What an inspirational story! Glad something like baseball cards helped re-focus your life. Keep doing what you're doing and that will make each day easier to progress forward. Take care of jr and guide him away from places/people he dont need to associate with.

Fordman
 

MisterT

Well-known member
Mar 7, 2011
2,609
36
Virginia
As noted above, I think a lot of people can relate to aspects of your story. Stay strong and take one day at a time. You are among friends here.
 

Enfuego79

Well-known member
Jan 21, 2013
5,229
101
Deltona, FL
I truly admire your bravery for sharing your story with us. I do agree that we all have some sort of demons lurking in our lives and we all need that "something" to put our mind at ease. I for one would spend every bit of white space I had on drinking to levels that would scare my daughter. Here I am now, going on 38 years young in 2 days. I admit I do have a drink or two "occasionally" but the time I do have of not really doing nothing is usually spent either fiddling with my collection, watching something on TV about baseball, or just teaching my daughter about the sport, and history.

Glad to see you have pulled through. Good luck to you.
 

EricTownsend88

New member
Jun 13, 2014
48
0
What an incredible and inspiring story! This hobby has more ways than one to connect amazing people. I had a pretty life changing moment myself the other day. I belong to a through the mail and in-person autograph board. I came across a fellow member who's wife is a school teacher out west. She has a 6 year old student who is a die hard San Diego Padres fan. The little fella has been given a bad break in life as he has muscular dystrophy. This is a disorder that can impede one's ability to perform normal functions such as walking. Almost 90 percent of the time, he's committed to a wheelchair. So, I saw tons of members donating to his elementary school. I decided it was my time to help.

I really hope the worst is behind you and I'm glad this hobby has found you well :)

I'd also love to send this youngster all my Padres stuff if you wouldn't mind sending me the address
 

Gjb70

Member
Aug 1, 2015
661
0
Awesome story, and congrats. I can relate as well. And love to hear such a great story from a fellow Belle collector!
 

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