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All The Hype
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Let me take you back to the fall of 1999, McGwire/Sosa fever had swept across the country and they were putting on an incredible summer-long showcase of power for the second season in a row. As a 10-year-old baseball maniac, what could be better than watching your favorite player (Sosa) and one of your other favorite players (McGwire) blasting homers seemingly every night? Looking back, it certainly disappoints most of the baseball fandom to know that this was done with Performance Enhancing Drugs, but regardless of how it was done, there couldn't have been a more exciting time in sports over the last few decades.
I remember riding bikes with my older brother down to the local card shop every week on allowance day to grab as many packs of our favorite product, Skybox Thunder, as I could afford with my $5 allowance plus whatever change I'd scraped up that week. The inserts rocked. I had collected my whole life, but those shiny 90s inserts were some of my all-time favorite cards. The back of the packs showed the 1:300 odds of pulling one of the rare "Dial 1" Inserts, although I could only hope I'd be so lucky one day.
And then I WAS so lucky one day. An unfamiliar black card with rounded corners came from one of those packs and changed the way I looked at cards. I had not only pulled a "Dial 1" insert, but I had pulled a Mark McGwire "Dial 1" insert, valued by Beckett at $120 at the time. A massive pull for a 10-year-old who idolized baseball's most prolific power hitters. It got me excited about the value of cards, even though I never would have (and still haven't) sold the card.
Fast forward to the beginning of this year, I set out to complete the set and began looking for the other 9 cards. It took me about 7 months to find them all, but they are finally together. Eventually I plan to frame and display them in my home. The set took about $65 total to complete, just over half the original value my McGwire once held. To me, the set is far more valuable and will forever serve as a reminder of the summer that truly ignited my baseball card passion.
I remember riding bikes with my older brother down to the local card shop every week on allowance day to grab as many packs of our favorite product, Skybox Thunder, as I could afford with my $5 allowance plus whatever change I'd scraped up that week. The inserts rocked. I had collected my whole life, but those shiny 90s inserts were some of my all-time favorite cards. The back of the packs showed the 1:300 odds of pulling one of the rare "Dial 1" Inserts, although I could only hope I'd be so lucky one day.
And then I WAS so lucky one day. An unfamiliar black card with rounded corners came from one of those packs and changed the way I looked at cards. I had not only pulled a "Dial 1" insert, but I had pulled a Mark McGwire "Dial 1" insert, valued by Beckett at $120 at the time. A massive pull for a 10-year-old who idolized baseball's most prolific power hitters. It got me excited about the value of cards, even though I never would have (and still haven't) sold the card.
Fast forward to the beginning of this year, I set out to complete the set and began looking for the other 9 cards. It took me about 7 months to find them all, but they are finally together. Eventually I plan to frame and display them in my home. The set took about $65 total to complete, just over half the original value my McGwire once held. To me, the set is far more valuable and will forever serve as a reminder of the summer that truly ignited my baseball card passion.
