Bittersweet to say the least. I have collected Jagr cards for the better part of 25-years, with a break in there somewhere. I have spent an embarrassingly large amount of money on Jagr cards. I sold off some of the better cards years back (including a ton of 1/1s that I wish I had today), then when he returned from the KHL I started in full force again, focusing on game-used, autos, and plates. I picked up some 90's eye candy and some other lower-numbered cards along the way, too.
But I think I'm done now.
As soon as I saw Jagr did not get picked up for the 18-19 NHL season, and that he had moved back home to his Kladno team, I knew the end was probably in sight.
Then the new sets starting coming out with few or no Jagr cards (with the exception of the superb Jagr Years subset in UDs1).
I still picked up the cards I wanted for my collection. Unfortunately as of late, those have been mostly printing plates, and I seem to be the only person picking them up. Then I picked the full set of four Leaf Distinguished Series plates for like $14. Oof, that was sad. Yeah, it's Leaf, but a lot of collectors like the "rainbow" set of cards. But not this one. Maybe because it's Leaf? Who knows.
Over the 6-months I have tried to sell some of the duplicate Jagr cards. Message boards, Facebook. Facebook is an odd place to try and sell things off. Knowing there are a ton of thirsty Czech collectors, the only people I have been able to sell any Jagr cards to are in Canada. Facebook groups love razzes, but I can't bring myself to do them. People pay for a chance at a card? No thanks. I'm sure that is hurting me, though.
Anyway, so yeah, I'm done. Last week someone on Facebook contacted me about buying ALL my Jagr cards, and he assured me he was a "serious buyer". Eyebrow raised. I told him it'd take me a few days to come up with a number, so he comes back with 70 or so cards specifically. Of course it's all mostly high-end. I tell him to give me some time, but I'm not looking to dump the cards. He seems fine with it. I create a shared Google doc with the cards and prices, then I hear nothing. Nothing. Thanks, big guy. He appears to be a flipper, so it doesn't surprise me.
Another of the many things I collect are Billy Dee Williams cards. That said, they are 99% Lando cards from Star Wars sets. The most recent set to come out is Star Wars Black & White: Empire Strikes Back. That set is not doing well, but it presented me the opportunity to chase numerous parallels (too many, really) of Lando. I grabbed a few, the /25, the /10, some others. But I think I'm done with all the parallels. I believe I am cutting back on Billy Dee to only auto cards.
The worst part about all this? I KNOW I will lose money, but that's not the point. The kicker is that people who collect individual characters are almost to themselves. No one will want to pick up a lot of Lando cards. I have some decent low-numbered parallels, but who's going to want them? Star Wars is such an odd non-sport area to collect. Maybe I can sell off some of them, but there are a lot of those purple or copper parallels that will sit in my office doing no one any good.
That's the worst part of collecting--when you are done, you know you will have a ton of things left over that you will still own. My wife never understood why I collected cards. I guess because I started when I was a kid, back when '86 Donruss baseball was all the rage; back when my uncle gave me a stack of '87 Topps baseball cards, rubberbanded together; back when my dad used to tell me stories about collecting Yankees team sets when he was young, growing up in New York City. Collecting cards has been in my blood for 30-plus years.
I would do anything to get back only what I put into all the cards. Sort of a zero-interest savings account, I guess. Not gonna happen. Now I have a ton of webpages to update, more message board threads and Facebook group posts.
Maybe I'll get lucky. I doubt it, but maybe.
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