A few years ago my brother got in with a group from Union County (NC) Public Library as they hosted their first ever kids friendly "comic convention" called Super-Con. Two years ago they moved the event from the actual library to an odd, but super nice location in the NC Agricultural Center. While my involvement last year was really helping out my older brother at his table where he peddled various items, I decided to request my own table.
Toby and had been talking it up for quite a while when we'd get to see Chase at Myrtle Beach when we'd gather at our mom's house. I really didn't think Chase would be interested in the event as he doesn't read or collect comics, but he called me one day last week asking if he could crash on my couch if he decided to come. Of course I told him to come on...then my wife proceeded to make me clean the house in anticipation of his arrival.
Chase is a several years younger than me, however there was a time we both we set up at card shows. We would set up and sell our duplicates and inserts we pulled in order to have a little more spending money to buy more cards with. This was in the early to mid-90's. Neither one of us ever had anything really good to sell, but I do remember him pulling a Jose Cruz RC from Upper Deck SPx. At the time he was a hot prospect and several collectors were chasing his cards.
All weekend Chase and I's conversations would always seem to come back to either baseball cards or wrestling. I knew Chase watched people break current boxes of trading cards on YouTube and I knew that he really didn't have the desire to jump back into the hobby. However on our way home from the event he told me he still had all of his cards from his childhood stored away at his dad's house in FL. One set he said he would love to finish was the 1996 Donruss Preferred set. I remember him buying that giant metal tin hobby "box" and working the set, but that was ages ago. I figured he let them all go like so many people do when they fall away from the hobby.
Upon learning of this info, I told him about the Trading Card Database website that I had recently started using. I encouraged him to set up an account and once he retrieved his cards to load up his profile with cards he could trade and enter his want list for the 1996 Preferred set. I really enjoyed the hobby talk as I rarely have people locally to talk with about this sort of thing.
Later Saturday evening my whole family sat down for family movie night and Chase joined in. My two young daughters also really enjoyed having their uncle around. Before we got started with the movie I handed him two sealed packs of 1991 Fleer Ultra baseball. He told me those were the first packs he had ripped in 15+ years. Wow. I can't even imagine going that long with crackin' some wax!
Sunday we all went to church, grabbed a bite to eat afterwards and then headed home to watch the Carolina Panthers/Houston Texans football game. Before you knew it the game was over and he had to hit the road. I don't know if he'll ever read this blog post, but I had a great time re-connecting of sorts over the weekend. I know he's my brother and all, but we really didn't grow up together so we've never had the strongest of relationships. However thanks to baseball cards, we had memories to share and a common interest to talk about all weekend. This was easily one of the better weekends I've had in quite some time.
Great story. Love hear stuff like that. Such a fun time.
ReplyDeleteMan... I wish one of my brothers was interested in comics... and the other one cards. You're living the dream!
ReplyDeleteMy older brother got me into comics, but has since moved onto digital comics. I think he still understands the collector's mentality however. My younger brother doesn't collect cards anymore, but follows the hobby so at least we get to chat about that when we get to spend time together.
DeleteI have two half brothers that I didn't see much growing up, so I can sort of relate to this post. Love these kind of posts BTW, they just seem to add more soul to a blog.
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