Collecting Miami Dolphins trading cards was a big part of childhood
By Brian Miller
There has been a lot going around lately about the rising costs and values of sports trading cards and that brought back memories of Miami Dolphins Topps cards.
Collecting trading cards used to be fun before it became a business. Searching pack after pack for that one player you were missing to complete your Miami Dolphins team set was like winning the lottery as a kid, once you found it.
Those are days that have long since gone. As an adult, we find other more important uses for our money. Prices on trading cards have gone up too. Call it inflation or whatever you want but the days of being a kid and picking up a stack of packs with dried powdered gum are gone. Now, a pack of cards costs more than a gallon of gasoline.
When I was younger I used to forgo lunches at school. Instead, I would pocket the money all week and on Friday’s stop at the small convenience store on my way home from school and buy as many packs of Topps cards I could afford. Nestled in those packs of 12 to 15 cards, far more than the five you get today for three times the cost, were some of the best memories a child could afford to buy on his own.
For whatever reason, I collected two types of cards way back in 1981. Anything related to the Miami Dolphins and as many Joe Montana cards that I could find. I thought his name was cool. At one point in my collecting years I had 10 mint condition cards with his name and likeness but over the years that has somehow dwindled to a few.
While I made out with Montana, years later I thought that Pro-Set would take over the NFL from Topps so I bought as many as I could. I completed about 6 full sets of the first years print but then realized that while I liked the cards and was getting older, the more cards that are printed the less value they have. I still have the cards and they are worth almost nothing.
Today my youngest son wanted to start collecting but the feeling wasn’t the same. Even in his eyes, I could see that it was different. $7.00 for a pack of cards that had maybe five cards in it. The dejection that he didn’t get a card with a game-worn jersey or some specialty rare card. It was then I realized that collecting cards have become more about money than enjoyment.
I stopped collecting more than a decade ago and I don’t really miss it. In a small closeted room off of my older son’s bedroom, boxes and boxes of football cards sit. Some complete Topps sets dating back to the mid-’70s and some full of cards from 1969. A couple of Dan Marino rookie cards and even Bob Griese and Larry Csonka rookie cards.
They haven’t been looked at for years, maybe more. I kept them thinking that someday I would sit on a floor with my son and we would sort and look through them while we started his collection. But now that is all different. Players change teams so quickly that it is hard to find a favorite and of course as mentioned, the prices continue to rise for far less. It’s taken the fun out of it and along the way taken a bonding experience away from fathers and sons.