Another Kind of Collectible Plate

Having been blessed with the collecting gene, I've dabbled in all sorts of collectibles before committing myself to casino chips and related items. For a while, I even collected baseball cards.

As a kid, I wasn't particularly interested in baseball and as a result never collected baseball cards. I remember buying trading cards with the Beatles, monsters and cars on them, but most of those ended up attached to the fork of my bike with clothespins to make that clackety-clackety sound that sounded exactly like a motorcycle.

In the early 1990's I became interested in baseball cards and went through a buying flurry, acquiring enough semi-worthless cards to fill a box that now sits in my attic. One of the reasons I was put off was the realization (Duh!) that the card manufacturers were continuing to put out more and more special issue sets and special inserts in the regular sets. So, regular cards issue cards have lost some of their appeal to collectors. Couple that with the fact that ANY baseball card must now be "slabbed" by a grading company to be worth anything, and you have a couple of reasons that baseball card collecting sucks.

The card companies basically see their job now as to print money. Which is fine, but being one of the sources of that money is not something I want to participate in. Special inserts inside regular packs of baseball cards have been around for a long time, and included things like autographed cards and holographic images and stuff. But, I recently discovered the latest insert designed to keep packs of their cards flying off the shelves: the printing plate.

They're now inserting printing plates (allegedly) used to print the baseball cards right into the pack with the cards. What will they think of next? If this sounds unbelievable or you're not sure what I'm talking about, check out the auctions running on eBay to see some.