Half a year ago I asked the question of What if...? What if I took 20 sports cards and treated them like I might have when I was in elementary school for the summer?
And now I know.
I didn't do everything a school aged kid might do. I didn't draw on them. I didn't put them in the spokes of my bike. But I did carry them around with me everywhere I went. Weddings? Check. Funerals? Yep. Work. Church. The store. Ball games. Concerts. Everywhere.
I mostly kept them in my left front pocket. I also started to keep my keys in that same pocket. And Brandon Belt was near the top of the stack on most days. I didn't pull them out every day at lunch and try to memorize the stats. I just didn't.
Bartolo Colon was at the bottom of the stack. I went through five rubber bands during the course of the summer. The late 1980s Topps cards seemed to get flimsier. They stayed in the middle of the stack. The more modern Topps cards, also near the middle of the stack, fared rather well. Tim Federowicz's name wore right off the front of his card. The last picture of the bunch is designed to show the side wear.
Here are some closer photos of some of the cards.
Now the researcher in me wants to try the same thing on a bunch of Good/Very Good cards from the middle of each decade. I don't have the time nor patience to give that a go.
For now I think that I might just keep the stack in my pocket and see what happens at opening day, 2015.