Okay, let me tell you about this John Elway Topps card I dealt with recently. It wasn’t anything super planned, just something that happened.
Digging Through Old Stuff
So, I was finally tackling the mess in the garage last weekend. You know how it gets, boxes piled up over the years. Anyway, I found this dusty old shoebox tucked away. It was full of my old sports cards from when I was a kid. Mostly baseball, but a few football ones too.
I started flipping through them, just for old times’ sake. Lots of players I barely remembered. Then I hit this one card – John Elway. It was a Topps card, looked pretty old. I recognized the face right away, of course. It kinda stood out.
Checking it Out
Pulled it out for a better look. I remembered hearing that some old cards can be worth a bit, especially rookie cards for famous players. Elway was huge, right? So, I got a little curious. Was this that card?
First thing I did was just look closely at the card itself. The year on the back was 1984. Seemed like it could be his rookie card, I wasn’t totally sure off the top of my head. The condition, well, it wasn’t perfect. Let’s be honest, I was a kid, these things got handled.
- The corners were a little soft, not sharp.
- There might have been a tiny surface scratch, hard to tell.
- It wasn’t bent or creased, which was good.
- Centering looked okay to my eye, but I’m no expert.
I didn’t have any fancy sleeves or cases back then, it was just loose with the others in the shoebox. Amazing it survived this well, honestly.
Figuring Out What I Had
Next step, I went inside and hopped on my computer. I just searched around online for “John Elway 1984 Topps card”. Lots of pictures popped up, and yeah, it looked like the rookie card everyone talks about.
Then I started seeing all this stuff about grading. Companies that put your card in a plastic case and give it a number grade. Seemed like a big deal for value. People were showing cards graded 8, 9, 10… and the prices were way up there.
I looked at mine again. Knowing its condition, it probably wouldn’t get one of those super high grades. Maybe a 5 or 6? I was just guessing based on what I saw online comparing pictures and descriptions.
What I Did (or Didn’t Do)
So, I had a choice. Do I send this thing off to get graded? Pay the fees, wait for who knows how long, hope it comes back with a decent number?
Honestly, I decided against it. It seemed like a bit of a hassle for a card that wasn’t mint. Plus, part of me just liked finding it. It brought back memories of collecting cards, trading with buddies, all that stuff. It felt more like a cool piece of nostalgia than a potential paycheck.
I did buy a simple plastic case for it though, one of those hard plastic screw-down ones. Just to keep it safe now that it was out of the box. Cost me a couple of bucks at a local shop.
So, the Elway card is now sitting on my bookshelf in its new case. Not graded, not sold. Just a neat find from cleaning the garage. It was a fun little project for an afternoon, going through the process of identifying it and figuring out what it was. Sometimes just the finding and remembering is the best part.
