Baseball cards. I am still hoping my 1992 Topps Stadium Club Dome Set featuring Brien Taylor will send my kids through college.
They probably will be valuable.
I only collected for three years (1969-1971) as a kid, though I had no idea old baseball cards would be worth serious money one day. I just liked to wheel and deal with my friends. Saturday mornings on someone's front porch, most of the kids in the neighborhood kept their cards in a cigar or shoe box. I grew out of that, but I never could bring myself to get rid of the cards -- again not for any monetary reason, but rather a vague sense of nostalgia (and a mild pack-rat affliction.) So I carefully packed them all away, and basically forgot about them for about 25 years.
By the time I rediscovered my collection, the baseball card memorabilia market had taken off. Still, I only kind of wondered what they were worth - I just got a huge kick out of looking at them again. By then, I had been introduced to E-Bay, where thousands of card auctions were going on all the time. I decided I wanted to complete my sets - from my old cards 1969 was about 90% complete, 1970 about 75%, and 1971 about 75% (but the entire 25% of that set I didn't have was all high # cards. . . which, because of the way Topps released the cards back then, were rarer and thus more expensive.) Over the course of 3-4 years I bought sets of commons on the cheap and finally completed all three years. I basically broke even because I re-auctioned all the extra cards (doubles) I got by buying lots. Then I pretty much lost interest and put them away again.
Recently, I got them out again to show my sons, and a friend who is a weekend dealer said he would appraise them for me. I was surprised to learn my old collection was worth between $15,000 and $25,000, depending on how I sold them, and when.
Of course, I would never actually do it. Sell them, I mean.
