The Passion of the Hobby is a double edged sword

So I had echoes of my husband saying " I don't want to just sit around and watch Netflix" in my head as I was browsing reddit and randomly saw through some of their ad targeting something about a Wolverine trading card set coming out in the summer of 2024. 

I was instantly reminded of my childhood. I grew up with a very small comic and card shop (cause they were combined back then?) in my hometown and I suppose it had sports cards too but my brain selectively deleted those from memory since I wasn't keen on them in the height of the junk wax era. 

I was in middle school and my local shop would give me $6 store credit for every 'A' I got on my report card. Needless to say, every semester walking in there with $36 of store credit guaranteed and my mom willing to match, I felt like a 12 year old baller. 

 My Big Ass Childhood Binder that was the shell of something that held Dad's old documents was big and blue and eventually covered with 99 cent X-Men stickers. X-Men were my favorite followed by the other 90s X-Teams cause I was reading their comics but I had a little Star Trek, Ren and Stimpy, Lion King, Simpsons, whatever people found for me or I traded for on the playground. 

Still mostly in tact, too. Few old holograms went to PSA and 1 Magneto from 91 got a 10. It didn't sell for much. I digress, I got connected with my old collection and discovered an overwhelming experience going to a card shop but 10 minutes from my house. I want to say it was around $200 for the box of Wolverine. Inflation is a bitch but it was my first taste of the new world of card collecting. 

 An autographed Mark Sasso Cyclops card, thick juicy Fleer Ultra card stock with incredible art, serial numbered cards? Oh I was hooked and my LCS was now my dealer. It only took 1 to make me think about going back for more and trying new products. I wonder if that box hadn't been so obviously Wolverine and X-Men oriented if I would have been sucked in as hard and fast as I was to this new world of collecting. . . 

But its too late to worry about that now, I'm here! 

 As an afterword, while all that was going on I also was late DX with ADHD, which many of us in the hobby are, and am self dx as Autistic. The world is a little scary right now for me to push for a formal diagnosis but the extreme hyperfocus and limitless energy for something that beacons to a simpler and innocent time in my childhood - and isn't alive like my passion for saltwater fishkeeping -both hobbies compete for competing expense costs but at least you don't have to occasionally flush cards down the drain when something goes wrong with the water - so I plan to talk about a lot of different topics; how to deal with your neurodivergence and fuckups when you're TOO passionate for the cards (if anyone has solved for this let me know I'm still figuring it out), how to not get scammed and how to spot fakes, how to comp things, how to sell cards if you want to explore that bit of it, how to temper and adapt what you collect, how to run breaks or be smart participating in them (again that's work in progress) and all that jazz. 

 And if you read this far, congrats you get a cookie!