Cardboard Keepers! Teddy Ballgame

Time for the next installment of "Cardboard Keepers", a thought experiment where I theoretically whittle my entire collection down to just 2,000 cards; 1,000 baseball keepers and 1,000 other keepers.

Tonight I've got just a single card to add to the baseball collection.  It was one of the first really big vintage baseball cards I landed after returning to collecting as an adult, and also an early example in practice of the philosophy I'm continuing to use in my collecting these days.  Behold! 

Pretty sweet, huh?  Aside from being my first vintage Topps Ted Williams card proper, I appreciate this card due to the sheer amount of work that went into acquiring it.  You see, this card was largely funded by the proceeds from the first and only "card draft" I've ever held in the history of this blog.

Back in 2012, I organized a draft of cards I was ready to part with.  I ended up with 7 participants, at $22 bucks a head, with each participant getting 22 cards in the end.  I think the project was a success, and I got positive feedback from most if not all of the participants.  It was a good deal of work, but in the end I mailed out around 150 cards that weren't a strict fit for my collection at the time, and made around $150, which funded the majority of this beautiful Ted Williams card.

Even as far back as 2012, I was in the "condense and collect fewer but more significant cards" mindset.  Well, some of the time anyway...

Nice, clean back on this copy.

I haven't inducted any Red Sox cards into the Cardboard Keepers collection since the very first post, so I'm pleased to get some more Boston representation in the project.  As far as Red Sox cards, it doesn't get much better than vintage Ted!

That's 15 cards down in the baseball Cardboard Keepers collection altogether now, 985 to go.  You can see the virtual album here if you're interested.

I'll be back with more keepers soon, in the meantime thanks for stopping by!