This last Sunday I returned to a hobby I have neglected the last few years. I collect sports cards of Football and Basketball players from the University of Oregon Ducks who have gone off to the the NFL, NBA and the Canadian Football League.I have thousands of cards in 15 2" three ring binders organized in chronological order from when they played at the University of Oregon. My first card is from the 1930's of "Iron Mike" Mikulak who played football at Oregon from 1931 to 1933. He was in one of the first football sports card sets ever made. To name a few I have cards of Norm Van Brocklin, George Shaw, Jack Morris, Dick James,Mel Renfro Bobby Moore, Dan Fouts, Gary Zimmerman, Chris Miller, Bill Musgrave, and Joey Harrington. My favorites are a complete set of Norm Van Brocklin cards from when he played for the LA Rams and the Philadelphia Eagles in the 1950's. I probably have at least one card for 120 different players. In any case, since most of the Sports Card Stores have closed down in Southern Oregon I had not collected many cards since 2002. I had bought a few on the Internet but part of the fun in collecting was the hunt and the Internet took all of the fun out of it. There are two ways to collect card. Buy unopened packs or buy cards from packs other people have opened. The first would be very expensive if you were only collecting Oregon players like I do. You could easy spend $100.00 looking for one card of an Oregon player. Therefore, I look for cards that have already come from open packs. Most card stores have large boxes with thousands of cards put in their randomly. I love to go through those boxes looking for the Oregon players. It's like looking for a needle in a hay stack.
Well, a few weeks ago a new sports card store opened in Medford. Since football is over I spend 3+ hours there on Sunday and looked through 12 or so boxes and found about 50 cards of Oregon players for a mere $5.00. These were newer cards which helped to bring my collection up to date. Who said the football season is over. Go Ducks!
