Trading cards go to college
The summer of ’95 – Batman Forever dominated at the box office, Waterfalls was the song you just could not escape from, and baseball cards were at a now-unimaginable peak with six (six!) licensed manufacturers. Cards had grown up a lot since the junk wax boom that started in the ’80s. With cereal box printing technology long abandoned (since 1991, at least), new premium card formats were popping up everywhere. Full color, full gloss, foil stamping, holograms, die-cuts, and even refractors were all over the market. On top of that, trading cards had grown beyond just collecting and were moving into the realm of gaming. The hobby had matured.
As for me, I had limited time and limited funds. Like the previous summer, Scout activities ate up most of my free time. Only, instead of scrambling up mountains, I was scrambling to finish the requirements for Eagle. I still had time before I aged out, but I had a hard stop on August 18. I was heading off to college the next day. With that, my card collecting would be winding down, eventually coming to a halt with a few packs of UD3 in 1997. But little did I know that cards would be waiting for me at college orientation.
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