General Forum

But you already could've had the 1972 OPC card to tell you that!

A couple things come to mind from when I was a kid collecting.

Marking checklists

Leaving cards outside and having them get rained on. We were playing wiffle ball and I used cards for who was batting in my lineup. We went on to do something else and they were left out.

Unfortunately I did lots of dumb things with my cards as a kid. I "autographed" some cards as if I was the player, I taped the good players sports illustrated or kids cards to my door for decoration, put rubber bands around sets spot left marks on the sides of cards, I threw out common cards and kept inserts, and the list goes on and on.

Might have fallen asleep on top of my 1989 Topps baseball set as a kid. Not in box.

I still have around 300 of those bent cards.

I'll fess up as a kid I did almost all of it. I marked the fronts and backs with a huge "K" to identify my cards from my brother's cards. For some reason a lot of the 1971 Topps baseball cards on the back I would color in the cap logos on the player photos. Also I would cut up cards to put the players caps or helmets, or the team name/logo or whatnot and add them to scrapbooks. And there was the edge trimming particularly for the Hostess type cards from food boxes to try to improve the hand cutting from earlier. and sometimes writing the new team a player was traded to. Sadly most of those defaced cards were tossed years ago. But a few have survived. Oh and markup the checklists? Yep under 10 year old me was  guilty of that.

As a kid, attaching cards with clothes pins to the front forks and rear frame of my bike to get that chopper sound from the spokes. I'd blow through four cards in no time doing that. Cringe!

I've done window experiments where you try to see how well cards of different types hold up to extreme weather and sunlight exposure. I think that experiment lasted 3 years. I do not remember all of the cards I used but there were 4 types

Base card
https://www.tcdb.com/ViewCard.cfm/sid/5751/cid/1301676/2005-06-Upper-Deck-312-Brendan-Shanahan

Refractor (don't remember)

Dufex card (it was a Pinnacle card of Alexandre Daigle but can't remember which one)

Plastic card (pretty sure it is this)
https://www.tcdb.com/ViewCard.cfm/sid/7120/cid/1113202/2006-07-Upper-Deck-Trilogy---Frozen-In-Time-FT3-Brendan-Shanahan?PageIndex=1

I still have 3 of them. I don't remember what Refractor it was. The Dufex card rolled up into a ball. The Frozen in Time card didn't really change much except that the paper backing can't be removed anymore.

Long after I escaped many of the childhood mishaps with cards, as a younger adult collector I used the dreaded screw down card holders on some my most precious cards. A 1955 Spahn survived pretty well but a Yount rookie card didn't do as well - resulting in disappointment when I submitted it for grading.....

That hasn't happened to me yet but it's a fear I have every time I get a package that's taped up a little too much.  While I like that people make sure that the mail can't be tampered with, it also makes it impossible to open sometimes without damaging the card(s) inside.