The lost art of collecting baseball (sports) cards

I'm sure no matter how old you were when we were young boys (or girls) we all collected baseball cards to some degree, whether you used them in your bike wheels or taped them to your bedroom door or wall (both no-nos for me) so I went to eBay yesterday to buy a Ronald Acuña Jr. Upper Deck rookie card (I'm much too old to do the old Easter egg hunt in buying up loads of boxes in finding the card, I just want to buy it) and much to my surprise (to borrow words from Jeff Francoeur's new Georgia Natural Gas commercial) I find zero, zip, zilch there must be some mistake. Well I did some research and if you remember your history, Fleer sued Topps and the MLBPA in the 70's to break their monopoly. Starting 1981, Fleer and Donruss competed with Topps in the market. In 1988 and 1989, Score and Upper Deck entered the fray. In a number of ways, it was a Golden Age of baseball cards. But in others, it was also the Dark Ages. Well Upper Deck bought high-end basketball card maker Skybox in 1995. However, Marvel entered bankruptcy in 1996 and Fleer/Skybox was sold off in 1999. They also limped along for a few years before getting bought up by Upper Deck in 2005. By 2009, there were only two major players: Topps and Upper Deck. In 2009, Topps signed an exclusive contract, trying to beat back competition from Upper Deck. In exchange for a undisclosed and (likely) substantial fee, MLB only licensed Topps to make baseball cards. Upper Deck still made baseball cards in 2010 because they had an MLBPA agreement. However, without an MLB agreement, it was more akin to those video games where you could use player likenesses but they played for teams like Chicago and Seattle rather than the Cubs and Mariners. Still, MLB sued them and, a month later, Upper Deck settled and exited the baseball card business. Topps was now the sole producer of baseball cards. So in other words it broke my heart that there will never be a Ronald Acuña Jr. Upper Deck rookie card. Now the one company covers the collecting world for each major sport: Topps for MLB, Upper Deck for NHL, and Panini for NBA and NFL. I was almost obsessed with collecting cards from age 8-16 and have amassed anywhere between 100,000-150,000 of mostly never-has-been player sports cards in my lifetime, I'm not an expert by any means but as a kid in the late 80's into the mid 90's I always thought of Topps (who in their right mind would put a stick of chewing gum in a pack of sports cards?) as like bobo sneakers and the bottom of the barrel and Upper Deck, etc. was the business! I had one last dance back in 2003 when I got my paycheck and went all willy-nilly and bought a case (yes a whole case not just a box) of Upper Deck basketball cards in the hopes get LeBron James and Dwyane Wade rookie cards, I wound up getting multiple LeBron rookie cards but no Wade Upper Deck rookie card but in a twist of fate I had three packs of another brand (I don't remember the brand and my cards are stored away now) unopened for several weeks and I opened and the first pack and BAM there was a Wade rookie card. I looked online and I'd be lucky to get $20 bucks for my prized and iconic Upper Deck #1 Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card because cards were so massed produced back then, I was bought the 1989 Upper Deck whole box set by my late Grandmother just to get that Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card and that matching Ronald Acuña Jr. Upper Deck rookie card was going to look so good right beside it in my wooden card holder mounted on the wall that has my favorite or most expensive cards in it. Perhaps even sadder is that kids being raised today are more concerned with smartphones and iPads and computers and will miss out on a dying breed that was my life after school (as you can tell by the total number of cards I have that I had to have several packs anytime we went to the store) up until AOL dial-up internet and that dreaded sound when you connected online that came along with it so I'm going to go back to eBay and pay $30 for that Ronald Acuña Jr. Topps rookie card and probably buy a Zion Williamson (local boy) rookie card next year or whenever his rookie card comes out and then sadly that may be it for me as I close a chapter of my life for good that even though it was a borderline obsession gave me so much happiness!

I still have some from the 70's.