My first addiction was gambling. I was around 12 years old.
I was in 6th grade when I discovered baseball and baseball cards. It was the summer of 1986 and the New York Mets had 2 players, Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry, who for some reason really stood out to me (oddly enough, the trajectories of Gooden, Strawberry, and my lives would take us down the same road) so I was a Mets fan (I was losing my mind when that ground ball slid under Bill Buckner’s glove). I am not sure how I discovered the card shop. It was hidden away on a small strip mall I passed on my way home from school. The first time I walked in, the convergence of watching and collecting sports, especially baseball, led to an obsession and an eventual addiction.
Where does addiction factor into this? Did I start gambling on sports through a bookie at Jefferson Middle school? No. I started gambling on baseball cards. Huh? Roll with me here.
In 1986, there were 3 major companies putting out baseball cards: Toops, Fleer and Donruss. A pack of cards cost around 30-50 cents. Most of the cards pulled from the packs were worthless no-name players with little to no value. But, a 1986 Donruss Gooden or Strawberry sold for around $3. If you were lucky enough to hit a Vince Coleman rookie, you were looking at about $5 (the Jose Canseco rookie did not start jumping off until midway through the season). For 30 cents I was gambling on hitting one my favorite players, or the Coleman rookie, or Clemens or Mattingly.
I would not spend my lunch money ($1 for a hot lunch in those days) and save it for my daily after school stop at the card shop. I would buy 3 packs and hope to either hit a star or at least pull enough lesser players valuable enough trade in for another pack. Generally, as with most “gambling,” the winnings do not compensate for the losses. The losses were created by me obsessively trading my cards back to the house for diminishing returns while chasing a big win. The gambling scenario played out as follows:
1. Buy 3 packs for around a dollar.
2. Open packs.
3. Trade in the contents of the 3 packs for 1 unopened pack.
4. Walk away with next to nothing and down a buck.
Now, the distinction between a card collector and a card gambler (now referred to as an “investor” or “speculator”) is that a collector would buy 3 packs and walk away with cards. They would “collect” instead of trade in for more (or, technically less) cards. Me? I did not collect. I gambled. I often threw away the few cards I could not talk the shop into taking back as trade-ins. Even worse, on the rare occasion I would hit a star card with value, I would simply trade it in for MORE packs and run myself right back to step 4.
If I was unwilling to walk away with either money or cards - what was the point? What was I chasing in those packs? Some card that did not exist? No. I was chasing the anxious high I got opening the packs and slowly thumbing through cards hoping to pull something BIG. A 30-cent ante for a possible 3 dollar payoff. That is a +1000 line.
I stole to support this “gambling” addiction and the card shop which fed my addiction was the first place I ever planned to rob.
Stay Tuned!