Packrat

I keep a small stash of art supplies around the house, just in case the feeling strikes me to throw together a little project. I'm far from an artist, but I love the feeling of when an idea strikes and I can drop what I'm doing and just make something.

This afternoon, I had to drop everything to construct a project that suddenly occurred to me. 30 minutes later, I had:

PACKRAT


I got into baseball card collecting in 1986 and discovered girls in 1991. During the time between those bookend dates, I purchased thousands and thousands of baseball cards. As my collecting approached obsession, I constructed a rationalization to convince my parents that spending all this money on pieces of paperboard was worthwhile: In the distant future, I was going to sell these cards to pay for college.

With college in my rearview mirror, I decided a couple years ago to pick up the cards from my parents' home in Nebraska. "Maybe," I thought, "I'll sell them on eBay."

Well, I should have realized that there are a lot of grown-up little boys who have flooded the almost-nonexistent market for late 1980's baseball cards; thus, my investment has not appreciated at all. In fact, a quick tour of eBay showed that the cards I spent so much $$$ on as a kid were worth less than when I bought them. For example, I remember very clearly buying Don Mattingly's 1984 rookie card for $24 back in 1987. Sadly, this same card is available today via eBay for roughly the same price.

Well, part of my collecting included leaving a handful of packs of baseball cards unopened. In 1987, I envisioned selling them at a king's ransom to some future speculator. Given the lack of a market, I've decided to turn them into art.

PACKRAT Close-up


I glued 14 packs to some black foam core, then used 9/16" staples to further affix the Score packs to the backing. I wanted to have a little fun with the capitalist hopes of a younger me -- these packs won't ever be sold, but I'll put them to an artful use.

There are so many items that I keep around me that I don't need -- that I'll never need. I keep books I'll never read, clothes I'll never wear again, other gear that serves no purpose other than to provide evidence of my bourgeois existence. These packs of baseball cards no longer need to worry about being shuffled from one box to another and eventually forgotten. They are now art, and in being art [even bad Andy art ;)] they are made great.