Being a sports fan, that is to say, a sports fanatic, has long meant more than watching a game and supporting the hometown team on game day.
For fans, the games are a part of life, a social tradition that takes root, often in childhood, and never lets up. The tradition can grow wild and expensive and elaborate or it can be held in check by real-world responsibilities but a sports fanatic holds on to it, maintains it, and loves it, each in his or her own way.
Merchandise shows off favorite teams and players. Win flags transmit Cubs victories. And then there’s the ballpark or the stadium visits, the near spiritual ritual of the game day dress, especially on a winning streak. The jersey can’t be washed — it’s what keeps the team winning.
For the less spiritual and the more modern, there are the games outside the games. Fantasy leagues let players create whole scenarios and maybe win some money and sports betting lets fans make plays on every which way the ball moves from the moment the game begins until it’s over.
For generations — usually older these days — that love of a team, of a player, and the culture outside the game itself first took hold at a corner store purchase of a rectangular cellophane pack and a stick of dry, pink chewing gum. The cards inside could be traded to friends who needed them or kept, maybe sold later for some real money if the rookie did much, or assembled as, player by player, a full roster filled out inside a plastic binder.
These sorts of fans aren’t so common anymore — younger kids don’t tend to go for baseball card packs — but for their fathers and grandfathers, the trade, the deal, and the buy can still make for a Sunday outing. So, some 300 visitors dropped by the Sportscard Showcase at the Willowbrook-Burr Ridge Sports Performance Center.
The showcase was the brainchild of Dave Marvin, a teacher from Peru, Illinois, who got into trading cards as a boy decades ago. He said there weren’t too many trading card shows in Peru back then, but over the years even the shows in the western suburbs he’d enjoyed visiting started to dry up.
“I understand Willowbrook had a show at the same place and it was a pretty decent show but for whatever reason it fell apart I don’t know why,” he said.
In part, kids started collecting other cards — game cards, Pokemon cards, which had a table Sunday — and other kids started playing games online instead of collecting memorabilia in their free time.
And partly collecting has gotten expensive. Kids simply can’t afford to collect a whole set of cards when they’re competing with essentially investors. Indeed, some of the cards Sunday sold for hundreds of dollars and one, an autographed Albert Pujols card, was up for sale for $8,500. That card was up for sale by Gary Miller, who specializes in rookies and autographs.
These numbers are a far cry from the collectors’ shows in the 1970s and 1980s when even small towns could host a fair number of shows and expect to draw buying crowds.
“I remember three or four shows in towns of 20,000 people, and you just don’t see that anymore,” Marvin said. “But there are a lot of shows and it’s getting up there again, and it’s getting to the point where it’s hard to find a weekend where you’re not competing with another show.”
Six years ago, he figured he’d start promoting his own shows—assemble sellers and bring in buyers and if he were organizing the shows, he could do that anywhere in the state, though he started at home with some small mall shows.
“I had everyone calling me because I was the only one in the area,” Marvin said.
In the years since, he’s gotten the hang of promotions and Sunday’s show featured cards from just about every era and every sport plus a chance to meet Dickey Simpkins, a former Bulls player and a three-time NBA champion.
Still though, despite the high-ticket prices on some cards and the celebrity cache of the events, the shows draw the fans — the folks who aren’t investors per se but simply in love with the game or a player or a year.
One of those fans was Chris Thill, who drove over from the Orland Park area. Thill said he’s been collecting since 1977, when he was a boy and he still loves the hobby and Sunday morning, he was having a good time.
“So far it’s good,” he said, looking over some vintage football and baseball cards for his collection. Thill has kids, though he didn’t bring them. They never did get into collecting.
“My boys collected for about a year,” he said. “But they passed on it. You kind of would hope they’d carry on the dream, but they lost interest.”
But, with a crowd estimated at some 300 people, a packed parking lot and more dads coming in every few minutes, Marvin said he counted Sunday a win. The crowd was there, and the vendors were happy.
“I do this every single weekend,” said Tony Gordon, one of the vendors. Gordon praised the Willowbrook/Burr Ridge event, both as a fan of card collecting — which he’s been doing since he was a kid — and as a seller.
“I love it,” he said. “It’s a blast.”
Jesse Wright is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
