{"id":6031,"date":"2019-01-28T09:00:42","date_gmt":"2019-01-28T09:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mojobro.com\/bigleaguecards\/2019\/01\/28\/inside-the-pack-collector-spotlight-on-aarron-minson\/"},"modified":"2019-01-28T09:00:42","modified_gmt":"2019-01-28T09:00:42","slug":"inside-the-pack-collector-spotlight-on-aarron-minson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mojobro.com\/bigleaguecards\/inside-the-pack-collector-spotlight-on-aarron-minson\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside the Pack: Collector Spotlight on Aarron Minson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most collectors spend time opening packs. For collector Aarron Minson, his endeavor is finding packs that are still sealed. Minson collects any sealed pack with his favorite player, Ryne Sandberg, visible on either the front or the back. Then he gets the packs graded by PSA to add to his collection.<\/p>\n

I first met Aarron a little over a year ago in a Facebook group where he was looking to add to his unique and impressive group of packs. This was around when, as he put it, he \u201cabandoned all other collection endeavors to focus on Sandberg packs.\u201d I\u2019d heard of people collecting packs featuring their favorite player, but never on the scale Aarron does, and never all PSA-graded. Last year, I was even lucky enough to add one pack to his collection \u2014 a shocker to me, as he already has most packs I run across.<\/p>\n

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The 1983 Sandberg rookie card started Minson’s collection. This grocery cello pack is one of his favorites.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Like most collections, Minson\u2019s started out small, and grew from there. \u201cI limited myself to rookie year (1983) items at first, but someone approached me with a PSA 9, 1984 Fleer cello with Sandberg on top that I couldn’t resist,\u201d he explained to me. \u201cThat really opened the floodgates for me and led to a more inclusive approach to the collection. Now all unopened packs featuring Ryne Sandberg are fair game.\u201d<\/p>\n

You might think that a player who appeared in just 15 seasons may not have that many unique items…but you\u2019d be wrong. Minson says he has \u201c90 unique and unopened cello, wax, rack, and oddball packs featuring Ryne Sandberg\u201d in his collection.<\/p>\n

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This PSA 10 Cracker Jack pack is another of Minson’s favorites.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With so many items in his collection, Minson admits that it\u2019s tough to pick a single favorite item. There are a few that stand out to him, though. \u201cMy 1983 Topps grocery cello (PSA 9) is up there. It’s a rarer item for the era, and always reminds me of the card that started it all for me in this hobby: a Ryne Sandberg Topps rookie my dad bought for my 9th birthday.\u201d In keeping with the out-of-the-ordinary theme, Minson added, \u201cI’ve also become very fond of the 1991 Topps Cracker Jack prize pack that I have. To me, unopened star packs in general tell a story. This one was packaged in a box of caramelized popcorn, and someone resisted the urge to open it for almost 30 years, even with the obvious star showing. It wound up grading a PSA 10, which is a pretty remarkable conclusion of the story to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the large number of issues he owns, some packs continue to elude Minson. \u201cIn particular, a 1985 Fleer cello with Sandberg on top, as well as one with the Sandberg\/Mike Schmidt card on top.\u201d And though he hasn\u2019t run across anyone with a collection as thorough as his, Minson knows collectors who operate in the same general niche space. Despite the fact that they may often need the same packs to complete their collections, Minson says there isn\u2019t a level of competition between them, adding that \u201cwe look out for each others’ interests and revel in each others’ success.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sentimental value clearly wins out over the monetary value in this collection, but even still, Minson\u2019s goal is completion, and therefore, he has no one pack more sentimental than the others. As he told me: \u201cI can’t pick just one!\u201d<\/p>\n

Minson\u2019s quest not only positions him as a Sandberg collector; he also sees his collection as one that memorializes the height of the card-collecting market. \u201cI’m surprised to find that this collection has become as much about assembling and preserving a thorough representation of junk era products as it is a player collection,\u201d he explained. \u201cViewing myself as both a curator of junk wax and a Sandberg pack collector has really invigorated me to press on!\u201d For Minson, one man\u2019s junk-era wax is certainly his treasure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most collectors spend time opening packs. For collector Aarron Minson, his endeavor is finding packs that are still sealed. Minson collects any sealed pack with his favorite player, Ryne Sandberg, visible on either the front or the back. Then he gets the packs graded by PSA to add to his collection. I first met Aarron […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6032,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"amp_validity":null,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mojobro.com\/bigleaguecards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6031"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mojobro.com\/bigleaguecards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mojobro.com\/bigleaguecards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mojobro.com\/bigleaguecards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mojobro.com\/bigleaguecards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mojobro.com\/bigleaguecards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mojobro.com\/bigleaguecards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mojobro.com\/bigleaguecards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mojobro.com\/bigleaguecards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mojobro.com\/bigleaguecards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}