I've recently been pondering the future of my baseball card collection.

From about 1987-1991, all of my moneymaking endeavors were undertaken with the sole purpose of feeding my habit � allowing me the opportunity to peruse card shops and conventions for "cardboard gold," those elusive, coveted collectibles that doubled as an investment. I pretty much gave up the hobby when I started high school ��right around the time I realized that I would no longer be able to afford both baseball cards and girls in my life.

Even with my hobby in a dormant state, I never had to fear a repeat of the 50s-era horror story wherein someone's mother threw out shoeboxes full of baseball cards, contributing potentially thousands of dollars to the local landfill. My mother, as did my father, aided me � they're enablers � at times by driving my friends and me to shows on weekends. While on vacation in Maine one summer, Dad once took me to Augusta for a card show. Mom chaperoned Matt, Will and myself on a Saturday excursion to Atlantic City (and won about 30 bucks on just three quarters in the slots while we waited for the bus back north) for the national convention one year.

As kids, I remember we'd collect our favorite teams and players, but we'd do so with an eye on Beckett Baseball Card Monthly to see how our hobby was working as an investment. Even when I stopped collecting, I'd still buy Beckett about once a year, just to check up on my top cards ��my 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey, my 1976 Topps Dennis Eckersley, my 1983 Fleer Cal Ripken, my 1972 Topps Tom Seaver.

I'll always be proud of my Seavers, my Ryans, and those of my other favorite players. But my favorite players then ��Howard Johnson, Mark Grace, Gregg Jefferies, Andy Van Slyke ��don't mean as much to me anymore. At least the fact that I have every card of theirs printed up to about 1991 doesn't mean as much.

So my cards remain at my parents' house, carefully packed away and sorted in "official" baseball-card boxes and albums, as well as various shoeboxes. But what good do the do me there? Even if I brought them up to the apartment, what good would that do? It's not like I'm going to pull them out when we have friends over so we can look through boxes of baseball cards. Now I wonder, Should I consider selling them? From a nostalgiac standpoint, I'll always have some cards to remind me of the fun we had going to baseball card conventions, of seeing Joe DiMaggio at the national convention in Atlantic City, of playing blackjack and using baseball cards as betting chips. But I don't need my entire 1987 Topps set (in a box) or all those countless "common cards" of nameless, faceless players in yellow-and-black Pirates uniforms.

From a reference standpoint, baseball cards are obsolete. With the internet, they're no longer the necessary pieces of reference material they once were (statistics can be found anywhere). And with the internet is eBay, which will make selling them easier (maybe even more lucrative) than a garage sale or local flea market. And the gum, for the better part of the last half-century, was never anything to bother with. I think baseball cards are now nothing more than collectibles and a business (that bothers me, a little).

So I may sell them. I always did look at them as an investment; I always figured that one day I would try to get back some of the money I put into them. Even in playing, we were learning ��about buying low and selling high, about being smart and not gambling with purchases. Sure, there's some part of my childhood that I would be selling off, some nostalgiac value to many of my baseball cards. The 1988 Topps card of Atlanta Braves first baseman Gerald Perry (card No. 39) was the last card I needed to complete the set. That was the first one I completed the old-fashioned way, by buying scores of packs and accumulating dozens of doubles. I finally got it when Will slid it under the kitchen door while we were away one week.

But not every card means something, and I won't sell all of them. I'll keep the Tom Seavers and Nolan Ryans. I'll pare down my collection to one album's worth of cards I can keep on the shelf with my photo albums. I'll still be able to look through them, still be able to monitor their value. I'll hold onto the Barry Bonds and Mark McGwires, those that will be worth even more down the road when they enter the Hall of Fame. Then I'll sell them. But if I keep a select few, those will be enough to remind me of my collecting days.

I need to simplify. I keep enough things as it is. I'd prefer my memoriabilia collection to be something I can display and share rather than something that I keep only to myself because it's only of interest to me. I think I could do more with the money if it were in actual U.S. currency instead of Topps, Donruss, Fleer, Score and Upper Deck card stock.

I've been making small purchases recently on eBay with the idea that I'd like to collect one ticket stub from each decade of Notre Dame football since 1930, when the stadium opened. I'll design some kind of arrangement or layout, likely with a photo of mine, and then have it framed to put on a wall in my part of the study or something. I would find something like that more satisfying than a game program from the 1979 Sugar Bowl that I'd leave on a shelf 364 days a year and pull out only occassionally.

So why shouldn't I start earning money off of eBay as well? I have piles of things lying around my room for which I could probably get a few bucks here, a few more there. It all adds up. Two nights ago, as I was going through the dozens of large plastic cups I'd accumulated over the years (like those you get every time you buy a soda at a college or professional sporting event), I immediately tossed aside the McDonald's Team USA basketball cups ��the ones with Jordan and Johnson and those players from the 1992 or '96 Olympics. But then I thought, "Hey, if I have a set here, maybe there's some collector, or some Jordan fan, who would pay 10 bucks for the set." Even 5 bucks would be worth it, considering I got them for $3.65, including soda, fries and a Quarter Pounder. So rather than tossing them outright, I put them in the back of the closet that Casey doesn't use and figured when I could, I'd photograph them, scan them into the computer, and start my life as a Seller on eBay.

That's what got me thinking about my baseball cards.