What Teachers Are Worth
My childhood ended on the afternoon I tried to sell a Tony Fernandez rookie card. Dad had driven me to the next town over because I was hoping to complete a set of 1985 Topps baseball cards. I was six short, and in those pre-Internet days, the only way to get your hands on missing singles was to trade for them or buy them. I was going to buy mine and Dad, to his credit, had elected to not intervene. This was my ballgame.
I had a stack of cards to sell, the idea being I’d make five or six bucks unloading a pile of unwanted duplicates and then turn around and buy the ones I needed with the cash. I’d done the math. Any card collector of the era either had Beckett Baseball Card Monthly prices memorized or carried around the most recent volume. Beckett said my Tony Fernandez was worth 50 cents. So I started by offering him up.
The owner of the store, a gruff middle-aged fellow with a bushy mustache who stood opposite me behind a display case of Mantles, Koufaxes, and a Tom Brunanski I coveted, peered down at the rangy CONTINUE READING: What Teachers Are Worth - Teacher Habits