Your guide to Worthlessness
I hope you have finished wiping away your tears after having read my reasons for why the hell your cards are Worthless. If not, it’s kind of a prerequisite, so go do that first. This isn’t some 300 level Medieval English Literature course though. It won’t leave you with soul-crushing debt and no prospect of work.
How worthless is Worthless?
We’ll call Worthless less than 20 bucks. I know that if you’re reading this from Turkmenistan that 20 bucks doesn’t feel very worthless. That’s like the median weekly income. That totally sucks for you and I hope things get better. But, for most of the audience reading this, $20 barely buys a shitty pizza.
Worthless examples
Ok, here it goes. Feel free to cover your eyes, it can be traumatic. These are some fine examples of the types of cards that can crush your dreams.
2016 Panini National Treasures Collegiate Basketball Henry Ellenson Rookie Card Jersey Auto Serial Numbered /99
Yikes, this one is like a diaper full of Worthlessness. Where to begin?
It’s a rookie card with an on-card autograph, a piece of jersey, and it’s serial numbered. Seems like a gold mine, no?
Ok, first, let’s go with apathy. No one cares about Henry Ellenson. He sucks as a professional basketball player. Hell, he’s barely getting 23 minutes a night in Liga Endesa. At the age of 26 years old, and having done jack-shit in the NBA, he’s too old for anyone to care about.
Next, this is a card featuring him in a college uniform. Basketball card collectors with money to burn don’t want to spend their money on cards of players in college uniforms. It’s some fetish for pictures of NBA laundry. Anyway, it’s true as of now, so it pushes this one further into Worthless territory.
Finally, this card features some first class Panini jersey bullshit. Look at the tiny text on the back at the bottom bottom. It says the material is player worn, not game worn. This isn’t even the worst of these types of cards though. Some pieces of material have absolutely nothing to do with the player at all. Read more about this type of shady shit here.
1989 Fleer Ken Griffey Jr Rookie Card
Sweet! A Ken Griffey Jr rookie card. Hall of Famer. 600 HR club member. F’ing highlight reel every night on Sports Center. Never caught with roids. What a find!
Nope. Overproduction combined with crappy condition. Worthless.
Fleer, along with every other sports card manufacturer in 1989, printed an absolute f*ck ton of cards and gullible people bought them up as if the cards were going to fund their retirement. The other screw-you factor is the fact the card image is not centered well enough to gloat about. If you were looking to sell this card right now the proceeds wouldn’t even cover the cost of a jar of Grey Poupon.
2016 TopFlight Prospects Lamar Jackson Serial Numbered /15
This is a beautifully designed card. It’s shiny and looks even better in-hand than in than the picture. It features only the second unanimous NFL MVP in history and there is even the all important rookie card badge . Very limited print run of 15 cards. Sweet AF, right?
Well, it’s Worthless. It is a card that was manufactured by someone who holds no licenses to sell cards featuring the likeness of Lamar Jackson or feature the logo of the University of Louisville. The ollecting community doesn’t give a shit about unlicensed cards. Collectors only pay bucks for cards produced by companies that pay their toll to the billionaires. This card is a bit like Theranos. The card looks the part of something valuable and we really want it to be. In reality though it’s not. It’s considered a scam because it defrauded rich people of a little bit of their money.
1968 Topps Hank Aaron
A f’ing legend right here on a card from 1968, well before technicolor Craig Sager chased him around the field like some creepy ass stalker. This thing should be worth some decent money. But, some numbnuts decided to draw a poorly scrawled out letter M on the front. Add in a big ass crease running from top to bottom plus the shitty condition of the corners and it puts this card living in the land of Worthless.
2016-17 Panini Prestige Emerald Bonus Shots JaVale McGee Serial Numbered /5
There are only 5 of these in the world. But the Worthlessness is pretty self-explanatory. I’ll just leave you with this.
2021 Panini Prizm WNBA Hyper Sue Bird
I didn’t want to exclude 50% of the population from feeling Worthless so I present this Sue Bird card. Pack fresh card of a future Hall of Famer. It’s a Prizm parallel too. But, mother f*cker, look at those dark lines on the card, one vertical and the other horizontal. Shitty quality control by Panini paired with apathy from the general public about anything WNBA and this card too is Worthless.
2009 Topps Chrome Refractor Terrence Williams Rookie Card Serial Numbered /999 PSA 9 Mint
“F yeah! A PSA graded card. This must be some real valuable shit here. Everything in a PSA case is f’ing gold.”
T-Will, best known as the purported leader of an alleged health insurance fraud scheme, resides in this slabbed case. If the player weren’t so very irrelevant to collectors, there is a lot here the could have made this card not Worthless. Rookie card, a popular set known from Steph Curry’s rookie year, a precious serial numbered refractor, and supposedly semi-desirable condition based on the opinion of a purported expert in the field.
Apathy trumps all in this case though. No one wants T-Will cards, not cause he may be doin’ time, but cause scoring just over 1000 career points in the NBA makes you not at all noteworthy. So, here it is a PSA card that is Worthless.