Many years ago, when malls were more of a thing and online shopping only existed as a glimmer in Jeff Bezos's eye, I remember my dad bribing me to behave while my mom shopped at adjacent department stores by buying me a cheap pack of sports cards from the mall hobby shop. I was only around eight years old at the time, but opening the pack and recognizing the athletes featured on the cards as the same guys I'd occasionally see on TV or on sports vidya rosters was absolutely magical.
I collected and sorted the cards and put them in binders and then stopped really giving a shit, so my parents likely sold them in a garage sale. A few years later, Pokemon cards happened. And again, I collected, sorted, became apathetic and rinse, repeat.
Much to the dismay of the Beanie Babies currently in my attic, those cards are actually selling for a decent amount of money online these days. Certainly the vast, vast, vast majority of them are hardly worth the cardstock they're printed on, but this thread isn't for the shitty cards (although they're certainly welcome).
I got back into cards about two years ago, NBA in particular. It felt like a bit of a waste of money, but I had money to waste, so fuck it. Then I drew a Kobe Bryant autograph redemption card.
For background, a redemption card isn't the actual card, but a scratch-off you can redeem online and have the actual card mailed to you several months later by the manufacturer, in this case, Panini. They tell you the player and other details on the scratch-off, so the only real guesswork is when you'll actually get the card, assuming the player lives long enough to sign the card.
Unfortunately Kobe didn't live long enough to keep the promises made by Panini.
In lieu of an actual Kobe autograph, Panini was kind enough to send me some ultra rare pack of exclusive cards only made available to those who redeemed Kobe autographs around the time of his death. After a period of mourning, I sold that unopened pack for fucking $1700 on ebay. I'm currently sitting on a Zion Williamson autographed rookie redemption that I hope to sell for $1200 or so, but Panini just sent these ones out this weekend and I got mine today, so the market is pretty murky right now.