Yep, it’s been a while. I took some time off creative writing, while focusing on photography, but I'm back with a new article for the 90s kids out there, and feeling good about it. Banner image by Steve Duck, and published over at Homecourt in full.

Before you could serve Pau Gasol $200 for a shout-out, ‘90s kids stockpiled pictures of basketball players made from cardboard, plastic and ink. Tear open a dazzling foil packet, inhale the fresh scent of chemical print, and you’d possess juvenile hard currency. You could score a “rare” holographic Michael Jordan card. You might also get jumped for being too showy with the loot. Pre-internet, b-ball collectibles were the youth stock market, and teen investors were all in.

Sports cards were devised way back in the 1900s. Cigarettes came with collectible inserts to forge brand loyalty (as if nicotine wasn’t enough). Cards often had facts about the player on the back, which perhaps birthed the modern day stat-head. In an era when people couldn't afford books and the internet sounded like an abstract fishing device, trading cards were dubbed “The Working Man's Encyclopedia.”