I’ve been writing about pop culture and collecting for 20 years as of this past Spring and though I’ve skirted around the concept of obsession as a driver of collecting, I’ve never focused specifically on it. Over the past few years, I’ve managed to curb the majority of my urges to splurge on collections. Mainly as a facet of trying to improve my headspace, but also to save some money on purchases that aren’t necessary when you’re also raising a couple of kids. When I have been picking things up, I’ve been trying really hard to make the acquisitions utilitarian. So instead of buying more vintage toys, I’ve been picking up old Trapper Keepers and Mead binders to house my large collection of trading cards and stickers.
After a spree of picking up vintage binders on the cheap for a couple of years, I finally decided to sit down and start filling them up with all of the cards I had squirreled away in boxes in the office closet. I bought a couple large packs of 9-up card pages and started filling Rad Dog binders with sets of Dinosaurs Attacks, Fright Flicks and Stranger Things cards. As I was making my way through off of these trading cards it occurred to me that I only had a small, very incomplete collection of one of my absolute favorite Topps sets, the 1989 Batman cards. I’d been meaning to pick up a full set of the cards for decades, but it always fell down the want list, bumped off by Monster Squad junk, modern Transformers, or movie novelizations.
Now that I was finally organizing my trading cards I started to feel the pull, a little tug at the center of my brain that kept me circling back to the fact that I didn’t own a full set of these cards. This was a couple of years ago, around the start of 2024, and I’d managed to get my spending down on useless stuff to almost $10 to $20 every couple of months. I figured I deserved to treat myself to something small, and set aside a few bucks to try and pick up a mint set of the cards on eBay. What happened over the next year and a half is the perfect encapsulation of the obsession of collecting. I fell down into a deep Batman trading card rabbit hole that had a ton of twists and turns, and I noticed that my experience clearly illustrates what the mind of a collector is capable of if left unchecked. I thought it might be fun, or even educational, to share this experience as a sort of cautionary tale.
It all started innocently enough. I took a hard look at the partial set that I did have, something like 60 of the 132 cards, and 5 or 6 of the 22 sticker cards. I also had one of the two wax wrappers the set came wrapped in (with the Batman design for those keeping track.) So right off the…uh…bat (har har), I had a couple of options in order to complete the set. I could seek out the specific cards and stickers I was missing (most are available on eBay as singles), as well as the other wax wrapper (I just needed the Joker), or I could just try and find a complete base set of the cards and chuck my partial set in the trash as these cards are plentiful and kind of worthless. The latter just so happened to be way more affordable than the former, so I scouted the auctions for a base set that also had the missing wax wrapper I needed. It didn’t take long and before I knew it a pack-fresh set was flying across the country via the USPS to fill this long-desired hole in my collection.
For most normal folks, this would be the end of the 1989 Topps Batman chapter of their life. Sure, they’d free the set of the hard-plastic card case and place then in the 9-up sleeve pages; maybe spend a few hours pouring over the cards, reading the backs and picking out favorites. But the collection would be considered complete. Well, I’m kind of weird, so here’s where we really get into the weeds of a truly obsessive collector’s mind. Before I even received the package of cards I’d ordered, I was back on eBay digging through the virtual antique mall looking for another version of the card set. You see, in looking for the initial set, I stumbled on some sealed factory sets that piqued my interest. But since I knew that I wanted to have the set loose and in pages, I pushed past all of those auctions initially. But there was a small thing that was bugging me. On one of the sealed factory boxes I’d looked at, I noticed that the contents were listed at 143 cards (and 22 stickers.) Was this a mistake? I was pretty sure there were 132 cards in the set, so what were these extra 11 cards?
The thought kept eating at me, what were those extra cards. Did I need them? No. I didn’t even realize that there were extra cards included in the factory set for the past 35 years. Did I still want them though? Hell yes I did. So, I started digging to try and see if I could just pick up that 11-card subset. The problem became that since I didn’t know what they looked like and no combination of keyword search phrases seemed to bring anything up besides the full sealed factory sets, I was kind of on the hook to buy a full set. So, the search turned into trying to find the cheapest possible version of the factory set in order to score those eleven cards. I eventually settled on a cheap, opened factory box that looked like it had been used to prop up someone’s bed at some point. The stack of cards looked like they were in decent shape though. I was slightly pissed that I sprang for the base set first as I was now going to have two sets, but I just chalked it up to the cost of obsession. All told, I was only about $25 all in, including shipping.
So now the collection was complete.
Well, I thought it was. After receiving both sets of Batman cards I made a pretty interesting discovery (read, not very interesting at all, but to me it was riveting), that not only did the factory set have 11 extra cards (lettered A-K as opposed to continuing the numbering scheme), but the card stock used to print the cards was super bright and a clear upgrade over the more traditional off-white cardboard stock of the trading cards that originally came from wax packs. So, even though I had two sets, they both felt like they had a home in the collection as there was that slight, yet integral difference. There was also the matter of the other empty wax wrapper I acquired as well. Again, in my haste, the wrapper that I snagged with my first set wasn’t actually Topps branded. Instead, it was O-Pee-Chee, the Canadian trading card company that licensed all of the Topps products for release in our sister country to the north. So some sick part of my brain knew that the set wasn’t officially complete. Not until I acquired an official Topps version of the Joker wax wrapper.
Also, as I studied that O-Pee-Chee wrapper I received, I noticed something strange. Instead of the pack proclaiming to contain 9 cards, 1 sticker and 1 stick of bubble gum, the pack stated it had “Cards * Bubble Gum * Puzzle Cards”. No stickers. Another mystery presented itself to solve, and after doing some research I couldn’t conclusively say whether or not the puzzle cards were just an odd way of describing the 22-card sticker set. But what I did find was that the wording on the first card of the set, an introductory image of Batman standing next to the Batmobile surrounded by text that read “An O-Pee-Chee Picture Card Series – 154 Cards”. 154 cards. The keyword here being cards. The Topps set begins with the same card, though the wording is a bit different at the bottom where it states that there are “132 Cards, 22 Stickers.” So, the Canadian set had now entered the picture in my weird collecting-centric brain. Now I had to have a copy of that first card and the entire 22 card variation of the stickers that were just puzzle-back versions with no sticker, yet having the exact same imagery. And now I also needed the other O-Pee-Chee wax wrapper (the Batman version) as well as a Joker version of the Topps wrapper. It was imperative and a compulsion that too root in my mind.
As I started to slide down this obsessive collecting sinkhole, I was completely aware that what I was doing was absurd. There’s absolutely no good reason to HAVE to own so many different variations of these cards. Hell, as soon as I got the one set of cards into pages that would probably be the last time that I looked at them for another 10 years. But the pull, the mental loop of unconsciously going back to the thought of not having some aspect of the set was so hard to break. What was worse, was that these cards are relatively cheap. Like you can score a complete set of cards, be it O-Pee-Chee, Topps, or a dinged-up Topps Factory box for $10 or less. Wrappers will probably only set you back a dollar or two. So, I wasn’t even hip deep in trading card debt. It was just the need. The want. And the excitement of uncovering all of these little variations. It’s almost intoxicating to a collector, to find the niche sub-collections within the collection. Something special that sets it apart.
Much like the decision to snag a factory set of the cards for that 11-card subset, I was now all but set on picking up a full O-Pee-Chee set as it was the cheapest way of getting the 23 cards I just had to have. But this opened yet another door, branching the collection into a brand-new path. International versions of the set. Since I was buying the Canadian version, what about the United Kingdom. This was a branch that I was actually well aware of prior to falling into this Batman-shaped collecting hole. As an avid fan of the Garbage Pail Kids, and not having a set of the 1st series for most of my life, I knew that the most affordable way to get a set of that first series was the UK versions which was the same set, just 25% smaller. Like, the literal size of the cards is smaller. This was a common thing with UK versions of Topps sets, and I’d already seen some of the tinier UK Batman cards at conventions in the past. Since, I opened the door to Canada, did it not stand to reason that I also needed this cute-as-hell, tiny UK set? Of course I did. But this was easier said than done. For the first time in this collecting madness, I hit a frugal-shopping wall that only money could scale. A lot of money I’d find (considering we’re talking trading cards that I already owned in triplicate.)
The UK Topps Batman cards are definitely on the rarer side of the collection as they weren’t produced in the same numbers as their American and Canadian counterparts, and it didn’t help that shipping from the UK has gotten increasingly more expensive over the last decade. I couldn’t find any complete, opened base sets, only a handful of lots containing 20-30 cards, a few single, sealed cello packs of cards, and one (literally only one) sealed box of packs that was in the $200 range. That is way more than I ever wanted to sink into this insanity. So, this became the first saved-search of my Batman card collecting phase. Things I needed, a complete UK set (132 cards and 22 tiny stickers), plus two cello wrappers (one Batman, one Joker.)
Size difference between the US and UK cards
But then a new complication reared its head. Whereas the UK single pack cards were all of the tiny variety, there were also Factory sealed sets that were different than their US counterparts. The UK Factory set consisted of four separate mini sets that were sold on blistered card-backs, sort of like action figures. These mini sets, when combined, formed the full 132 card base set of the Batman cards. But the rub is that these factory sets are full-sized trading cards like the US and Canadian cards. This made the search for UK cards way more complicated than it needed to be as lots of single cards sold in the UK could be of either size and it’s next to impossible to distinguish them when you’re pouring over the pictures in auction listings online. Sometimes sellers would point out the size difference in the descriptions, but that was rare. So, if I gave into the obsession, my want list for the UK would double and I’d probably have to end up making some blind purchases in the hope that I could gather a set of the correct size.
This specific collection obsession had truly entered the ridiculous phase.
But the madness doesn’t end here. Nope. Opening up the collection to international sets had me coming back around to the US sets. Now that I was exhaustively collecting these cards, shouldn’t I also add sealed packs to the collection? Like one each of the Batman and Joker designs? What about a full box of the US wax packs? Or the advertising poster that came tucked into most sealed boxes? In investigating all of these options, I also uncovered that there were two types of card packs sold in the US. The traditional 9-card + 1-sticker wax packs, but also 19-card + 1-sticker cello jumbo packs. So, I’d also need to snag one of each of the designs in those variations as well.
Cello packs from the Netherlands
Do you see how quickly picking up one thing blooms into 30? And at some point, the inertia one builds in the process is hard to stop without ramping down. If you have 30, why not go full completest and get everything. As I was contemplating finishing out every permutation of the US Batman card collection, I started digging to see if there were other sets outside of the UK and Canada. Turns out there were at least two. One set in the Netherlands that was very similar to the UK set, but different enough that it felt like something worth seeking out, and another standard-sized set in Australia. The set from the Netherlands was also tiny and sold in cello packs, but instead of the card-backs featuring the story of the movie, they just printed more card-fronts on the backs. So, the set is half the size of the UK set (in card-count), but it’s also at least five times rarer than the UK cards. The Australian set, printed and distributed by a trading card company called Regina had the 132 cards, but no sticker or puzzle cards. So, for that set, considering the only sealed packs I could find were $30 each, I really only wanted at least one wrapper and that first card that had a different set of text than the Canadian, UK and US editions. Both of these sets have proven to be the most difficult to source though, and shipping from Australia is even worse than from the UK. So full sets are next to impossible to source unless you’re literally standing on the continents in question, and way too expensive to justify for this completest experiment in trading card collecting madness.
Months were slipping by and I had to will myself to not check up on eBay searches every day. Again, not only had my weird collecting obsession pushed this small project into a super complicated waiting game, but I had to actively fight my brain to quit trying to broaden the search into more niche areas. The last expansion of the collection that I allowed myself was delving into the second series of Batman trading cards. This meant sourcing a loose base set, the Factory set (which again had 11 more cards than the standard cards), both US Wax packs (9 card versions) and Cello packs (19 card versions), the advertising poster and O-Pee-Chee versions of the wrappers and a full O-Pee-Chee set with the non-sticker variations, etc. Luckily there were no 2nd series sets issued internationally as far as I can tell.
All told, this project took me a year and a half to get the collection to a point where I was more or less happy in terms of cost versus the actual collection. My patience and diligent eBay searching paid off in that I was able to source a complete set of the tiny UK cards, a set of the 4 UK factory boxes, 1 pack of the Australian Regina cards, two packs from the Netherlands, all of the US variations for both series of cards (including base and factory sets, loose wrappers, sealed packs, a full box of sealed packs and both of the advertising posters), and both series sets of the O-Pee-Chee cards. All of this because I was filling Rad Dog binders with miscellaneous trading cards one day and just had to have a full set of Batman cards. I even sought out a set of 8 lenticular trading cards that were cereal prize premiums in Kellogg’s Corn Flakes in Canada back in 1989 as they were the only other example of Batman 89 trading cards that I could find, and thus it seemed like they needed (NEEDED) to be included in the collection.
This isn’t the first time I’ve personally fallen down a collecting sinkhole like this. Monster Squad physical media releases and ephemera, a very specific collection of Sideswipe Transformers toys, and Hi-C Ecto Cooler packaging. This kind of crazy mindset is both exhausting, but also weirdly fulfilling. Because these collections get so crazy it usually takes a long time to find stuff, and as a lot of collectors will attest, most of the fun is in the hunt. So, keeping the hunt alive is crucial to enjoying the collection. In the case of the Batman cards I’ve amassed over the past couple of years, there are a handful of hard to source items that I’ve specifically decided not to buy (namely a second Regina Australian wax pack as $30 is way too much of a splurge for trading cards I already have so many other versions of.)
But as a final example of how a collector can almost invent new sub-collections to keep the collection going, there was a moment when I basically reached the end of this Batman journey when I considered seeking out sealed wax packs that had price tag stickers from some of my favorite defunct stores. If you look hard enough on eBay you can find packs with price tags from Eckerds, Kaybee Toys, K-Mart, Revco, and even Toys R Us. But seeking those out would be truly crazy, right?
Right?
