Eleanor Duncan is frustrated with the selection of cards.
The eight-year old is sorting through a big tub full of them, all priced at $1.
“There’s no WWE here,” she says, resigning herself to the situation. “No girls basketball either.”
She picks a few more cards and places them off to the side.
Eleanor and her family made an eight hour trek from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to take in the show. It’s a family affair for the Duncans.
“My dad collects cards and they are really cool,” Eleanor proclaims. “WWE are my favorites.”
This their second National Sports Collectors Convention as a family and it’s just their style.
Grandma, Sonjia, is watching carefully. She’s a collector too. Eleanor’s dad, Jordan, is scouring the convention center for deals. Especially basketball cards.
“He collects anything, anything that thinks he can flip a dime. Both of them are still collecting and selling online.”
Her twin sons Jordan and Jacob came by it naturally – if not strategically.
“As a young mom I used it as an incentive to improve their communication skills. We’d get the Beckett for them to review. That’s the way we’d get them to read. We got them to write by sending letters for autographs. They built a big collection and they kept with it.”
“I like Larry Bird. Grandpa likes Magic Johnson,” she says. “We started collecting when we were in college. We laugh because I couldn’t afford anything.”
They didn’t make that mistake with Bird and Magic.
“We invested in Larry and Magic’s first full (1981-82 Topps) so we had a bunch to hand down to the grandkids.
“Thirty years ago,” she pauses and laughs, “Thirty years ago. Easily. Yah, let’s go with that.”
Not every decision has been a slam dunk.
“I had a chance to get a Michael Jordan rookie or Danny Ainge. I got the Ainge, because I loved the Celtics. They tease me, ‘bet you wish you had that Jordan rookie now’.”
For Eleanor, at least today, she gets over the scarcity of WWE and WNBA cards by some extra time in the hotel pool.
Priorities.
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