What is your sports collection? [Poll]

The big 3-0 arrived for me over the weekend and I found myself taking stock of what life has brought over its first three decades.

For me personally, that's loads and loads of all things sports. I would definitely classify myself as a collector, though not of one specific item. If it's memorabilia, than I've got a place for it.

In my younger years, the obsession was developed through collecting (hoarding is honestly a better term for the habit) mass quantities of baseball cards. There was no rhyme or reason to the collection, nor was there a purpose like archiving or preserving the cards in anything more than 40-gallon storage bins. It had nothing to do with value and everything to do with learning the game's history.

I was, and still am, a stat junkie. Consuming the numbers on the backs of cards was like an addiction. Tearing open the plastic wrap to see which players hid beneath was the sweet hit. But after the initial opening, into a bucket they went. Or under my bed. Or all over the floor. On thrown into the closet. Or stuffed into entertainment stand cabinets. Or...you get the point.

I probably collected thousands if not tens of thousands of cards over the years. Just the other day, I got a text from my mom who found an Aaron Sele 1996 Leaf Press Proofs Silver card on the floor, looked it up on eBay and saw it going for $9.99.

Maybe some day I'll take stock of what's there, but even knowing there aren't any Honus Wagner T206's in there that could provide an early retirement, it's still an invaluable treasure trove to me as it played a huge role in me falling in love with the sport.