Finishing a Project Decades in the Making
Ron Davis Jr. and his dad, Ron Sr., have a bond that goes well beyond sharing the same name. The Davis men both love baseball and collecting. Ron Sr. is a lifelong New York Yankees fan and a big Mickey Mantle and Bobby Richardson collector, while Ron Jr. latched onto the Atlanta Braves and Dale Murphy at a young age. When Ron Jr. was eight years old in 1985, he and his dad made it a point to catch baseball on TV as much as
possible.
“We got WGN, WWOR, and WTBS, so we could watch the Cubs, the Mets, and the Braves,” Ron Jr. says. There was usually a baseball game on. If the Yankees were on the Saturday Game of the Week, of course, we took the Saturday off and we would watch them.”
Despite their differences in team allegiances, the Davis duo collected together.
“I did some autograph stuff with my kids when they were younger, and when I was a kid, I was like, ‘Dad likes baseball cards, too,’ so it works,” says Ron Jr., who’s 47 years old and lives in metro Atlanta. “But in the end, it’s probably half he likes baseball and half it’s a good opportunity for bonding with his kid.”
Ron Sr., now 72 and based in Sumter, South Carolina, got into collecting cards when he was eight years old. His dad didn’t collect, but that didn’t stop Ron from immersing himself in The Hobby. “Every year for Christmas, one gift that I always got was a box of Topps cards,” he says. “So, you opened the Christmas present, and there’s the box, and then you get to open every single one of the packs.” Though his father wasn’t as involved in The Hobby, these moments were still opportunities for bonding, Ron Sr. says. “Dad liked watching me open and the excitement I had from that.”
That tradition carried on well to the next generation.
“Watching Ron when he would open up a pack and get, whether it was Murphy or another Brave or somebody else he loved, it was exciting reliving my childhood,” Ron Sr. says. “Ron’s two kids, they collect a little bit. I imagine eventually they’ll have to fight over my collection.”
Collecting Together
When Ron Sr. got his driver’s license in 1968, he backed off collecting. But when his son started getting into The Hobby in 1986, Ron Sr. was right next to him ripping packs.
“We got into it pretty heavily in ’86, ’87, and I was chasing what all the kids were chasing — Juan González and Gregg Jefferies,” Ron Jr. says. “Dad was assembling a lot of sets and I did some of that. But any lawn mowing money I would get, it was, ‘Can you take me to Walmart? Can you take me to Kmart? I want to go get baseball cards.’“ Ron Jr. got so into the Hobby that he started “volunteering” at his local card shop. “Never for official pay, but I’d go in and help sort cards or whatever and when I’d leave he’d be like, ‘Hey, take a box of those Topps with you.’”
The Davis men took full advantage of their collecting opportunities back in the late ’80s and early ’90s. When the family hit the open road to visit in-laws in Kentucky, they always took their time to arrive at their destination.
“Back in those days when they had all the small card shops, every time we went through a small town, it was, ‘Hey, we’ve got to stop here. There’s a card shop,’” Ron Sr. says. “We’d go in and buy a box or something and open it.”
The Davis pair has been to spring training 18 times together to check out their beloved Yankees and Braves. “We would usually go to Tampa and then hit all the towns around Tampa,” Ron Sr. says. “We’d take balls and cards to get signed.”
Finishing a Project
By the early 1990s, the father-son duo was ripping tons of packs together. When the 1992 Topps product came out, it had a new wrinkle — a “Match-the-Stats” game card where a collector would scratch off different positions on the baseball diamond to try to match three stats before finding an out. One of the prizes was Topps would send the winner a 10-pack of gold foil cards, considered some of the first true parallels.
“We would scratch them off and send them off to Topps,” Ron Jr. says. “We would get back a pack that had the gold with the winner stamped on it. They went into my collection and they kind of just stayed there. Recently, I was going through my cards, kind of trying to figure out what to do with them. I was just looking through them and I came across a bunch of those 1992 Topps Gold and I was like, ‘Wow, those are cool.’”
Ron Jr. pulled out the star players and put them into one box and the commons in another. Going through stacks of cards got him thinking about how much of that 792-card set he already had.
“I’m looking at the 800-count boxes and I’m like, I’ve got to be close,” says Ron Jr., who figured he had about 70% of the set complete. He put them in order and posted online that he was looking to complete the set.
“A friend of mine in North Carolina, he and I had sent cards to each other back and forth, just kind of supporting each other in The Hobby,” Ron Jr. says. “He said, ‘Hey, when you get your list, let me know. I’ve got a bunch of those. I can probably help you out.’ He had every one I needed.”
Ron Sr. was thrilled when he found out his son had completed the 1992 Topps Gold Winners set. Even though they didn’t quite complete the set together this time around, it brought back good memories from 33 years earlier for both Davis men.
