Paul Lukas of ESPN recently spent some time at this year’s National Sports Collectors Convention in Cleveland.

So I’m speaking from experience when I say the key to a happy collecting life is the moment when you accept that you can never collect everything in a given category, because there will always be at least one thing out there that you can’t afford, can’t find or don’t know about. The feeling of completism will always be out of reach. Once you admit that to yourself, the world becomes a fun museum and you can cherry-pick some nice items that push your buttons without the pressure of having to acquire all of them.

But most of the collectors at the National didn’t appear to have experienced that epiphany. This was especially true of the baseball card collectors (by far the largest contingent of attendees), a disturbing percentage of whom seemed to fit all the worst collector stereotypes: nerdy, overweight, socially awkward. As I watched these guys — and believe me, all of them were guys — feverishly flipping through bins and albums of cards, trying to cross out items on their want lists, it occurred to me that they seemed to take very little pleasure in the act of collecting. They were more like addicts trying to cop a fix, and I found their frantic, joyless movements from dealer to dealer rather depressing.

Lukas has also put together a nice set of photos from the event. The piece is worth reading, if only to get a sense of the kind of ephemera that are sold at these things. For example, the 1999 Yankees championship trophy was on display along with a bunch of championship rings. Pretty cool.

I used to collect cards for many years when I was younger. It’s easy to stop as you get older and need to conserve your money. These days, I’m more into seeking out rare LPs than sports memorabilia. Simply put, it’s just expensive to get into this stuff. I’d still love to go to a convention, but it won’t be a while until I’m buying Robin Ventura’s gold glove off some nerd.