Rip the era all over again.

Every pack was a lottery ticket.

You funded the habit with lawn money and birthday cash. The corner store kept the rack packs by the register, and you picked the one with the best-looking top card. That was the whole science of it.

Then the ritual: the rip, the smell of that ancient gum, powder on your fingertips, fifteen cards fanned across the bedroom floor. From the late '80s to the mid '90s, hope came fifteen cards at a time — doubles for days, until one pack hit different and gave you a name you never traded.

That's the stuff in these boxes. Not investments — flashbacks. Cards from the era when the fun was the rip, not the flip.

Every pack and box in this collection was opened with my son. It stopped being about the hits a while ago — it's our thing now, and these cards are looking for their next binder.