How Penny Hardaway Ruined My Childhood

There were few things as valuable to me growing up as my card collection. Check that. There was NOTHING as valuable to me growing up as my card collection! (This might still hold true to this day. Yes. Yes it does.) I remember lying in bed recounting the day's trades that I had made at school with friends. Actually, it was more fun to trade with kids I did not particular care for. Those were the ones that you could scam. You could not rip them off too bad and risk their mom calling your mom and asking if the kids could trade back, but you always wanted to push that limit. (My mom and I had a rocky few years in there. If I was the beneficiary of the deal, I always had to trade back. On the rare occasion that I had been cheated, she'd say I had made a poor judgment and had to deal with it. Love you mom, but not sure if I can ever fully forgive you for this).

I inventoried my cards in trapper keepers according to sport and last name if they made the cut of "good" cards. If they made the cut of "great" or "rare" cards, then I had an individual hard case waiting for them. Otherwise, they found themselves in a shoe box. I even had my fire rescue plan in tact just in case our house went up in flames in the middle of the night. (All of my Jordan's and Montana's were kept in the same trapper keeper. They were the first ones to rescue. If I had time to come back, I would get the shoebox full of my Bird's, Barkley's, and Bo Jackson's.)

Needless to say, I thought I had it down. Up to this point I had shown flashes of my future vocation in accounting and finance. I had locked in profits by always referencing my Beckett before making any trade. (You want to trade me that Fleer's Charles Barkley for my NBA Hoops Shawn Kemp? If it checked out in Beckett, you had yourself a successful transaction.) Even with the sudden influx in specialty brands, I was able to keep myself well diversified in a volatile market. Sure, I loaded up on Montana's and Jordan's but those guys had secured their legacies and values in Beckett. This new young crop of talent in the first post-Jordan era, you could not yet do that. That was of course until Penny Hardaway.

Penny was the oop to Shaq's alley. And I'm not talking Kazaam Shaq. I'm talking Blue Chips Shaq. These two were going to take over the NBA. I always tailored my basketball game to that of guards, so I chose Penny to be the one I idolized. There was a good two years that I called being Penny at every recess. Some of my other friends were Jason Kidd, Karl Malone, or Chris Weber to name a few. But in 4^th and 5^th grades, no one dare called being Penny. That was me. He was THAT good. I remember sporting the single Band-Aid above my eye in the Magic's '95 Finals run. (Yes, both Nelly and I ripped it off but at least I wasn't trying to pull it off as being original and I own up to it. Putting it a little lower on your face DOES NOT make it yours! I can go on for a while on this, but will refrain. You know what you did Nelly!) Penny was so cool he had his own spin-off in Lil' Penny. Lil' Penny was a trend setter in his own right. This last years' NBA Finals, Nike was back to producing puppets. This time of Lebron and Kobe. (I wonder if Lil' Penny's knees held up over the years?) Penny was even my favorite question at our lunchtime game of, "where did he go to college?" It always seems to stump people. (Memphis STATE is the correct answer FYI. They did not become known as Memphis until later.)

As it turned out, the season after the Magic made the Finals, Penny would have an outstanding season as Shaq went down. There was little doubt in my mind that I had made the absolute best financial decision of my life by starting to trade for more Penny's. After finishing high in the MVP voting and capping off the summer with an Olympic ring, I knew that Penny's were going to be trading at a higher level than before. I had a nice share in the market, but not the kind that you can retire on. The '96-'97 season should have been a clear indication that it was time to liquidate some of my Penny stock. A Shaq-less Magic limped to the playoffs on the weak knees and ankles of Penny. But what did he go and do? He exploded in the playoffs! He did not need Shaq and neither did my card collection portfolio! I had ridden the ups and downs of the market and it was all about to pay off.

As for what happened next, I take full responsibility for. These previous paragraphs were written not to incite your pity, but simply for your understanding. I got greedy. Like I said, up to this point, I thought of myself as a sound investor. But after Penny's most recent playoffs performance, I was sure he was going to outperform the rest of the market. I thought Warren Buffet himself was selling me Berkshire Hathaway at pennies on the dollar. (Pun intended?) Simply put, I got lax in my fundamentals and got into an overbought position in the market. I thank my Joe Montana (I have always envisioned my guardian angel as Joe Montana) everyday that I did not make any of these trades on credit. By the beginning of the next season, I had tripled my position in Penny after almost fully liquidating my Shaq stock.

Then came the Great Knee Injury of '97. I tried not to panic. He could recover from this. I had yet to see the affects of knee injury on a young guard's cross-over. Should I bail on my Penny stock now? I went to my Grandpa to discuss. He had made it through the Great Depression and Black Tuesday. Maybe he could guide me through these hard times. Well, I wasn't going to stash Penny's under my mattress, but I liked his plan of holding onto them. So that's exactly what I did. As historians will note, this was the beginning of the end. Penny's knee injury and subsequent lack of recovery skills (I really wish this was a measurable skill before an injury happens) sent his stock into a plummet the likes of Beckett had never seen. I was ruined! I could never recover from this! I had traded countless future Hall of Famers away for this?

This is why I hate you Penny Hardaway. You ruined my childhood. I will never wear a Band-Aid over my eye again. And if I do, I will say that is was Nelly influenced and give him all the creative credit. I pray to my Joe Montana every night that no child has to go through the same life altering financial crisis I went through at such a young age.