Thirteen years after I last lied my way into a bar, I lied my way into a Facebook group about collectible sports figurines.
I didn’t need a fake ID for entry into “Kenner Starting Lineups.” I didn’t need to wash Xs off the backs of hands or pull off a stamp transfer.
I did need Google, though. And oh, the shame I felt.
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How did I not know the year Lineups were first released? It wasn’t brain surgery. It wasn’t much more than a Captcha-style step for weeding out automated bots. But I — like scores upon heaps upon piles of sports fans born in a 40-year span — collected these things. I loved these things.
I used to, at least — and I wanted to find the people who still did. Real collectibles never die; they only fade away. And sometimes, they fade back in.
So, more than two decades out from the heyday of the four-inch, $3.99 sports action figures, I needed to make sure that they were first manufactured in 1988. They were — 346 separate ones across three sports in that first run alone, an evolutionary step between baseball cards and Funko Pops, a legitimate sensation that crested with a series of massive conventions in their birthplace of Cincinnati. They’re also a dustbin item, millions of times over; by the end of the 90s, licensing fees had jumped, the first generation of collectors had grown up, and a possible second wave had opted more for PlayStation and Pokemon cards. Kenner let the trademark lapse in 2000, and that, largely, was that.
Cal Ripken Jr. is somewhere in my mom’s attic, though. I am sure of this.
I was also certain that I was in the right place. The internet is a machine run by hate, commerce and nostalgia, and Starting Lineups checks at least two boxes. So I wanted to look in on the people who cared the most, and understand why that was true, and whose truth it was. Who wants Starting Lineups? Who needs them? I was an interloper, maybe, and a fraud, but some doors are worth sneaking through. So I entered “1988” into the text field and joined a 4,000-person club.
The customizer
“I need to make a fucking Jeff Cirillo,” Rob Strom said. “I want him on my all-time Brewers team, and I cannot find the font to save my damn life.”
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Cirillo made two All-Star teams for the Brewers, in 1997 and 2000. That wasn’t enough to sneak him through the Starting Lineup window, but that’s no concern of Strom’s. His game — and there’s nobody better — is making custom new figures using paint, stickers and the guts of the originals.
Want Tom Brady in a Michigan jersey? Strom will find, say, a 1997 Buffalo Bills Doug Flutie. Then, he’ll place masking tape over the parts that are correctly colored, and prime/paint the rest. Next, using logo and font internet databases, Excel and Hobby Lobby decal paper, he’ll make you a ringer jersey/helmet set from the 1999 Orange Bowl, complete with Nike logos. He slid that one back into its original packaging, replaced the Flutie card with a Brady and bam — $130 on eBay.
Want former Falcons linebacker Tommy Nobis? Then it’s time for Frankenstein mode. Strom will take a 1992 Seth Joyner — in a linebacker stance — turn the Eagles jersey into a Falcons jersey and replace Joyner’s head with Johnny Unitas’. Then, naturally, he’ll make the color of the arms match. Dry. Apply decals with Kleenex. Wait. Done.
Some of Rob Strom’s work. (Courtesy of Rob Strom)
He’s done this enough times to lose count. More than 2,500, he said. Maybe 3,000. And he flies through his work. Ten in a day, if he wants. The masking is the most tedious part. And that, in a rare occurrence, is where working from home in a pandemic has worked out for someone. Strom, 49, is an accountant in Oshkosh, Wis.
“This morning, I had some stupid financial review meeting at nine o’clock,” he said in May. “So we got the Zoom going. They’re zoomed in on my head, and the whole hour I’m taping figures. I probably got eight taped up in this stupid thing.”
He painted all eight that day, with some headed for eBay, and others going to people in the group. He started posting in 2015 after a divorce, then left for a few months in 2018. A custom 1998 Michael Jordan prototype caused controversy for being too close to the real thing — the Starting Lineup white whale — so he bailed … temporarily.
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“One day I drop a custom bomb on them,” he said. “And of course, everyone was like ‘He’s back!’”
He also went on pause after opening up an arcade bar in late 2018. “First six months in my bar, you couldn’t move in it. It was jam-packed,” he said. “I’m like, ‘I’m gonna retire. I’m never gonna do another Starting Lineup again.’ Then everything crashed on me in March.”
He kept his day job, though, and now he’s back in the Lineup game. Again. He’s also still using the method he first picked up back in 1995 when he saw a customizer at one of the Cincinnati conventions. He picked his brain (“I can’t do shit like this,” he thought. “I’m not gonna be able to make these.”) and stopped on the way back to Milwaukee at the suburban Chicago craft store his aunt managed. She hooked him up with some necessary materials, and he put the skills he’d learned working in a paint shop to work.
For the next six years, he mastered the painting process — which separates him from other customizers who hand paint and, at times, can struggle with even coating — but couldn’t quite nail the right logos and fonts. By then, the internet could help.
“So I download all the fonts,” Strom said. “And because I’m an accountant, I know Excel. So I’m making everything in Excel. I’m using WordArt in Excel. I can use gradient fills. I’m doing two-color uniforms, two-color nameplates, and now I’m on fire.”
By 2015, he’d made thousands of customs — including for his stepdaughter’s entire soccer team. One customer has bought more than 300 NFL figures, mainly by mailing 3×5 notecards with specifications to Strom’s home. Strom himself has owned every official release. That’s partially because he bought them all at once, a few years from a seller whose name he doesn’t remember.
“Every. Single. Player. Ever. Made,” he said. “This dude was like frickin’ Oscar from ‘The Odd Couple.’ Every player individually wrapped in these supposedly UV protective baggies. … He even brought it to my house, he wanted to get rid of it so bad.”
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It cost Strom $10,000.
“I don’t have a wife,” he said. “Am I gonna get yelled at?”
Strom has dozens of anecdotes like that — stories about his “Box Guy,” and when to use inkjet printers instead of laser printers, and which customizers on the board “hack shit up and annoy us,” and which dealers were famous for ripping off customers. He’ll talk about the “dead nuts” accurate Marcus Mariota McFarlane custom from a few years ago. He’ll tell you how simple it is, and how you could do the exact same job with patience and the right paint gun. He’ll tell you about the other jobs he’s done, like turning a spare track athlete into Steve Prefontaine and selling it for $360, and the jobs he won’t do.
“(A buyer) was like, ‘Hey, if I send you a 1991 Dominique Wilkins, can you make it into Michael Jordan?’ I go, ‘Yeah, but what are you gonna use for the head?’ He’s like, ‘Well, just keep Dominique Wilkins on there.’ I’m like, ‘I’m not putting my name on Michael Jordan with a Dominique Wilkins head, bro. Just so you’re aware.’”
He’ll tell you about how he’s run the numbers — an accountant to the end — and that a $50-per-figure average would be enough to retire on by the time his kids are grown. Before I knew what happened, I’d spent 90 minutes listening, and I could’ve spent 90 more. This was all because he bought a 1988 Eric Davis figure on a whim at the Northgate Mall in Milwaukee.
“My generation, guys that are just about to hit 50, we were too old for the video game era, because I went to college before the first Nintendo. We were the ‘go play sports and come home when the streetlights came on’ generation. So all we did was sports. Night and day. And then now all of a sudden, these figures are out? You just lost your mind,” he said.
More than 30 years later, after learning which stores received shipments on what days with his friends and “taking your ass to Toys ‘R’ Us or KB or Target,” it’s still happening. The knobs have just been tweaked.
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“If you were a sports fanatic, the only figures you had were Starting Lineups. For the ’90s, there was nothing else,” Strom said.
“I think this (Facebook) page is like therapy to us old guys, right? Because I think I’m about the same age as all the guys that hit the boom. You started collections and went crazy, and then you’re in your late 20s, you’re buying houses, and getting married, and all of a sudden the figures are gone. So you forget about them for 10 years. And all sudden you go, ‘Oh shit, I forgot I had these.’”
The discerning collector
If 99.9 percent of all Starting Lineups are worth somewhere between “nothing” and “Taco Bell combo,” — if they’re all different versions of Cal-Ripken-in-the-attic, there’s still something left over. That’s Buddy Myers’ space.
A 700-piece collection, in the group, isn’t anything superlative. It’s not about quantity for Myers, though. It’s about quality. And it has been for a while. Myers ballparks the value of his collection at about $25,000.
“Even after I got out of school (in 2002), I bought some really nice figures that maybe I couldn’t afford,” he said. A Cincinnati native, he’s now a management consultant in Hermosa Beach. “It was something I did passively every couple years, adding a nice piece of two.”
One of the first was a 1989 Bryan Hinkle with an Action Figure Authority (AFA) grade of 80, worth about $300.
“Really, what’s kind of got me super into it again is just being at home all the time — but even like in 2018 and 2019 I was adding some real pieces,” he said. “Like, super high-end stuff.”
In May, that meant a 1989 Bill Fralic — widely viewed as a “grail piece” — from someone else in the group. In February, it was a clear-bubble Reggie Miller. Myers is still looking for a 1988 Marc Davis. He’s got a list, and he’s working on it. Scratched off, for example, is every Michael Jordan release, except one.
One of the Starting Lineup “holy grails.” (Facebook)
“I want the best pieces,” Myers said. “I’m a little bit obsessive-compulsive about grading and stuff like that. But to me, it’s less about what today’s value is and more knowing that only 10 of these exist.”
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Those are the ones he seeks out, and he’s got a theory for why he’s seen more of them lately.
“Those are the two different types of collectors, I think,” he said, “The people that were kids that collected, and now they’re buying the big pieces that they couldn’t afford. And then you’ve got the people that are like getting up there in age, that are like, ‘What the hell am I going to do with all these things? I’ve got thousands.’”
That’s the sort of thing Myers is trying to avoid; he keeps his collection secure, and he’s “not huge on displaying like the super rare pieces,” partially because of the amount of space they take up. He’s not hung up on the financial element — though, with a wife and daughter, he’s made clear that the collection isn’t, like, garage-sale fodder.
“For me, it’s just having it,” he said. “At some point, I’m gonna cull this thing down to my top 100 pieces. I’ve already started thinking about what that’s gonna look like.”
The general collector
Jack Storm collects plenty of stuff — action figures, horror memorabilia and, after a 20-year break, Starting Lineups. He got back in the game after watching “The Last Dance” documentary about the 90s Bulls.
“It refueled my whole Starting Lineup-collecting phase all over again,” Storm said. He’s 36 and works for a global freight forwarder. “The documentary led me to the group, and it’s been full-steam ahead ever since.”
Task 1 for Storm, a Yankees fan, was getting hands on every Derek Jeter release. It started with one from his rookie year in 1996. He paid about $25 for it.
“I thought, ‘Hey, that’s not bad for a 25-plus-year-old toy that would look good hung on the wall.’ I bought the one, and then from there you know now I’m looking for all of them.”
Storm knows bad collector groups. This one, he says, is not on that list. “Very few people are trying to basically make a buck off of you. More so, they’re trying to help you build a collection and find things you’re looking for, where other groups are all about trying to say, ‘OK, this piece is 30 years old, I need $200 for it no matter what. These guys are not like that. They’ve been very, very friendly, and for the most part, all of them are willing to make deals to help you out.”
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As for the point of his collection? Having things nobody else does isn’t quite as much of a draw. He wants what he wants, and he had a $15-ish cap.
“If I saw all these things going for, you know, 50, 60 bucks each, I probably wouldn’t have even bothered,” he said. “So that was a huge drawing point for me to try to really build a collection again.”
The browser
In 1989, on their way back to Columbus, Ohio, from an Indians game, Jay Heilman’s uncle made a pit stop at a Toys ‘R’ Us in Akron. First baseball game, first Starting Lineup.
“And I remember him getting irritated because it took me forever,” Heilman said. “I’m looking at all these different figures and have to pick two — it’s like taking a kid into a candy store and saying ‘ You can pick a piece of gum.’”
More than 30 years later — long after Heilman opened the boxes, played with Jose Canseco and Joe Carter, built his collection and eventually learned that his mom, like so many, had gotten rid of all 200 or so — Facebook brought him back.
“Facebook spying on you can help sometimes. I think somebody had posted a picture of a Jameis Winston Starting Lineup that they had released during the Stadium Series a couple years ago,” Heilman said. He lives in Florida now and roots for Tampa Bay teams. “I’m like, ‘Man, that’s cool. I remember collecting those.’ Then all of a sudden, there’s a suggestion to join the page.”
He posts and comments — and that, for now, is it.
“I enjoy just scrolling through the pages and looking at the ones that these guys have. Some of these ones from the early ’90s I’m like, ‘Dang, man. You know how hard I would look for that ’92 Canseco. I could never find that one and this dude’s got like five of them.”
Heilman’s temptation is real. So is his shared PayPal account.
“I’m tempted to buy some of these, but at the same time, my wife already gets on to me enough for buying crap and I’ve got five kids, so I can’t really justify spending $15 on a figure. So this page coming up is more of a nostalgic thing because I’m able to go back and look.”
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Plus, he already collects Hot Wheels and Funko Pops and action figures and plenty more that clutters his desk.
“I don’t ever buy stuff now with the intention and say, ‘Oh, this might be worth something someday,’” Heilman said. “What’s the point of owning toys if you’re gonna leave them in the box?’”
So, while Heilman is on the lookout for a well-priced Warren Sapp, what he’s hoping for is the right cheap, bulk buy to share with his sons.
“Anytime they get into something that I used to like, that I enjoyed growing up, man, that feels good,” Heilman said, “because it kind of allows me to kind of relive those memories through my kids.”
The coach
Mark Hager wasn’t looking to play with Starting Lineups. He was hoping to teach with them.
Hager is a coach with Hasek’s Heroes, the Buffalo non-profit founded by Sabres legend Dominik Hasek to provide kids with the opportunity to learn hockey, free of charge. For years, Hager had been using Starting Lineup figures to explain the game to younger kids.
“When I was trying to explain to little kids on the dry erase board, ‘Here’s what you do,’ X’s and O’s with lines did nothing for them,” Hager said. “Putting little plastic guys on hockey sticks on a table? And saying, ‘See this is what you do, you go here?’ You watch them, and it’s suddenly animated to them. They don’t know what a half-wall is, or that a man’s supposed to be there during a breakout. They don’t know.”
A few months ago, the stockpile disappeared, probably during spring cleaning of the space the program shares at its rink, Hager said. So he joined the group — presumably after answering the entry question correctly — and asked for help.
“I’ve had three people say, ‘Send me your address and I’ll send you some free ones,’ which is phenomenal,” Hager said in May. “Secondly, I have another guy who was like, ‘Hockey isn’t where the money is on these things. I’ll send them to you for three bucks apiece. I’ll take them out of the packaging because shipping’s a son of a bitch on these things — as long as you’re not collecting.’”
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For Hager, it was appreciated. Every dollar counts — and that applies to both the figures themselves and the fact that they make it easier to teach in a conference room, rather than during paid-for ice time.
“We teach from four for 14. Those kids still want to learn. And these things as learning tools are priceless,” he said.
It’s been nearly two months since I joined the group. I could leave it — but I don’t. So, I see that Strom, the customizer, is offering loose figures for $4 each. He, naturally, needed their boxes. The last custom he sold was a $30 Tim Brown Notre Dame. Myers is looking for a mint 1998 John Cappelletti Heisman Edition. Strom is making unboxing videos. Heilman hasn’t posted since we spoke, though I’m sure he’s scrolled his way through plenty.
And Hager, in his second and final post, thanked everyone for helping him out. He got what he needed, and so did I.
(Top photo: Courtesy of Rob Strom)
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