Flip
So Bernie Madoff is getting his own trading card.
Have I mentioned how difficult is it to try to be satirical or humorous about the modern world? You really can’t beat the truth. I mean if I came up with some short story or even a novel about a guy named Shyster or McFraud or something else obvious like “Made-off” who defrauded huge amounts of money from supposedly smart people and then wound up on a trading card everyone would think I was some kind of a hack of a complete jackass. And yet, there you have it: real life in all its glory.
When I was a kid in the 1970’s card collecting as an investment tool was still in its infancy. I was a bit too young to be part of the generation that put cards in their bike wheels or anything like that although we did enter the world of gambling through baseball cards. Oh, and on Staten Island in the ‘70s it was always baseball cards. Sure you might occasionally buy a pack of football cards or hockey cards but the serious card aficionado specialized in baseball cards.
There were two main ways of gambling with baseball cards, one relatively low risk and even-handed while the other could gain or lose you dozens of cards in a minute or two. The low-risk gambling method, the one that led you on the path to say, football betting slips or the odd Lotto purchase as an adult was card flipping. In card flipping you would hold the card perpendicular to the ground using a knuckleball-like grip with your fingertips. You would then throw the card using a gentle arm swing and a flip of the thumb to make it rotate like the rear propeller of a helicopter as it fell to the ground landing either “heads” (the picture) or “tails” the green-grey side with the statistics and “fun facts”). Your opponent would do the same. If his card (and it was always two boys who did this, I never recall a single girl EVER flipping baseball cards) landed the same way yours did, e.g. if you were heads and he was heads he got both cards. If he did not, you got both cards. Then he would go first and you would have to match his flip. The game could go on for quite some time until one participant was out of cards or running low enough to want to stop.
Over time kids developed various techniques that they swore made them better flippers than other kids including exaggerated or perhaps non existent arm swings, starting the card with the side you wanted facing up on the ground facing away from you (or vice versa), and various finger manipulations on release. A subject of debate that would arise would be if the card had truly “flipped” on the way down; any card that did not have the desired tight, spinning spiral due to wind or poor technique could become the subject of a fierce debate over whether or not there should be a re-flip depending on who won the round. Sometimes the debate would escalate and eventually flipping was banned as a schoolyard activity though it still went on after school hours. In any event card flipping was an early life lesson on risk, reward and loss and possibly one of the earliest metaphorical representations of real life in that while you could develop some skills for success being a big winner was more a matter of luck and which way the wind was blowing. Eventually you learned to only play with your doubles and to leave all of your favorite players at home. Life lesson learned.
The higher risk game that was the gateway drug to, oh, casino gambling, run-ins with bookies and/or investment banking was called “colors” and involved practically no skill whatsoever save perhaps a knowledge of your opponents card collection. The way colors worked was one kid put down a card face up and then the next kid did. If the color on a predetermined area of the card was the same (typically we used the team name but not always) the person who matched the color got both cards. If not, the first player would put down a card and try to match and so on and so on. You had to set ground rules in advance about what constituted a “match”; I remember one year (’78? ’79?) the Yankees and the Texas Rangers names appeared in an orangey color that was virtually identical on some players and fairly different on others depending on, I suppose which cards were in which print runs. You had to agree in advance about things like that or there would be howling and screaming and lunchroom aides getting involved. Sometimes piles would grow to 20 or 30 cards deep and play would slow as kids agonized over what they were losing. Drama would build as each card was turned over until finally there would be a match and one kid would have a pocketful of cards to take home. That’s the way it goes sometimes eh?
I wonder if old Bernie Madoff played any of these silly card games as a kid. I wonder if any kids today play any of those games. I suspect the answer to the latter is “no”. Too many generations have been instilled with the notion that cards are “investments”, that those pieces of cardboard that my generation so carelessly flipped around a schoolyard have some innate value. Parents would probably be quite displeased if their kids were gambling away an investment possibility in some frivolous game. After all, there’s nothing we believe in more here in America than the power of good investing.
Hmmm, I wonder if it would be OK to go to old Bernie for some advice now. There’s no way he’d scam again, not with the whole world watching, right?
Have I mentioned how difficult is it to try to be satirical or humorous about the modern world? You really can’t beat the truth. I mean if I came up with some short story or even a novel about a guy named Shyster or McFraud or something else obvious like “Made-off” who defrauded huge amounts of money from supposedly smart people and then wound up on a trading card everyone would think I was some kind of a hack of a complete jackass. And yet, there you have it: real life in all its glory.
When I was a kid in the 1970’s card collecting as an investment tool was still in its infancy. I was a bit too young to be part of the generation that put cards in their bike wheels or anything like that although we did enter the world of gambling through baseball cards. Oh, and on Staten Island in the ‘70s it was always baseball cards. Sure you might occasionally buy a pack of football cards or hockey cards but the serious card aficionado specialized in baseball cards.
There were two main ways of gambling with baseball cards, one relatively low risk and even-handed while the other could gain or lose you dozens of cards in a minute or two. The low-risk gambling method, the one that led you on the path to say, football betting slips or the odd Lotto purchase as an adult was card flipping. In card flipping you would hold the card perpendicular to the ground using a knuckleball-like grip with your fingertips. You would then throw the card using a gentle arm swing and a flip of the thumb to make it rotate like the rear propeller of a helicopter as it fell to the ground landing either “heads” (the picture) or “tails” the green-grey side with the statistics and “fun facts”). Your opponent would do the same. If his card (and it was always two boys who did this, I never recall a single girl EVER flipping baseball cards) landed the same way yours did, e.g. if you were heads and he was heads he got both cards. If he did not, you got both cards. Then he would go first and you would have to match his flip. The game could go on for quite some time until one participant was out of cards or running low enough to want to stop.
Over time kids developed various techniques that they swore made them better flippers than other kids including exaggerated or perhaps non existent arm swings, starting the card with the side you wanted facing up on the ground facing away from you (or vice versa), and various finger manipulations on release. A subject of debate that would arise would be if the card had truly “flipped” on the way down; any card that did not have the desired tight, spinning spiral due to wind or poor technique could become the subject of a fierce debate over whether or not there should be a re-flip depending on who won the round. Sometimes the debate would escalate and eventually flipping was banned as a schoolyard activity though it still went on after school hours. In any event card flipping was an early life lesson on risk, reward and loss and possibly one of the earliest metaphorical representations of real life in that while you could develop some skills for success being a big winner was more a matter of luck and which way the wind was blowing. Eventually you learned to only play with your doubles and to leave all of your favorite players at home. Life lesson learned.
The higher risk game that was the gateway drug to, oh, casino gambling, run-ins with bookies and/or investment banking was called “colors” and involved practically no skill whatsoever save perhaps a knowledge of your opponents card collection. The way colors worked was one kid put down a card face up and then the next kid did. If the color on a predetermined area of the card was the same (typically we used the team name but not always) the person who matched the color got both cards. If not, the first player would put down a card and try to match and so on and so on. You had to set ground rules in advance about what constituted a “match”; I remember one year (’78? ’79?) the Yankees and the Texas Rangers names appeared in an orangey color that was virtually identical on some players and fairly different on others depending on, I suppose which cards were in which print runs. You had to agree in advance about things like that or there would be howling and screaming and lunchroom aides getting involved. Sometimes piles would grow to 20 or 30 cards deep and play would slow as kids agonized over what they were losing. Drama would build as each card was turned over until finally there would be a match and one kid would have a pocketful of cards to take home. That’s the way it goes sometimes eh?
I wonder if old Bernie Madoff played any of these silly card games as a kid. I wonder if any kids today play any of those games. I suspect the answer to the latter is “no”. Too many generations have been instilled with the notion that cards are “investments”, that those pieces of cardboard that my generation so carelessly flipped around a schoolyard have some innate value. Parents would probably be quite displeased if their kids were gambling away an investment possibility in some frivolous game. After all, there’s nothing we believe in more here in America than the power of good investing.
Hmmm, I wonder if it would be OK to go to old Bernie for some advice now. There’s no way he’d scam again, not with the whole world watching, right?
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