Finally put it on the wall.
The card you would never sell, printed at life size and ready to frame — with room left for the part only you can write.
There is a joke at the heart of this hobby that nobody finds very funny. You spend years finding the right card. You pay properly for it. And then you put it in a box, in a drawer, in a safe deposit box — because that is genuinely the correct advice. Light fades it. Handling costs it. Above a certain number your insurer has opinions.
So the thing you love most, you almost never look at.
This is the fix, and it is not complicated: display a reproduction, keep the card safe.
A sample, not a listing. There is no price on the plate and no card for sale here — a plate is made from a card you already own.
We take a photograph of your card, print it just over life size on heavy archival stock, set it the way we would set it in the Journal, and leave room underneath for you to say what it is doing in your life. It fits a standard 8×10 frame. It goes on a wall, or a desk, or in a study where somebody will actually see it.
The part we cannot write
Anyone can look up what a 1969 Topps rookie is. What nobody can look up is that you bought yours in a shop in Cleveland with money you had saved for something else, or that it came out of your father’s desk after he died, or that you have shown it to exactly four people.
That is the half that disappears. The card outlives everyone and the reason it mattered does not — unless somebody writes it down, and the person who has to write it down is you.
So the sheet that ships with every plate is a prompt, not a form. Where you got it. Who gave it to you. What you gave up for it. Who you showed it to first. Who should have it next. Answer three of them in your own words and you have made something your family can read in forty years. It was in your hands. That is the whole claim, and it is the only one worth making.
Clean, or ruled for ink
Two versions of the same plate, and people are genuinely split.
- Clean. The card, its name and year, and one line beneath it. Nothing else. This is the one that looks like it came from a gallery.
- Inscribed. The same plate with three faint ruled lines under the caption, for you to write on by hand once it arrives. We print it on uncoated stock so ink actually takes. Nothing comes back to us; you write on it at your own kitchen table.
Either way the words are yours and they stay yours. We do not keep a copy, we do not publish it, and nobody is asked to send anything back.
What it costs
$119 for the first card, and $99 for each one after that — up to three.
Three is the ceiling, and that is deliberate rather than a nudge. Choosing which cards are the heirlooms is most of the value here — a wall of thirty of these would say much less than three. If your answer is genuinely thirty, what you want is a Record, which is a different thing built for a different reason.
Start one — $119What this is not
- It is not an appraisal, and it carries no value. There is no price on the plate, no market history, no estimate. We do not do that here and would not want to on something meant to be hung.
- It is not authentication. If your card is graded, the plate says so. If it is not, the plate is quiet about it.
- It has to be a card you own. Not the one you always wanted — the one in your drawer. That is what makes it yours to hang, and it is also the better story.
- You do not have to be a photographer. Send us a photo from your phone and we will tell you how to improve it. If you would rather not handle the card at all, send a link to a listing for the same card and grade so we can be certain which one it is, and we will source the image ourselves. If we do that, the plate shows the card — not your particular copy — so it carries no certificate number. Your photograph is the only way the plate can name your own card, which is why we ask for it first.
If you need something else
This is a gift and a thing to look at. If what you actually need is a written record — because there is an executor, or an insurer, or a family who will one day have to work out what all of this is — that is a different piece of work and we do it. It is slower, it is researched, and it is built for somebody who has to act on it.
And if a collection has just landed on you and you are trying to work out the first move, start here instead: what to do with an inherited card collection. It is free and there is nothing to sign up for.
Who makes these
The Heirloom Index is written by Gregory S. Ostrowski — a Certified Financial Planner™ professional who has collected since he was a kid, and for a long time now the kind of cards on this site. The design here is the same one we use for the index and the writing, which you can look at before you order anything.