“I've kept my old baseball cards in a box since I was a kid.”
B1 · Intermediate9 minPhrases
When you need this
Baseball cards are small printed cards with a player's photo on the front and their numbers on the back. Kids have traded them for generations, and many adults still have a shoebox of them somewhere in a closet. Today some people collect them seriously, and a rare card can sell for more than a car.
So card talk comes in two moods. One is nostalgic: what you collected as a kid and what your parents threw away. The other is about money and condition: what a card is worth, whether it's in mint condition, and whether it's been graded. Both moods use a lot of present perfect, because collecting is something that has been going on for years.
The same language works for any collectible, from soccer stickers in São Paulo to trading cards in Tokyo. Swap the object and keep the phrases.
Phrases
keep buying and saving things of one kind
give one thing and get another back
a sealed set of cards; you don't know what's inside
a player's first card; often the most valuable
perfect, like new
damaged from use
has a certain money value
have experts check and score its condition
every card from one series
a thin plastic cover that protects one card
an event where collectors buy, sell and trade
put in the trash
Say it out loud
Tap a sentence to hear it. Say it after the voice.
Practice · 3 min
Say one natural line for each situation.
1
2
3
4
5
Say it today
Use it once in a real conversation before tomorrow. Out loud counts, even to yourself.