There was a steep learning curve for me when I first started looking into pre-war cards, and I collected cards for most of my childhood. And if I didn't have the internet I probably would have given up. Anything before Topps was fog in a land with little to get your bearings with. Building a context to understand it takes time and effort. And it helps to have an entry point. I started by looking for pre-war Cardinals HOFers, the team I was a fan of and a franchise that happened to have colorful characters and a winning history in parts of the pre-war era. From there I learned more history, and then knowing some history helped understand some of the other cards, and back and forth, etc. In some ways, though the sport and the medium are the same, pre-war card collecting is as different from modern card collecting as stamp collecting is.
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