Back in the day for me was mid/late 80s. I didn't get into cards till my late teens. As a player collector(Wade Boggs) it was hard to find the oddball cards. Actually all cards in general were rare at the time. I lived in a small town with one card shop. We did have card shows about every other weekend with around 5/6 dealers.
I was lucky and my mom worked at a place that gave 20% off to employees. Her boss would let her sell my little brother and me cards(wax packs, boxes, cases) at cost. Then we got the extra 20% off so we got cards at 20% under dealer cost. Man did we rip a ton of wax in the late 80s/early 90s.
Then ebay hit the scene. The cards that sometimes took months to find could now be found in days. A lot of the error, variation, regional issues, and test issues were still rare. It wasn't till early 2000s that pretty much everything was super easy to find. I would find anybody selling rare(at the time) stuff and buy out their entire inventory to resell myself with out any competition.
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