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nolemmings (Todd)I started collecting in '66, at age 7. The kids on the block were hoarding the local Twins cards fresh off their WS appearance-- my first Twin was Sandy Valdespino. Anyway, we were only kind of dabbling at that age-- I doubt any of us had more than a 100 cards.
I hit the big leagues in '68, when my next door neighbor and I pooled funds to buy them by the box from the neighborhood Ben Franklin store, a two-block bike ride. He housed the NL and I got the AL--we split the subsets. We did this again in '69, for some reason I recall Del Unser of the Senators getting off to a hot start and everybody hunting for his rookie card. Neighbor and I gave up the co-op idea at the end of 1969. By then I was too rabid about the whole deal and was doing the coins out of the sofa cushion trick. The addiction took off frfom there.