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Posted By: George

In 1961 I joined the Army, and I was in basic training at Fort Dix, in New Jersey. One weekend, I got a pass and went to Philadelphia. By some chance, I wandered into an antique store and asked if they had anything related to baseball. He pulled out a box that must have had 1000 T206's in it, although at that time I did not know what they were. The price was $1 each. That seemed like an outrageous price, because my Topps and Bowman cards had cost me only 1/100th of that, and they were bigger! I had only $35 with me, which was half of a month's pay at that time. But I pored through the cards, and found the 35 best........all Hall of Famers, and all in excellent condition, and I bought them. I had no idea that card collecting was a "hobby," or that these cards would eventually become valuable, but I knew what I liked. The players, as I recall, included Mathewson, Tinker, Evers, Chance, Cobb, Young, Brown, Collins.......but no Wagner or Plank, unfortunately. I mounted the cards in a large frame, which hung in my office for years. Around 1981, the first Beckett catalog was published. I bought a copy, and discovered that there were other collectors in the world, and my T206 collection took off from there.