[jchcollins]

The first large shows I remember attending were in Charlotte, NC - probably along about 1988-90. The auto guests were always the draw, and the reason us kids could get our parents to take us. I remember getting sigs from Duke Snider, Bob Feller, and later - Mark Grace who was in his first few seasons with the Cubs. Snider and Feller were both very nice to me as about a 12-13 year old kid. I remember I had purchased at the show a pretty beat-up '56 Topps Snider, and wanted the Duke to personalize it to me, but he talked me into personalizing a litho print instead, with the idea that if he wrote my name on his card, it would be worth less later and I might have trouble getting rid of it. (This little curiosity intrigues me 3 decades on - why did the Duke care what I did with the card, and the fact that it was already beat to hell seemingly didn't bother him, lol...). Feller I remember I had a picture signed, and he spent a few minutes to tell me that picture was from spring training, 1951 or whenever and you could tell because of the details on the uni he had on in the picture. I've never been much of an auto collector (though I'm getting back into it some now in my early 40's...) and sadly I did not keep the Snider or Feller autos over the years - I think I sold them in the early days of eBay, probably to get more money to spend on cards. In terms of cards I remember from these shows - usually held in the fall, they were often a good time to pickup the Topps Traded set if it had come out. One of them must have been in '89 because I remember the hot hot card at that particular show was the '89 Upper Deck Jerome Walton...NOT ironically, the Griffey Jr. Griffey soon surpassed Walton, the '89 NL ROY and he of 30-game hit streak fame that season - but at least at the time, Walton was more popular. Every dealer was being asked if they had the card, and some people were buying up as many of them as they could. I think his UD card was $15, Griffey's at the time was $8 or $10. I should have stocked up, LOL. At one show, I remember buying a '52 Bowman Warren Spahn for around $30, and thinking it was in incredible shape for the price. Only after I got home did I notice, in small neat letters, a stamp for "1952" had been applied to the back. The dealer of course had never mentioned it. Oh well, I loved the card anyway. Other random scores at shows like this I remember over the years were an '83 Topps Ryne Sandberg rookie, and I think the '78 Molitor / Trammel RC. I did have some more "major" cards in my collection at the time as a kid - including a '56 Mantle and Ted Williams - but those for whatever reason had seemed to come mainly from local card shops. I think probably because at the shows, after I spent money to get an autograph and a traded set - I was usually pretty broke in the days of being a teenager, but before I really had a job or steady source of income short of going through a hell of begging with my mother. (This tactic had worked well to get me things like a '58 Mantle Aaron, a '54 Bowman Campanella, and a '66 Koufax a few years earlier when I first found out about old cards). Also at one card show, I caught my first glimpse of a '52 Topps #311 in the flesh at one table - the dealer had it in one of those inch-thick lucite slabs. I don't recall specifically how nice it was, probably mid-grade - but the price tag was $5k something. Geez if we had only known how much Mantle would continue to skyrocket. No way my father was spending that much money on a baseball card back in the early 1990's, lol. "Are you crazy son, we are going to pay our MORTGAGE instead..."

Good memories of the time, the love of my parents, and good friends who would accompany me to shows. Thanks for starting this thread!