[Volod]

These are some really enjoyable stories. A nice respite from our usual obsessive concern with stuff like pricing, condition and grading. My old card story is pretty mundane. In the winter of 1951, my family had just moved and I was sent to a new school for the start of second grade and was kind of annoyed and dejected. Trying to figure out a new locker combination, I gave up in disgust and threw my stuff into the damned thing, when I noticed something lying on the hallway floor a few lockers up. It was a card of Aaron Robinson - a ballplayer I had never heard of, who played for a team I cared nothing about - but in that moment, for some reason, I fell in love with baseball cards. My childhood card collection grew to great size from that point, but that one card, the first I ever held, was put away in a scrapbook that somehow escaped Ma's voracious housecleaning and survived until I found it again in the 1980's. Most of my current collection remains stored away under virtual lock and key, but I keep Old Aaron close by in a desk drawer and pull him out once in a while to gaze at in wonder.