[kailes2872]

I have told this story before, so please forgive any repetition. I immediately had a name that came to mind. Melanie Lain was the most influential person for my collecting for several reasons.

I had collected a couple of packs in '78 and '79 - both in baseball and football. However, '80 was the year that I had a break through. I was 8 years old and in second grade. Melanie was a senior in high school and our teacher's aid. One day, I brought a box of cards for some variation of show and tell. Melanie came up and looked at my cards. She told me that she collected as well and asked me if I wanted to trade.

As an 8 year old, I had two thoughts - 1) No one was coming near my cards and 2.) Eww a girl? She has baseball cards?

I agreed to consider it, however, I had my reservations. Melanie went to the same church and lived close, so the next week, she came by with a shoe box. She told me that she didn't want to take my cards but went through her collection to give me some. It was '70-'75 with the majority in '72 & '73 but there were stars in every year. Aaron from all the years, Mays up until he retired, Clemente, Gibson, Kaline, rookies of Brett and Yount, Killebrew, Frank and Brooks Robinson - she just gave me all. She decided to go through her basketball and football collection and gave me a lot of 71-72's and 72-73's - Chamberlain, West, Baylor, Alcindor, Robertson, Unites, Staubach, Namath - they were all there pack fresh.

This was an awesome day. I immediately went to a friend's house and gave him some of them - I figured that I had 3 Willie Mays' in there, so he could have one of them. Same with Aaron, etc.

From there, it was disaster. A card show was coming to town. I heard that baseball cards were worth money so I wanted to go. Melanie went with me. In the first 5 minutes at the show, I proceeded to sell the box. The guy at the front of the show picked through the best cards and offered me $8. I then took the rest and they guy offered me $5. I needed $14 for an '80 Topps set. I had to borrow $1 from my mom.

I collected through high school, but it was 80's junk wax and a bunch of topps, fleer and donruss sets from those years. In my sophmore year of college in the fall of '91, I decided to sell everything. I posted them in the trader. A guy came and looked at them. I didn't want to hover. He looked at my albums that had some of my stars - some stuff I had gathered over the years like a '68 Seaver. He stole 15-20 cards out of my binder and told me that he wasn't interested. I then looked through them later and realized that he had taken those better cards. I ended up selling the collection for $250 and put it towards a used big screen TV so that I could be the BMOC (in my mind at least) in the college dorm.

Fast forward to 2012. I took my boys to Cooperstown and they had both the Ken Kendrick collection and a baseball card room. While in the baseball card room, I showed the boys all of those '70-'75's that I used to have and it bummed me out like it was 1980 all over again. Later that weekend, after we got back home, I was on ebay looking at those cards and lamenting selling them all for $13. My wife, tired of my whining, says with exasperation - "If you want those cards, just go buy them." By the end of that day, I bought complete sets for '80-'85. Within the next week, I had bought complete sets back to '76. Over the next two weeks, it was '73-'75. I then found someone who was selling '66 and '72. I found someone on Craigslist who had near sets of '71 and '68. The race was on.

5 years later, I have '54-current in Topps, '50, 53 (Color & B&W), '54, and '55 Bowman plus 60-63 Fleer, '52 Red Man and some other test issues. My wife reminds me on occasion that her invitation was to buy the '70-'75 shoe box back - not every card ever made.

Through it all, I think of Melanie Lain. Not only did she give me the cards with no strings attached, she went to the card show and watched me sell them - never stepping in to say - "that was not the idea when I gave them to you. If you are going to sell them, just give them back." She was friendly and positive the entire way.

Given the 1-2 sentence responses to most of these, I have probably emoted way too much, but it does make me go back and think about how I acquired this collecting illness and why I remain borderline obsessive with it even today.