I got started with cards because Topps' Garbage Pail Kids were so popular when I was in 3rd grade. This led me to find a trading buddy at school who also collected baseball cards. My first card packs were '86 Topps, 35 cents at the local 7-11 or Cashion's grocery store. By the next year or so I had discoved what old card were down at a local antique shop. The cards were actually from the collection of former Milwaukee Braves catcher Paul Burris - who was from the area and still lived nearby, retired. I remember buying a '62 Topps Gil Hodges and a bunch of '54 Topps commons. Burris had stamped them all "1954" in small letters on the front. Anyhow, that set the hook. I collected modern (what at that time had become junk era wax) until I was in high school, but was always way more intrigued by the older cards. I traded with dealers at shops and shows, and had accumulated a nice little collection of postwar stars and HOF'ers by the time I went to college. I was interested in prewar, but back then it seemed that virtually no shop had anything as old as tobacco cards. You did see them at shows, but they were always way out of my price range. I was born too late lol, started going to shows in the late 80's instead of 20 years earlier.
I put the cards away in college, but got back into it when I discovered online auctions and ebay around 1999. The rest is history, I've collected on and off - mostly on - ever since. I could care less about autos and relics and it's very rare that I will buy a "pack" of anything new today. I think Topps Heritiage is cool, but way too expensive for what it is for me to consider seriously going after them.