Ben,
I felt privileged to have read your post. Thanks for sharing, great story.
I didnt know you were a sentimental guy.
Great thread.
At age 6, my dad told me, out of the blue, one day at my grandparents, that he kept all his cards.
Didnt mention it before, even though I had collected since birth about, and then sat down with me, in a serious discussion at my grandfathers house, where they had been kept for 30 years at the time. It was all there, 1953-1960, baseball, football, basketball. every set about.
And then I was shown my grandfathers generation of cards. My grandfather had kept T-206s from the 1910s, and my dad had added from tobacco shops and stands in Manhattan. These tobacco shops and stands were fill-ins for formal baseball card shops from 1950-1970. My dad told me he paid 25 cents for the T-206 green Cobb in circa 1960.
I believe I received 9 cards that day. The first card I received from my dad's collection was a 1956 Hank Aaron.
And there it all was. I learned from the cards. They were still the internet in the 1980s, along with books. and learned from my family the history of baseball, and how to care for the cards.
As I got older, I wanted to be closer to the actual players. and then, closer to the players actually playing the game. I moved from cards, to autographs, to pre-war game used and for the c.1900-1915 group, photos. Cards became autographs became game used.
My grandfather J@mes Fuld was an attorney by day, and a sheet music collector, really a historian of music, by night/weekend/vacation.
He assembled our history of popular music - The Star Spangled Banner, Happy Birthday, Mary had a Little Lamb, etc. from collecting the sheet music, from 1600 to 1900. from first edition to final edition. alterations, developments. music and lyric may have been created separately and merged over time. He also collected the handwritten spontaneous creations. So he really collected to piece together the history of popular music. At one point he owned 3 of the surviving 7 original printings of the Star Spangled Banner printed in 1814. Incredibly, they were not tremendously expensive, like Ruth jerseys and Wagners were not.
I have a researching/collecting gene, I cant help it. I guess thats my why. My 2 year old son has about 80 little toy horses of various sorts. Lord help him and us.
But I love the game. Playing, and researching and collecting.