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Posted By: David Smith

Two stories about finds that "never were" come to mind.

1) When I started collecting cards back in the late 1970's, I lived in a small town and asked any adult that I knew if they had collected cards when they were younger. Most hadn't. A few said they had but didn't know what happened to their collections. One said he had collected in the 1950's but he had given his cards to his Son's for their collections. Then their was the interim Minister of our church.

He was in his mid to late fifties. He said he had collected cards in the 1930's and had also been given cards his Father had collected when he was a boy. He said he had boxes of cards and that he put them in the attic of his house before he went to fight in WW II.

After he came back from the War, he went up to the attic to store some of his war items and found that his Mother had gotten rid of the cards because 1, she needed the space and 2, since he was a soldier, she thought he was too old and mature to keep his childhood baseball card collection.

2) There is a thrift store that I often go to and there is an 82 year-old man who works there. He stays up front by the cash registers to help answer customer questions and to help the Latino workers out if they have questions or ahve problems with the cash registers. So, most of the time, he has time on his hands to talk.

The things he mostly talks about are his war stories, his stories about being a cop in his Hot Rod Oldsmobile (which he built) and working for his Father as a child and the things he did in rural Pennsylvania back in the old days.

I once asked him if he ever collected baseball cards since he started talking about a ball glove I was buying. He said he collected cards back in the 1930's and that he paid for them by working for his Dad. He said his Dad owned a gas/service station that was located right next to his family's home. He said he would work during the week and then get paid and go into town and buy cards at the drugstore on Saturday's. He said he had a couple of shoe boxes full and that he kept the players organized by teams and stored under his bed.

He too, went off to fight in WW II but instead of his Mother getting rid of his cards, she kept them as something to remember him by just in case.....

Anyway, he said his cards were destroyed when a fire started late at night in the service station and spread to his house. He said his family barely had time to get out of the house and took what little they could grab as they were leaving.

David