My first card show was in early 1980, when I was 14 years old, even though I had been going to card shops since 1976, soon after I started collecting. This was in the Chicago area, and I'm not sure exactly where that first show I attended was, except that I'm pretty sure it was in the northern suburbs somewhere. I mainly remember how big and overwhelming (in a good way) it seemed. There was a rumor going around the show that somebody had ripped an unopened pack of 1952 Topps high numbers and gotten a Mantle, which was just starting to become the hot card it became. I didn't have much money to spend, and the only thing I specifically remember buying at that show was a Saran-wrapped lot of 1956 Topps with Koufax showing on the top -- and then it turned out there was another Koufax inside. I'm not sure what I paid for that lot, but it can't have been more than $20. Eleven years later, I traded that second 1956 Koufax to a dealer for some other 1950s cards.
On October 11, 1980, my family was out on a Saturday afternoon and we stopped at a little card show being held at a mall, where I remember seeing a bunch of 1938 Goudeys at one table and wishing I could afford them. I remember the date because it was the same day as game 4 of the 1980 National League Championship Series between the Phillies and the Astros, a crazy game that I missed part of because we were out at this show.
In 1981 and 1982 (and maybe in 1980 and/or 1983) I went to several card shows at the Hillside Holiday Inn (a suburb of Chicago about halfway between Glen Ellyn, where I grew up, and downtown Chicago). It was at one of those shows in 1981 that I paid $10 for my first Old Judge, which I still have. The Hillside Holiday Inn is just off the Kennedy Expressway, the easiest way to get between the western suburbs and downtown Chicago, and whenever I go past there I think of those card shows from the early 80s.
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