I've been collecting since 1982 or so when I was 10 or 11. Although, there were many years in between where I was MIA, I would say the past 5 years is when I started really shelling out my hard earned money on autograph memorabilia. I also got burned with buying some items from the big crackdown era in the late '90s (Operation Bullpen), which may be the reason why I lost interest in autograph collecting for many years.
I always felt that it was useless for me to hunt down all HOF signatures and just collect the players I admire. Plus, there are too many HOFers that I wouldn't care to have in my collection anyways.
