Jay - Really good thread.
I started about the same time as you did, but I hit up Renata Galasso in '77 for 500 cards and even got the '76 traded set as a throw in. We lived just a couple of miles from the Hostess Factory Store, so every week I would convince my mom to take me and let me get some cards I needed for the set that year - Big Wheels, Twinkies, Chocodiles, etc...
Throw in trips to Burger King for Yankees cards and various and sundry Kellogg's cereals and I had all the basic food groups covered.
I think the moment that the hobby jumped the shark came a couple of years later when KMart issued their All Time Great set. From there on, the number of companies ballooned and the print runs must have skyrocketed at that point. I believe that the monthly price guides started (with the up and down arrows tracking card prices like futures) around then as well, which, as someone commented in (I think)the 'best and worst' thread, was a large part of the move from hobby to business.
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