December 1969 convention in Massachussetts

[trdcrdkid]

A few weeks ago, in a post entitled "1969: The dawn of card conventions" (here: http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=218969), I posted several articles from Sports Collectors' News tracing the emergence in 1969 of the first sports collectors' "conventions". At that point such conventions were just gatherings of a dozen or fewer collectors at someone's house, but some collectors traveled a significant distance to get to them. Although Sports Collectors' News editor Mike Bondarenko declared it "the era of the convention" in the September-October 1969 issue (actually written in November), the only specific convention I was able to find a record of in that year was the first annual West Coast Sports Collectors Convention on August 23, 1969 at the home of Jim Nowell in Brea, California.

Here is one that I overlooked. In the January 1970 issue of The Trader Speaks, Mike Anderson (who had been writing for hobby publications since the 1950s and was a newspaper photographer by trade) wrote up a description of a gathering of collectors that had taken place at his home in South Weymouth, Massachussetts in early December 1969, less than a month after Bondarenko had written his editorial. Anderson specifically says "this wasn't a convention in the sense that we had anything special like a ballgame planned", but it sounds like it was the same type of gathering as the other early "conventions" that began to proliferate and become more organized starting in 1970. Five of the nine attendees were from out of state, food was served, and the focus was on showing off people's collections, trading, and discussing the hobby.

[Donscards]

Originally Posted by trdcrdkid

A few weeks ago, in a post entitled "1969: The dawn of card conventions" (here: http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=218969), I posted several articles from Sports Collectors' News tracing the emergence in 1969 of the first sports collectors' "conventions". At that point such conventions were just gatherings of a dozen or fewer collectors at someone's house, but some collectors traveled a significant distance to get to them. Although Sports Collectors' News editor Mike Bondarenko declared it "the era of the convention" in the September-October 1969 issue (actually written in November), the only specific convention I was able to find a record of in that year was the first annual West Coast Sports Collectors Convention on August 23, 1969 at the home of Jim Nowell in Brea, California.

Here is one that I overlooked. In the January 1970 issue of The Trader Speaks, Mike Anderson (who had been writing for hobby publications since the 1950s and was a newspaper photographer by trade) wrote up a description of a gathering of collectors that had taken place at his home in South Weymouth, Massachussetts in early December 1969, less than a month after Bondarenko had written his editorial. Anderson specifically says "this wasn't a convention in the sense that we had anything special like a ballgame planned", but it sounds like it was the same type of gathering as the other early "conventions" that began to proliferate and become more organized starting in 1970. Five of the nine attendees were from out of state, food was served, and the focus was on showing off people's collections, trading, and discussing the hobby.

Bob Thing is still in the hobby and still lives in Maine.--I have known Bob since 1978 and one of the Best guys in the business. He still does the Greater Boston show twice a year. When I had my shop in the 80's, he would bring me my supplies and new Topps sets every year. These old reports are really great and fun to read on the old days.