How did you get started Collecting

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Posted By: Robert

I just thought it would be interesting to tell but I started collecting HOF only cards in 1973 at the age of 11. During the summers I worked for my dad for $50.00 a week. Every Saturday I would take the bus to Santa Monica and Fairfax to ACME cards, owned by Goody Goldfladen (NOT sure of speling) I would go in there and tell him who I wanted Cobb, Ruth whatever and he would come back with a fist full of cards for me to go through, Cobbs where $6.00 and Ruth $35.00. I once asked him for Plank and he said that was at least a $50.00 card. If I only knew then what I know now..

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Posted By: Chris Counts

In the spring of 1970, my mom gave me some money and sent me down the street to the corner grocery store to buy some vegetables. I was nine years old. For reasons I can't explain, I spent the money on baseball cards. The packs contained posters and I very distinctly remember the first one had Ollie Brown of the Padres in it and the second one had Willie Davis of the Dodgers. On my way home, my dad drove by on his way home from work and I explained to him what happened. He seemed amused and took me back to the grocery store where he bought my mom some vegetables and he bought me some more baseball cards.

About a year later (1971, when I was 10), my dad drove me to Hollywood to visit Goodwin Goldfaden at Adco Sports Book Exchange (at least I believe that's what he called it). He seemed completely unimpressed by my enthusiasm for old cards, he was a bit of a grouch (an understatement), and even at such an early age I clearly treated my cards better than he did (he nervously and noisely shuffled them like they were playing cards, constantly banging the edges and dinging the corners). I walked out with a handful of 1957 Topps cards, still one of my favorite sets. The highlight was a Don Drysdale rookie (I paid 15 cents for it ... at the time there was no premium for rookies). From that moment on I was hooked on old cards ...

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Posted By: Robert

Chris,

Your right it was ADCO on Santa Monica Blvd just east of Farifax. And he was a grouch and handled his cards like they where worthless. I remember he used to hold one end of the pile with his right hand and then with his left thumb he fold them back on the edge like he was going to shuffle. I heard he is still alive and living in Van Nuys

Robert

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Posted By: jackgoodman

If you ever made it into his backroom, it was like one of those rooms in which the owner never threw anything away. Boxes upon boxes upon cabinets upon stacks of other stuff. But, if you asked for a 1917 rootie katootie bread card of Willy the mascot, he would grumble as he went into the backroom and then return within minutes with a whole box full of 'em. He was probably the first real card store. Gosh that brings back memories......

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Posted By: Julie

is that the Forum has had this topic so many times that some of us are tired of telling our stories! It's nice to read some of the new ones though!~

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Posted By: Robert

Julie,

Sorry I am new to this forum and did not see anything like it so I thought it was a good subject. I apoligize for being a newbie. Maybe I should just read and not participate.

Robert

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Posted By: jay behrens

Search function. Known it, use it, live it Aside formt he great people of this board, it's the single best feature of this site. If it's been asked before, you can get your answer right away rather than wait for a response.

Jay

Jay

I've just reached Upper Lower Class. I am now officially a babe magnet for poor chicks.

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Posted By: Julie

you should participate, and look up stuff on the "search posts," WHY did you think I was telling you not to post stuff! That's the OPPOSITE of what I said!

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Posted By: Dave Williams

My sister, bless her heart, gave me a pack of 71 Topps she paid for with her hard earned allowance money. I opened it, pulled a Steve Carlton card, promptly took the scissors to it and trimmed it so it would fit in the pictures section of my wallet.

I was 8.

Then every spare penny I found went to baseball cards, football cards, and basketball cards. We'd walk through neighborhoods and pick up soda bottles and milk bottles for the deposit, then buy packs of cards with the change.

After a friend of my dad's gave me about 100 early 60's cards, all HOF'ers, including Mantle, Mays, Aaron, Clemente, etc... I was hooked. Never mind I played a game with all of them, and creased and tore them, plus initialed them so my friends wouldn't steal them....

Aside from my college days in the early 80's when I was flat broke, and sold a bunch of cards to finance pizza's and burgers, I've still got most of my cards.

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Posted By: Glenn

Found a Ruth card in a library book. No idea what book it was, but I've still got the card. 1986 Big League Chew, but still -- Ruth! Dad took me to my first card show at the Holiday Inn a few weeks later. I purchased a 1972 Kellogg's 3D Ty Cobb, a 1986 Fleer League Leaders card of local boy and rookie sensation Will Clark, and one wax pack of 1986 Donruss -- the highlight of which for me was the Pirates' Johnny Ray because he had the highest career batting average. I left the hobby in 1992 when I was no longer able to keep up with the number of different sets being produced and returned in 2002 when my budding interest in ebay and a gift of Astros tickets from my then-girlfriend (now wife) reminded me of how much I enjoyed those first six years.

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

I know it ain't "vintage"...

but two words got me started in really collecting for keeps as opposed to just buying the cards to play with and trash:

RENATA GALASSO

If she has one ad in "Baseball Digest" in the 1970's, she had a thousand.

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Posted By: Dave Williams

I remember calling Renatto in the early 90's when I had this rum dum card shop part time to order something, I don't recall what.

I'm talking to her, and she must have run that whole mail order thing out of her kitchen, she's screaming at kids, kids are fighting, it was surreal.

I never ordered anything again.

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Posted By: MikeB

In 1974 I was 9 years old. I swept the hair off the floor at a local barber shop and filled the coke machine for 25 cents. I could buy 2 packs of cards and a piece of candy at the dry goods shop across the street. In 1992 I went to my first national. I bought my a T202 with Matty, and it has been vintage cards since.