Share a great hobby story

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

With all the negativity currently dominating the boards (and understandably so) I thought it might be a good time to share a feel-good hobby story. It would be great if it highlights someone in the hobby positively like a dealer, or fellow collector, but any happy story will do.

I'll start with how I got into the hobby.

In 1981 my older brother was having his tonsils out and I was at H & L Greens looking to buy him something for his hospital stay. I wound up seeing baseball cards (somehow for the first time) and bought him 2 1981 Topps Rack Packs.

We were the last generation that played with our cards and we were both hooked. We played Flip, Knock Down the Leaner and other games. We also invented baseball games based on the statistics on the back of the cards.

For whatever reason our first packs seemed very Royals heavy and I remember several of their players making our All-Pro (that's what we called it) team. This was denoted by writing "AP" in black crayon on the back.

Our cards went through a lot of the regular child hood purges but somehow we managed to hold onto 1 card up until only a few years ago. When I moved in with my future wife I somehow lost track of the George Brett "AP" card. I don't know how, but I did. It had heavily rounded corners, tons of surface wear and, of course, the crayon "AP" designation on the back. Still if someone somehow stumbled across that card I'd pay more than the PSA 10 price for the same card to have it back. don't try and make one, I know that card like the back of my hand!

Why is a story about losing a card positive? because when I tell it I can still recapture the feeling of opening those first two packs with my brother; the feeling of learning how to fling cards around from my dad; the games we created, and the players we developed a love for based on those games. That little piece of cardboard is so powerful that THINKING about it can bring me back almost 40 years.

Your turn!