Great memories, Bob!

Was Kenmore Sportscards in one of those brownstones right near Kenmore Square where you walked up a short brick stairway in front of the building? I couldn't remember the name of the shop, but my mom used to drive me in back in the early 1980's and we'd park on a street behind the building (I remember 10 year old me thinking it was kind of a sketchy looking area :)). I was amazed that there was a whole store that had nothing but sports cards and collectibles!

New Star Market in El Centro, Calif
 

back in 1961-63 I bought rack packs of Topps. When the market closed, my parents were so upset and concerned about our young egos being deprived of the American Right to piss away...err, spend our hard earned nickels, dimes and quarters on baseball cards, so we packed up and moved to San Bernardino where I migrated down Del Rosa to R&S Liquor, Sage’s and White Front where baseball cards sucked every dime out of my young pockets. Little did I know the Baseball Gods would prevent me from EVER owning a Mantle portrait until I turned 30.
Life is unfair, so eat the desert first, as you sort through wax....

I remember growing up in a small town called Coopersville Mi until age 8. We would ride our bikes to Main St. and buy packs at the Quik Stop with Slush Puppies and Fleer Quicksand gum on allowance day.

After moving to Lansing in 82’ my mom would sit outside of a tiny shop called The Sports Collector Dugout run by a shady guy named Elliott and his wife while my brother and I were in. The shop had a permanent haze of smoke from Elliott and smelled horrible. He didn’t care about the kids in the shop while telling his secrets and spent the day talking to friends about his many exploits of ripping off buyers and sellers for braggadocio. I still have all my wax wrappers as I saved everything and they are all scalded from resealing poorly with an iron. I never knew a thing.

Thank god for the 1983 Michigan Topps packs, those were the first ones I would ever find a good card in. Amazing the stuff you just completely overlook as a kid.

The 'card shops' of my youth were our friends-who-had-older-brothers' houses. If Hendrix and Floyd posters suddenly started appearing on bedroom walls, we knew they were too busy learning how to play guitar or chase nubile tail to give one crap about shoeboxes filled with old cards, so they passed them off to their younger siblings. It was like looking in a museum, seeing all of these 'ancient' cards from the 60's...which was only a decade earlier. Then the trading of our brand new cards for some oldies would commence.

Well put and for me coming across collections throw away by moms during my morning paper route.

In 1977, my parents took me along to their friends' house. The friends' kids were adults and gone and their entire collection was in a 2 x 2 box in the garage. When they found out I was card-crazy they pulled out the box and said "take what you want". By the time my parents were ready to go home I'd pulled a 6" stack of HOFers from baseball and football. Seeing I was reluctant to leave that box, the friends asked if I wanted the rest.

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I spent hours going through that box at home, on the floor in my room.

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Around 11:00 I found the grail, the oldest card in the box: a 1955 Ted Williams.

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That had been a card I'd lusted after ever since I saw in in The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book. I was so thrilled I ran down the hall to show my parents. They did not share my enthusiasm for Teddy Ballgame, but I knew...

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Steve,
Your recollection is right on the money. I believe there's a restaurant there now, in the same building. I honestly can't recall if it was Fenway Sportscards or Kenmore Sportscards, but I believe it was the former.

I can relate. That book also made me lust after that card, so I purchased one through the mail for approximately $25 around 1981. I was nervous about spending that much for a baseball card.

Growing up in SE Virginia in the 1970's, my earliest remembrance of buying cards was at the local general store (BC Smiths if you sere my age or Rooster's if you were the previous generation), about a mile and a half from my house. We'd ride our bikes there, buy a few packs of 1977 baseball (spring/summer) or football (fall) cards and maybe a soda and Snickers bar. I can remember thumbing through those packs and looking for the All-Star or All-Pro border, knowing that something good was about to be uncovered.

Around that same time, a building in Newport News hosted the James River Antique Mall and there was a place in there that had old magazines and several boxes of cards. You could either by the cards outright (all the same price) or trade two-for-one. They were mostly newer cards from the '70's. I do remember one time the lady bought an older collection which had in it a 1966 Koufax, Mantle and Mays. No trading for those - she wanted something like $10-$15 each. I talked my parents into getting me the Mays, as he was most certainly the best of the bunch, for Easter.

We also discovered a pet store in Hampton that had some cards in the back of the store. Eventually the store closed, but one of the owners opened up a wonderful card store without the gerbils and fish. That was the beginning of The 10th Inning, owned by Don Harrison and Bob Neal, the latter the longtime GM of the Penninsula Pilots minor league team and a lifetime baseball man. The store still stands in Hampton, though its been in several locations. I just recently saw Don and he said new ownership would be taking it over this week.