[Eric72]

Ladies and gentlemen, the story you are about to read is (probably not) true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent...and I would never (admit to being so lame as to) take my opening directly frm the old TV show Dragnet, which was in its prime in 1954.

In 1954, there was a boy named Eric. Like many young collectors of the day, he eagerly anticipated the release of Topps' newest baseball card line. As a die-hard Yankees fan who treasured his '52 and '53 Mickey Mantle cards, he could scarcely wait to get his hands on the '54.

He searched in vain, all summer long, for that '54 Topps Mantle, but to no avail. Had he lived in a town with a population of more than 54 and the General Store stocked the Bowman offering that year, things might have been different for poor Eric. However, lady luck was not smiling on him.

Throughout his childhood, and into adulthood, Eric combed the barns and farmhouses of his tiny rural community, hoping against hope that someone would be willing to part with their copy of this elusive card. He never did leave Tinytown, PA, nor did he give up his boyhood dream of grabbing that '54 Mantle. And it wasn't until nearly thirty years later that he stopped searching.

In the spring of 1982, Eric learned that there would be a Baseball Card Show at the local Volunteer Fire House. Figuring he would finally be able to snag the card that haunted him all these years, he woke up early that day and headed down to the fire house. In fact, he was the first one in line...a full two hours before the show opened.

When the doors were finally unlocked, Eric vaulted himself into the show and frantically went from dealer to dealer, asking each of them the same question..."do you have a '54 Topps Mickey Mantle?" He didn't quite understand the reactions they gave him until he stumbled upon the 19th and final vendor set up that day.

The kind dealer handed him a well-worn copy of a thin book, made from newsprint paper, with the title, "Current Card Prices" on the cover. As he flipped through its pages and realized what he was seeing, a look of dawning comprehension came over his face.

"You mean they never effing made one?" he asked the dealer.

"I'm afraid not." came the reply.

Eric dropped to the floor, dead on the spot, from a condition the Medical Examiner could only describe as, "a broken heart."

This message board was created in his memory, many years later, by those who were there that day.