well-said, Doug. Sadly, I was an idiot and didn't collect vintage cards back then, but I did buy comic books via mail. I can remember scouring the ads in the back to order their mailing lists - those were almost as cool sometimes as the actual comic books. The big problem we ran into back then was that if you found a real 'deal' on something, it had always been sold already. I'm guessing you ancient mail-in card purchasers experienced the same. Of course I was too cheap to pay for the long distance calls to check availability
