I got my first pack in 1969. We lived in a rural/suburban sort of area, some new construction mixed among old farms. One or two houses still had the old crank telephones and the local pharmacy was a great store/meeting place for everyone. It was also a sort of special treat to go there and get some penny candy.
For some reason I decided on baseball cards, and bought one pack.
I opened it sitting on the car with dad and he said "Hey this guy is pretty good"
The cards eventually found their way to the bottom of the toybox with a bunch of other small stuff, and Reggie had to wait a whole two years before any other baseball stuff joined him. By then a couple of the cards had probably become lost. The 71s had a coin! so Danny Cater joined Reggie in the toybox. Until early 74 when the Hank Aaron specials got me interested in old cards. And eventually the Reggie Jackson rookie got recovered from it's toybox exile and added to the collection, having survived 6 years in the toybox, several cleanings and a move.
I still have it, and the Cater coin.
But then I've always been a collector. as a younger kid I liked shorts that had lots of pockets so I could carry more "interesting stuff" back from the woods and fields behind the house.
My first try at collecting baseball stuff didn't go as well. 67 or 68 we went to a cookout and the soda had pictures inside the caps! I rounded up a couple big pocketsful before we had to go and mom confiscated them all to throw away. Apparently the rocks, and bits of fungus covered wood I usually kept were ok but a bunch of "dirty old bottlecaps" were just too much.
Steve B
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