Nice idea for a thread.
I've been collecting for over 40 years [you'd think I'd have a better collection after all that time] so there are lots and lots of people who've influenced me, but I wanted to recognize a few here:
I started collecting when I was a tyke, with Topps baseball and football cards. My first big year for those sports was 1971. In 1972 I started ripping packs of basketball cards. 1975 is the year I started buying hockey cards. I quickly moved on to the chase for older cards. My uncle Fred gave me
The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book (Little Brown, 1973; Brendan C. Boyd & Fred C. Harris) and I read it until it fell apart. It was my first real exposure to the art of golden age Topps and Bowman and those cards were now on my radar. I found
The Complete Book of Baseball Cards: For the Collector, Flipper and Fan [1975; Steve Clark] and was hooked on T cards.
My first card show was Thanksgiving 1976 at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York, sponsored by the ASCCA. My father took me there on Friday on the way out of town for the holiday weekend. I’d become a Willie Mays fan when he returned to New York in 1973, so my first great project was to collect an example of every Mays card. I finished the Topps run at that show with the 1952 and 1953 cards. My mother nearly ripped my father’s head off when she found out that he loaned me $45 to buy them.
We moved to L.A. in 1977 and the only good thing about the move as far as I was concerned was that I fell ass-backwards into perhaps the richest collecting environment around. I quickly became involved with the West Coast Card Club, which held monthly meetings in a church basement and later a social hall in Northridge. Everyone who was a regular at those meetings was an influence on my collecting.
My collection at that point was pretty much about the four sports, Topps, Bowman and a smattering of T cards. It was during that time that I focused on a few Western regional issues that have ever since fascinated me: Zeenuts, Bell Brand, 1968 Atlantic Oil.
I put away the cards after the 1980 baseball season and really did not return to them for nearly a decade, when I decided to attend a massive show at the Moscone Center in San Francisco as a welcome diversion from law school. Unfortunately, in a moment of existential panic in 1987 I sold off a big chunk of my collection to raise some cash before law school. I really did not buy much at the Moscone show but I was re-energized to start collecting. I then attended shows throughout the Bay area if I could get to them on BART or other public transit.
When I returned to L.A. after graduating and got a job and started having disposable income, I really got back into collecting, aided by the abundance of shows. It was a rare weekend that I did not have at least a show a day to attend.
My collecting changed immeasurably around that time owing to two meetings at shows. At one, a fellow had 1948 Leaf cards of Barney Ross and Benny Leonard. I sort of knew that boxing cards existed but seeing these, I was instantly smitten. I bought the pair for a few bucks and took them home to show my father. He looked at the Ross card and said the words that changed my collection forever: “I think my cousin Ray fought him.”
You could have knocked me over with a puff of air. “Dad,” I said, “if you have a cousin who was a professional boxer that means
I have cousin who was a professional boxer.” He then told me about our cousin Ray Miller for the first time and I realized that I, klutz of the month, was related to a world-class athlete.
The other collection-changer for me was meeting an old-time collector named John Spalding. Some of you might have known John. He was a gentleman collector from the Bay area with a strong background in PCL history and sports. But that isn’t what got me interested. It was his album of prewar Exhibit cards. I’d never seen anything like these. Over the course of several shows and a few years I purchased stacks of them from John, while making a general pest of myself picking his brain about the issue and others as well.
Finally, I wanted to give a shout out, as others have, to Mark Macrae. Mark has been instrumental in mentoring Anthony, Jason and me in the surprisingly difficult art of show running. You can't just rent a space and put on a show like an old Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland movie; there is a ton of work and effort that goes into it, and Mark has gone above and beyond answering our questions.
BTW, our third show will be May 3, 2014, at a new location in Gardena.