My dad collected coins as a kid, and tried to get me into it when I was a kid, but I was always much more interested in baseball cards. Actually I started with Wacky Packages, which first came out when I was 7, and then I moved on to baseball cards a couple of years later when I became a baseball fanatic at age 9.
When I got back into baseball cards in my mid-20s after a break, I quickly focused on pre-WWII cards, but my funds were limited. So I built as broad a type collection as I could by looking for bargains and getting as much bang for my buck as possible, generally spending no more than $100 on a card, and usually no more than $50. That philosophy soon led me to get into non-sport N, T, and E cards and trade cards, both of which were much more affordable but came from the same era and had many of the same characteristics I liked about vintage baseball cards. As I've mentioned on here before, I now have several thousand trade cards, almost 20 albums' worth, and a pretty decent type collection of non-sport N and T cards along with several sets and near sets of T cards.
I've also amassed half a closet full of tabletop baseball games, another long-term interest of mine, and lately I've been branching into games of other sports. And I have over 5000 books, including pretty decent collections on certain topics (Shakespeare, Medieval English history, baseball history, early 20th century pop culture). But that's a story for another time.
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