When I was a kid, Graig Nettles was my favorite player. I wore #9 in little league, played third base, modeled my batting stance after his (though I hit righty).
When the 1981 Fleer set was issued, my friends and I were obsessed with the set. There was no internet, obviously, so discovering all the errors was a matter of sometimes discovering them ourselves, sometimes reading about them in hobby magazines that came out just once a month, sometimes finding out about them from card dealers.
The "C" Nettles error from that set became the most coveted card in our neighborhood. Our local card shop had one - Dollars and Sense, in Ridgewood, NJ. It was $17.
My father left when I was 9 years old, and my sister and I were raised by my mother. We had no money. In 1981, seventeen dollars might as well have been seventeen million dollars to our family.
For my birthday that year, my mom bought me that card. I knew what she paid for it, and I knew how she must've had to scrimp and save to get it. I put it in a plastic case I had, and it hasn't left that case since 1981. It's worth about fifty cents today, but it's my favorite card.
-Al
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