I've mentioned this a couple of times in posts since I joined, but probably my best story like this is the first card show I ever attended.
I was a regular reader of The Sporting News (the local drug store held me a copy at $0.35 per week) and was 12-13 years old in the early 1970's. Answering some sort of ad that was in TSN led me to getting a few of the early hobby newsletters. And from one of those newsletters I received a letter from a collector in Grove City, Pennsylvania, about an hour from my house in a suburb of Youngstown, Ohio.
Bill MacTaggart invited me to a show he was hosting at his house. My parents drove my brother and I over and we found Bill's house on Grant Street. There were a handful of collectors set up on card tables and other tables on the front porch and in the living room. It was amazing to see all the older cards everyone had that I had only seen on one of the early checklist books that we had.
I can't remember any of the cards we bought or how many cards we bought. I do know that we had a wonderful time and my parents hit it off with Bill and his wife Jean. Bill eventually rented a hall for his show (I think he had two different locations) and my brother and I each took a table at his show for several years. The show circuit around Youngstown was Bill's show in Grove City in June and Jim Borgen's show at the McKinley Memorial in Niles in July.
I've traded Christmas cards and letters with Bill for nearly 50 years now. In those early years in the 70's, he would often buy my brother and I boxes of cards that were in Grove City and not Youngstown (including hockey cards) and ship them to us. We've traded cards over the years and I've thoroughly enjoyed our hobby friendship.
I haven't seen Bill for way too long. A couple of times since I moved to Indiana in 1997 we've been back in Youngstown and gone to the outlet mall in Grove City - I've often kicked myself for not having set up a lunch or dinner with Bill.
I see the occasional picture of early hobby "shows". I wish we would have had pictures of the set-ups on Bill's porch.
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