[familytoad]

Interesting topic!

I know when I started. 1971 Football cards. I would have just turned 9 years old.
Then I hit it as hard as my meager allowance would go!
That run lasted (by the volume of cards from my original collection) until 1978.

I had virtually no 1978 Football but a lot of 1978 baseball so I think I determined that cutoff pretty well.

In 1988 I started again, along with the rest of the planet.
I stopped buying packs in 1992 or so.

I got into prewar in 1991 which is still my main gig even though I have almost every Topps set complete too. It was great going backwards to fill those sets (I have baseball and football, Bowman and Topps , mostly finished but some I don’t collect at all… you know, the ugly ones:-))

I have chewed a lot of bad gum, people!