Quote:
Originally Posted by ALBB
The 62 Post cards were a set that...
.after being in the baseball card hobby for a while.. and figured out Topps/Bowman/Fleer set and prices....a lot of guys saw it as an easy set..with quite reasonable prices...and found it pretty easy to complete
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Albert, as someone who collected them ravenously in 1962, I must say the Post Cereal set was most assuredly NOT easy to complete THAT year. I turned 8 the summer of '62, saw the Post commercials with major league baseball stars touting the "FREE" trading cards on Saturday morning TV, and my interest got aroused.
I proceeded to go grocery shopping with my dear mother every chance I got. She allowed me to select the cereal. I had a decent memory for an 8-year-old, and so I chose Post boxes with cards I did not have, naturally.
I was the youngest in a family of 5. My Dad was gone much of the time in his documentary work for NBC as a motion picture cameraman. If my older brother or sister ate cereal, I wasn't aware of it. Had I been a couple years older, I probably would have enlisted their help to eat the Post we had....
My Mom preferred the 40% Bran Flakes. I enjoyed the Alpha-Bits, but I forced myself to eat whatever we had to get more of the cards. I was very much aware of the cause and effect.....
Now, I avidly collected the baseball Topps, and still recall getting Ralph Houk to complete the first series. Yet, collecting Topps was a breeze compared to the Post Cereal. It wasn't even close. In my mind, I had to work like crazy to amass a good collection of the Post Cereal. Ever try to eat 2 bowls of cereal, one right after the other? To a kid who likes eating cereal, that was still a lot of work. Plus, I had to keep close watch when Mom was off to the supermarket. I also had to carefully, V-E-R-Y C-A-R-E-F-L-L-Y, cut the cards off the back of the box!
I well remember the time I reached 100 of the 1962 Post Cereal baseball. ONE HUNDRED CARDS---WOW!!! In my little kid's mind, that was a major achievement. I don't think I got very much farther along after 100 cards, but from my standpoint, I did well. Furthermore, I was much, much more engaged collecting the Post than I was the Topps. Those cards looked so colorful and vibrant, compared to the Topps. On top of that, Post gave us kids those terrific TV commercials to entice, and motivate us.. Topps offered no commercials; nada. So in my kid mind, Post, using a superlative of the time, was "THE MOST!"
About 15 years ago, during the lousy recession of 2008-09, I sold my childhood 1962 Topps baseball card collection, saving my best Roger Maris, and the ugly Mickey Mantle. I didn't get very much, but it was done through a rather mundane auction house. Then again, a childhood '62 Topps collection, even though I took good care of them through the years, was / is considered common as dirt.
As for my childhood 1962 Post Cereal baseball cards, you better believe I still have them! I worked too hard to amass those what, 110 cards.
The interesting twist to this story is the following year, I managed to get only one box of 1963 Post Cereal with the baseball cards on the backside.
Why, you might ask?
Simply put, I was thoroughly sick and tired of POST CEREAL, and I mean downright satiated. No more, until many years later.
As an adult, I was able to bid and win a pair of beautiful Post short prints from 1963----Roger Maris & Mickey Mantle. It seemed like they were everywhere in 1962, but then come 1963, Post virtually "hid" them on backs of a certain size of POST GRAPE NUTS FLAKES, that "wonderful" geriatric cereal known to keep people my current age on the go-go. As I stated earlier, I had a lot of fun writing that up in NEVER CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN.
Not to go off on my book, I will warn you that the Amazon digital download doesn't look right; the transfer did not go through quite right. Tragically, I am at a loss as to how to correct it. So, on the slim chance any of youse guys want the much better-looking physical copy of my E-book on a CD, requiring a disk drive on your computer to read, I do still have copies, for $30 bucks each, postpaid. I'm not planning to lower the price; if anything, I'll probably just throw the unsold copies away.
Well, if you've read thus far, thank you for allowing an old man to reminisce. The summer of '62 was a lot of fun, very FULL-filling.
--- Brian Powell