[jingram058]

I started collecting initially in the 1960s, and put several Topps complete sets together from packs, with my parents blessing.

Then I got older, lost interest in cards and moved out of the house. When cards were later deemed valuable, my mother had given my cards away, as I had told her go ahead and do. She asked me many times after I had moved what did I want to do with them, as my old bedroom had become a guestroom.

Then I got back into the hobby while I was in the Navy, and even in the late 1980s/early 1990s could acquire such things as Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig Goudeys cheap, and many others I acquired from relatives leaving the hobby, friends leaving the hobby, etc.

Next, I foolishly sold some valuable cards for a fraction of their worth at a time when I was strapped for cash. I vowed to never do that again, and haven't.

Then I got back in again just before Covid and managed to put together a complete 1953 Bowman set, 1962 Topps set, and acquired a bunch of great cards from various pre- and post-war sets which I will keep, and when I croak my family knows what to do. Some of this in a safe deposit box.

Now, the so-called hobby has turned into investing in graded cards, that people perspire about and even with my 3 pensions I cannot afford, and frankly don't want to.

So I am out again. I read this forum, and like doing so. I lead the charge on raw cards, which are basically extinct here. This forum, and Blowout as well, is a country club for graded card investors. That's all fine, but make no mistake, baseball cards is now a hobby for very wealthy people, which I am not. I live in retirement in a very nice upscale Florida neighborhood comfortably. But I do not have the disposable income to drop thousands of dollars on pieces of cardboard and frankly, I don't want to.