Posted By:
Ed McCollumI started collecting baseball cards in 1972. My grandfather bought me a pack of cards at the local Kroger store, and even though I couln't chew the gum (I had been diagnosed with diabetes earlier that year), I insisted that he buy me a pack so I could see what they looked like. I was hooked.
Over the next three years, I collected comlete sets of the Topps cards. Sometimes spending a weeks allowance to buy twenty packs at a dime a piece to get one card that I needed from a high series, and throwing the rest away. But by age 12, I gave it up. Cards were for kids, not teenagers. I put all the cards in a lock box in my closet at home and basically forgot about them.
Move ahead twelve years. I'm fresh out of college, have moved six and a half hours from Mom and Dad's, and I'm home for Christmas. Imagine my suprise to see several very heavy boxes under the tree with my name on them. Inside one was my complete set from '72, '73 in another, '74 in another, and a set from '84 in the last. Mom said she came across the cards in the lockbox, and thought I might still want them. She even found a set at a local store for that year to join them. But if I wanted them, they had to leave the house with me. Otherwise, the same fate that met my brothers cards ten years before I was born was sure to happen. Out to the trash pile they would go, and they would be burnt. I took them, and got started all over again.
I got married four years later. My wife took it in stride that every year, my Mom would give me a set of Topps cards for Christmas. Over those first couple years, I was even able to complete the run from '76-'83, and my wife even bought me my first vintage card, a red background Ty Cobb T206 for our first anniversary. The T206s became my new hobby, while I still got the Topps every year for Christmas.
Mom called Sunday night. Seems she found a set for this year, but it's $60. did I still want them, considering that would be about all I got for Christmas? It didn't take long to decide. Ballplayers today aren't what they used to be. Do I want a portion of my meager card collecting budget to go to thier union, and help support the guys who can't make it on a base salary 73 times my yearly salary? No. I'll concentrate on the T cards, and buy the poor to fair condition classics, and stop with the current madness. My son, who is 11, will still get a complete set, as he has every year since birth, but I'm giving up. I'd rather get a poor condition Bender portrait than a complete set dedicated to cry-baby, steroid using egomaniacs for my money.
Sorry to ramble, but I feel better now. Thanks.
Ed