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BryanI still remember opening my first pack of cards back in 1986. As a young buck in thr group I started collecting the stars of the day like Dwight Gooden and Don Mattingly. A good friend of mine began his collection at the same time as I did and together we were able to form the neighborhoods greastest collection. I can remember being very young and having older guys in the town come to us to try and buy cards. To this day I still don't know how we came across some of the cards that we had - all newer cards mind you. My first "old" card was a 1952 topps Mickey Vernon. From that point on I was hooked with older cards. While my friends were buying the new stuff I was looking through the penny boxes at the local card shop to try and find that beat up 1955 topps card. Growing up in Fredericktown, Ohio we did not have a ton shops to go to, actually we had none so most of my cards came from dad driving me to shows in Mansfield, Ohio so that I could drool over the 59 topps Mantle cards. I started to study up on the older players at a young age. Reading up on Cobb, and the Tinker to Evers to Chance combo, the great "three-finger" brown and most of all Christy Mathewson and how he was so admired by the entire world. As newer cards came the more I hated the gloss and special inserts and gold plated super secret 1 of 1 collections that started to creep up. Then I found ebay and auctions houses on the internet. I started to collect T and E cards and with the people that I have met I have grown my collection to more than what I could ever imagine. I am like most people that read this board I think. If it were not for the people that I have through the internet I would sold my cards and picked up the dining room set that my wife wanted:)