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DJThis is a good thread and only improved by the people who "get it". I agree with John and David.
I long for the "good old days" and I will never forget how excited I got about getting SCD (been anti-SCD since 1996), the latest issue of CCP (Current Card Prices), the yearly Beckett and Eckes PG, a signature of my favorite Hall Of Famer (who wasn't charging for a signature) and
mailing lists / catalogs in my mailbox from some amazing people. The catalogs were made out of newsprint and folded over and by the time I got the thing, the seller was already out of everything I wanted.
In the late seventies, after the purchase of my first ever trading card (a 1976 Topps card of a Pirates player named Larry Demery at an antique store) for 10 cents, my father found it interesting that I would embrace by accident something he collected as a child. He told me the stories that we all heard with subtle variations. In this case, I would soon realize that he had tortured DeLong's in his bicycle spokes to create that flickering sound. What followed shortly for Christmas was an envelope full of 1953 Topps cards...Campanella, Mize, Feller, Berra, Wynn, Antonelli...the guys he remembered seeing in person because of his head start on life.
I would befriend at a young age a veteran collector who was retired and fawned over tales as he flipped through album pages full of Goudey's and Playball's sharing the adventures of Hal Schumacher, Arky Vaughn and Lefty Grove. Stopping at every page to tell a tale. "Lefty Grove was the dirtiest son-of-a-bitch I ever saw" he would say and then flip to another page where the image of Rudy York would bring forth a story. The cards were not even close to Mint but he didn't care and neither did I. I don't even think the stars were complete as I don't remember the Bambino having feet.
In 1990, with money in my bank account, I heard that he wanted to sell his collection. He was in his eighties and he had grand children and great-grand children and wanted to do something for them. He had planned ahead by purchasing a price guide and when I sat down, he told me how much he wanted for the whole collection. He said "$300,000".
$300,000? He said he looked up each card and added the values up and came up with this. Of course this was absurd because he was using the EX-MT prices and charging me individually the retail price was simply not fair. The collection at the time was probably worth $25-30K at most. I told him that the price was bit high and tried to explain to him on how to price out cards due to condition. This for some reason angered him and he stormed out of the room grabbing a box full of packed binders. His wife said that he didn't want to sell his memories and apologized about his behavior. Nice lady.
DJ