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Posted By: leon

Not sure of my first pre-war card but I got started back into collecting (from when I was a younger kid) about 10 yrs ago. My wife and I went to a small mall near by and there was a card show of about 15-20 tables in the middle of it, for the weekend. I saw "Smilin' Dave" and the rest is history. Smilin' Dave is so named as he is a nice, portly, gentleman, probably mid to late '50's, and he's always smiling. He always tells a great story too. I saw a '54 Banks in poor minus condition on his table, in a binder....the thing looked like it had been in some kids pocket all summer long. Then he probably used it for his spokes. It was about $10. I thought to myself that that was really cool that you could buy this 50 yr old card of a great HOF'er for only 10 bucks. Dave's whole table (rather big) had many cards just like this one...a few better but mostly like this one. I learned a lot from Dave and still see him around ever so often. His whole table has the value of about 1 PSA 8 common nowadays. He sure has a lot of fun though. My 1st two notable pre-war cards (don't know if they were my very first) were a PSA 7 T205 Johnson I bought from my mentor and partner in crime, Scott B., and a nice E102 Cobby I bought from John Spencer. It was all down hill after those two cards.....I guess I should blame those 3 gentlemen for my addiction....