[SteveMitchell]

I discovered baseball cards in the spring of 1957 after acquiring a few Topps Davy Crockett cards sometime a year or two earlier. (No memory of where or exactly when; perhaps they were gifts.) The first card set I would complete was the 80-card green back Davy Crockett set; the first baseball set, the 1963 Topps.

Spent about every available cent from 1957 to 1964 on baseball (and a few other) cards except for my Chuck Schilling model glove (1963) which set me back nearly $20 - or a full year of baseball card buying in those days. (Starting in 1960 or '61, I virtually completed the each Topps set while accumulating more than 1,000 duplicates each time.)

My last "kid collection" [insert asterisk here] buy was in the late summer of 1964 when I bought lots of the 1964 Topps Giant Size cards. I did not buy even a single pack in 1965 or for a few years thereafter.

The asterisk: Despite not buying the current cards from neighborhood stores starting in 1965, I did make a couple of purchases via mail order: a 1955 Bowman set (from Barry S. Newman) and 1954 Topps baseball set (Frank Nagy). Both sets were in tip-top condition and, if memory serves correctly, the '55 Bowman cost $12 and Frank let me have a deal on the '54 at something less than $10. (Each was acquired in either 1965 or '66.)

Thanks for the great trip down memory lane.