How long you collected as a kid ?...

[hangman62]

I was thinking about this recently...How long or how many years did you collected cards as a kid. Im talking about that those " true passionate years of collecting cards as a youth".. I think its a lot SHORTER then you would think.
I know thinking back,.. for myself...it was ONLY a little bit in 66..a lot in 67,68..and kind of " out of it" by 69. As with many..when I just about got to my early teens...i started getting interested in "other things".

Ral G

[CW]

I stuck with it for awhile, collecting from '77 (age 7) through '85 (age 15). While I kept one geeky vice (my love for Rush music), I did fall out of baseball card collecting for about 15 years, getting back into collecting in '99.

[Bob Lemke]

I was very much into baseball cards from age 3 (1954) through 9 (1960). Football card interest spanned the years 1954-62. I think the last serious non-sports set I pursued was Civil War News in 1961.

I generally bought one pavk of the new baseball cards each spring to see what they look like, through the 1960s.

[dherm360]

I have been truely passionate since 1977. When I was younger I couldnt wait for each weekend to go to the local bowling ally or VFW. Luckily my parents were very supportive. Up until a few months ago I had never sold or traded any of my cards(then I sold four 2009 autos and bought a T205).
In the last year I have even come to enjoy the hobby even more by pretty much going exclusively with prewar. It has become exciting learning every day something new, and this board had a great deal to do with that, so thank you very much!

[novakjr]

Started in '86(age 6) picking up a pack here and there from the concession stand at the t-ball fields. Was pretty serious in '87. I just loved the '87 topps set. Collected somewhat seriously until about '93. A combination of too many sets coming out, the downfall of Bo Jackson, and somehow lost interest between Topps series 1 and 2. Going through my old collection, I've got a crapload of series 1 singles, and nothing at all from series 2 that year.. After '93, I really only collected casually for a few more years. A random pack here and there. But I still went to shows and collected a few of my favorite players. Cal, Molitor, Brett, Murray and pretty much my favorite Indians.. I got back into it for a bit in '98 when I started putting together the '98 Bowman set, but that quickly fizzled and I found myself completely out of collecting by '99(other than the 1982 Topps Traded Ripken that I bought in '01)

I started back up late in '04, when a buddy was showing me a t206 of his, and I decided I wanted one too. So to ebay I went, and I ended up with a beat to shit Krause pitching for under $10. And the collecting has been back on since then. Almost everything I have from my childhood collection is worthless, aside from a handful of HOF rookies. My childhood football collection is even worse, aside from having almost every possible Drew Bledsoe rookie(I think the number of rookies he ultimately had was another reason I lost interest in collecting altogether). I've never really gotten back into football, aside from slowly putting together the '56 topps set and some HOF rookies. Never got much into basketball other than star/HOF rookies.

[vintagetoppsguy]

I, too, started in '86 (age of 15 - late bloomer) and got very passionate about it in 1987. I sitll love opening '87 junk wax!!! I never quit the hobby and have been collecting for 25 years straight now. I will be 40 next month and I don't plan to ever stop.

[steve B]

A bit different here.
1969 - 1 pack
1970 - none?
1971 -1 pack
1972 -none?
1973 - none till we moved late in the year then some
1974- 77 a fairly typical ammount for a kid
late 77 - moved again to a town with a card store! It's been downhill ever since - a few periods of relative inactivity, but still collected a bit.

Steve B

[Robextend]

Originally Posted by vintagetoppsguy

I, too, started in '86 (age of 15 - late bloomer) and got very passionate about it in 1987. I sitll love opening '87 junk wax!!! I never quit the hobby and have been collecting for 25 years straight now. I will be 40 next month and I don't plan to ever stop.

I have the same love for 1987 Topps, I was 6 years old and that was the first set I started collecting. I must have bought (well, begged my mom anyway) 3 wax boxes worth of packs, and the rest is history. I did take a long layoff from the mid-90's up until I discovered my love for vintage around 2006. I was so disenchanted with the insert craze of the 90's that I just gave up for quite a while.

[BradH]

Originally Posted by CW

I stuck with it for awhile, collecting from '77 (age 7) through '85 (age 15). While I kept one geeky vice (my love for Rush music), I did fall out of baseball card collecting for about 15 years, getting back into collecting in '99.

CW-
You and I must have been separated at birth. The ‘77s were my first true love and I too took a “Rush break” in the 1980s. I came back to the hoppy and turned to tobacco cards when I landed my first “real” job in the mid 1990s, although I now collect as much 1950s football as I do old baseball.

I bought a few packs in 1976, but really dove in as a seven-year-old in 1977. I still have 500 or so of my original ’77 Topps cards in the same wooden box I housed them in (decorated with my little drawings of the team logos). I have since gone on to complete two very high-grade ’77 sets, and I’m working on a third, but I will always keep those originals because of the fond memories.

I collected for a few years until 1982, when all three card designs that year really turned me off, so I really didn’t buy any cards that year. A high school buddy and I bought a ton of 1986 and ’87 cards, most of which I sold a couple years back in a yard sale. Mom and Dad never really supported my hobby, but somehow a few packs always made their way into my Easter basket or under the Christmas tree.

[CW]

Originally Posted by BradH

CW-
You and I must have been separated at birth. The ‘77s were my first true love and I too took a “Rush break” in the 1980s. I came back to the hobby and turned to tobacco cards when I landed my first “real” job in the mid 1990s, although I now collect as much 1950s football as I do old baseball.

I bought a few packs in 1976, but really dove in as a seven-year-old in 1977. I still have 500 or so of my original ’77 Topps cards in the same wooden box I housed them in (decorated with my little drawings of the team logos). I have since gone on to complete two very high-grade ’77 sets, and I’m working on a third, but I will always keep those originals because of the fond memories.

"Brother from another Mother," as they say. 50's football?
I also appreciate those cards -- I had a blast while building a
NM+ '55 All-American set a few years ago.

I've always thought about putting together a high grade subset of
'77 Topps, collecting all the "All-Stars" from that set. The photography
and card layouts in the '77 set are some of the best from that era,
no doubt!

[Davids]

This is my first response as a relatively new member. I swore that I would just be a spectator but can't sit this one out! My first cards purchased were 62 Topps baseball in the spring of 1962 (end of grade 1) bought at Edwards' corner grocery store. I played "dropsies" only once and lost all my cards so never played again. I also placed high value on condition and my sets never came to school (only doubles for trading). I continued to buy baseball (and hockey and football, some non sport like pirates and civil war) every year until and including the summer of 1968 (between grade 7 and grade 8). It then became uncool and, after 3 aborted attempts, vividly remember throwing virtually everything else out (I still believe there is a box in the ceiling joists of our former family home which I would love to figure out how to gain access to). Included in the disposition were many cards that I had acquired from older kids going all the way back to 1953 (had the Mays but no Mantle) but, for some reason, no 1952s.
Every subsequent year I would buy a couple of baseball packs just to see what they looked like up to 1990. That year we were still playing in a seven a side touch football league but decided that we (all around 35yrs old) needed some youth if we wanted to continue to compete so we recruited some junior players. One of these kids didn't drive and lived near me so I became the driver and got to know him well. Guess what, he collected baseball cards so I decided to put together a 1990 Topps set card by card. I was again hooked and have collected ever since, I currently concentrate on 1952-1967 Topps along with all Bowman Baseball 1955 and prior.
As a postscript to this rant, I suffered my 56th birthday this year and got an amazing gift from my younger brother. Ready for this, he had found a calendar from non other than Edwards' grocery store which had been demolished probably 30 years previously!!

[CW]

Originally Posted by Davids

As a postscript to this rant, I suffered my 56th birthday this year and got an amazing gift from my younger brother. Ready for this, he had found a calendar from non other than Edwards' grocery store which had been demolished probably 30 years previously!!

Good stuff!

What a great thread this has turned out to be! I've enjoyed reading
every entry.

[Volod]

Thanks for bringing it up. Since I didn't start "re"collecting until some 30 years after initial childhood collecting, it has been a subject of some interest to me, since I wasn't sure of the exact points at which cards first grabbed my interest and then became passe. In the mid-1980's, I could still recall finding a few 1951 Bowman baseball cards in the schoolyard, and the 1952 and 1953 sets were powerful deja vu for me at card shows. But then, the 1954 sets were zippo, as far as my recall went, so I have to think the card fascination lasted just a scant two years. I have to think that my childish attention span shifted from gum cards to little league ball at that critical point.

[39special]

I started collecting in 1978 age 11.I would save my allowance, and went
to a local candy store and would buy a box of Topps,usually every couple
of months.Buy 1980 or 81 card stores started popping up in my area,
and my allowance went toward buying older cards.By 1983 girls and cars
became my priority,and I stopped collecting.In 2005 I got back in to
collecting.I'm still in to girls and cars but I collecting cards makes me feel
like I'm a kid again.

[ls7plus]

I began collecting starting with baseball in '58 at age five, and pretty much continued part way through 1969. I can still remember the excitement that echoed through the neighborhood when spring came along each year and some kid was the first to spread the news that the new Topps cards were out! Usually, we each got on our bikes and rode down to the corner market and/or the local drugstore and bought as many packs as we could afford. I always pretty much stuck to baseball, as if I wasn't playing it, I was reading about it, or watching it, or playing Stratomatic baseball with buddies for long hours at a stretch (which was very, very conducive to learning about pre-war stars, as we ordered not only the new game cards each year, but the all-time greatest team series and finally Stratomatic's hall-of-famer AL and NL series. We'd have a draft of all of the greatest players of all time that we had cards for, and play countless 50-game seasons before starting all over again--Ah, the delight of a youth filled to the brim with baseball!

Got back into the hobby in 1990 when a fellow lawyer at my office would bring his baseball cards in occasionally. Others made fun of him, but I thought they were pretty cool, so I began collecting again, mostly buying all the wrong stuff at first (read here new cards printed by the hundreds of thousands, at a minimum!), until I gravitated to vintage, about equally split between '50's to '60's and pre-war, in the early to mid-nineties (with something of a detour to McGwire and Sosa, plus Frank Thomas--how I loved to watch him hit) during that time. My focus has been primarily pre-war for the last half-dozen years or so.

Good thread!

Larry

[hangman62]

Bob,
Come on.. Very much into baseball cards at age 3 ?..AGE 3 ??

[almostdone]

I knew of baseball as a game, of course, but never knew anything of cards when I was very young untill the summer of 1978. I was 6 years old at the time and my older brother was injured badly in an accident that put him in the hospital for over a week. The associate pastor at our church bought him a full box of 1978 Topps cards that he opened and looked through while in recovery. Our family didn't have any money to buy other cards after that for a while so my brother and I knew everyone of those cards back and forth. That was the year Topps put a game on the back and we played it constantly. I learned to flip, sort and count with those cards but more important I learned to love these small cardboard treasures of my boyhood heroes.
After that I picked up a pack here and there until high school then got a complete set of Topps every year. In 1990 I stated to follow a young player in Seattle named Griffey and that's when I went nuts on cards until about 1995. Like most I realized there was not value to keep and couldn't keep up with it. So I abandoned it until about 2001 when a friend introduced me to Ebay and vintage cards. Form then on its been a passion and a hobby.
But every time I see any card from 1978 I can tell you wats on the back. Good thread!!
Drew

[scgaynor]

1978-1980 - Several Packs a Year
1981-1989 - Hardcore!
1990-1991 - A couple boxes a year
1991-1993 - Not much at all, I was 18-20, it was all about girls and cars
1993-1997 - Some Pre-1948 cards, almost strictly memorabilia
1997-Now - Full time dealer, no more collecting, you can't eat baseball cards or put them into your gas tank.

Scott

[uffda51]

First bought packs in 1959 (age 8) after mom brought home a shoe box full of 1956 Topps baseball and 1955 Topps All-America football from a rummage sale. Heavy in 1960-1962. Less so in 63, then big in 1964. Nothing after that until 1981 when Fleer-Donruss challenged Topps.

[53Browns]

I was 12 years old in 1980 when I started. Coincidentally, in 1981 when Donruss and Fleer brought out sets to compete with Topps, that was when the hobby literally exploded! Hobby shops and shows everywhere! It was awesome! I collected actively and passionately until 1984ish. Then resumed as an adult to find that the beloved cards of my childhood were so mass produced they didnt seem likely to hold their values.

[Big Ben]

Interesting thread!

I started collecting in 1972 with Football cards and collected Football and Baseball through 1980. --Then returned to the hobby in college around 1983 through the early 1990's. -- My collection was dormant with the exception of a few trades and sales here and there until 2008 when I reorganized everything and got interested in vintage baseball cards.

[Gradedcardman]

Started in 1972 at age 5 with basketball and baseball. Added football in 1975. Collected hot and heavy until age 33 in 1999(marriage). Started back in 2006(post marriage). Going strong again the last five years.

[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.

[wolfdogg]

Started in 1982 at age 11 and have never looked back..........................but sometimes wish I had never seen or heard of a cards

[DixieBaseball]

I recall dipping my toe into collecting as a kid about 1975-76, and ramping up quite a bit in 77' and steady through about 1986. I think the feaux wood panel issue of Topps in 1987 broke me as they were hideous and mass produced. Now maybe if they were less produced, I would view them like I do the 62' Topps issue. (Unique look, not my favorite, but some rugged charm) So I had about a 10 year run of collecting and after a 14 year hiatus, I came back to the hobby around the turn of the century, collecting mostly pre-war stuff. The cards I broke in on as a kid were Kelloggs, Hostess, and Topps. I think the Kelloggs cards along with the 75 Topps issue is what grabbed hold of me.

[tonyk1975]

My timeline goes as following- 83-92 baseball cards,92-95 comic books,95-2004 football cards,2004-2006 mcfarlane figures,2009-today prewar cards and still lovin it