How long have you been a collector?

It just occurred to me this afternoon that I'm closing in on my 26th year of collecting cards. In early 1987 I moved to the Boston area and my first real friend in the new town was an avid collector. He got me into Topps baseball that year and I've been hooked ever since. What's your story?

[Bocabirdman]

I collected from 1965 to 1978. I fiddled around as a vendor for two or three years after that. I sold out, walked away and bought my first cards (a few 1960/1961 Orioles) in July 2010. It has mushroomed ever so slightly since then.

[ullmandds]

I started collecting baseball cards in 1975 or so...at the age of 6...I collected mainly 50's-current at the time with a few handfuls of vintage thrown in. I began collecting solely vintage...in the late 80's. So I suppose about 38 yrs for me.

[g_vezina_c55]

Start collecting hockey cards in 1990. I collect sport cards since this time

[Greenmonster]

1972, working in my father's bait & tackle shop, Salisbury Massachusetts, paid in 1972 Topps cello boxes ( one every couple of weeks)...finding an ad in the back of TSN offering a Sandy Koufax signed 3X5 (may be from Jack Smalling)...finding a small stack of T206s at a flea market in Ipswich, 50 cents per card, except Red Sox players they were $1. I was off and running in this great hobby.

[atx840]

Coming up to two years.

[rainier2004]

Started in the summer of 1984...when my Det Tigers beat SD 5-1 in the WS...those were the days!

[wolf441]

Started collecting in 1981. Spent waaaay too much money as a young teenager on 1980's Topps that I wish I had spent on vintage cards! My 1st T206 was bought in 1984, Ed Abbaticchio - Brown Sleeves for $4.00 at a card shop in Hyde Park, MA.

[chris]

I am 32 and have been collecting as long as I can remember. My first memory of cards is from 1985, opening a 1984 Topps pack after a tee-ball game.

[familytoad]

Beginning in 1970 at age 8. Had thousands of each sport, up to high school age. still have most of them.
Seems I paused for a few years in the early 80's but by the late 80's I got even crazier about cards.
Bought my first vintage HOFers in 1990.
What a ride since then...

[Writehooks]

Coming up on 45 years. Concentrated solely on hockey cards in the late '60s while in elementary school, then switched to baseball after finding a stash of 150 '54 Topps inside a cookie tin in an old barn. In 1973 I read 'The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book
by Brendan C. Boyd & Fred C. Harris' and was hooked. By the mid-'80s I decided to focus on my favorite sport — boxing — and sold off most of my hockey and baseball collection to purchase vintage cards from the sweet science. The baseball stuff is long gone, and the only hockey I kept was the OPC WHA sets from the mid-'70s. Still buying, selling and trading boxing.

[EGreenwood]

I started in 1978. The 78 set is still one of my favorites. Stopped in 87 when I went into the Navy. I was on and off until around 2000 when I started back up.

[vintagerookies51]

Started in December 09, so a little over 3 years.

[kmac32]

1969 started with Topps....then quit and started again in 1988 collecting all the Topps cubs. Started with vintage pre war in the early 90's collecting cards of my great great uncle.

[queencitysportscards]

Since the mid 80's...off and on the last few years, but building a T206 Cincy set now...really appreciate the vintage material now.

I will never forget going to my local hobby shop in Fairfield, OH and finding creative ways to pay for cards such as cutting lawns, washing cars, and doing chores to pay for my next pack of cards, not to mention all the card shows I went too (those were the good old days).

I will never forget riding my bike to the store and buying a 1989 Upper Deck pack and pulling a Griffey Jr. Rookie...too bad most of the cards I collected growing up aren't worth much today! That's why I am collecting vintage now...plus I am older and wiser and appreciate the history of the game and the story the vintage cards tell through cardboard.

Happy Collecting!

[DeanH3]

I started in 1983. I found a box of cards in the garage. They belonged to my order brother but since he had no interest in them he gave them to me. A Yount rookie was hiding inside and got me hooked. I migrated to vintage during the mid 90's then prewar in 2000. Here is the Yount card that started it all. I still have it.

[cincyredlegs]

Closing in on my 38th year. Started in 1975 at the age of 4 with my dad and brother. He came home with a box full of 73 and 75 Topps BB and we were hooked. Still have all the cards today.

Mark

[itjclarke]

My first packs were 1980 Topps when I was 3.

My first true collecting habits formed around 1987-88 when my friends and I started going to local card stores and the old Moscone Center show in SF. Been collecting ever since.

[ullmandds]

Mark...im no math whiz...but yours doesnt add up?!

[ethicsprof]

from age 10 to now, except for a wee bit of time in grad school.
Looking at nearly a half century.
Pre-war only since around '82 or so.
T206s for a couple of decades then type collecting, vintage photo collecting for
6 or 7 years now.

all the best,
barry

[frankbmd]

First card in 1953.
Last card last week.
Several dormant gaps.

[cozmokramer]

Just thinking about this makes me feel extremely old!

I guess I've been collecting for about 30 years now.

My focus has changed a million times during that span of time, and as they say the only constant is change.

[mark evans]

As a nine-year-old, I collected 1958 Topps football, got them all, and then threw them out. I still remember throwing them out but the rationale now eludes me.

I then collected 1961 Topps baseball, got them all (Ex-Mt), and happily still have them. I recall my dad questioning the value of this effort, which I once figured to have cost me around $10.

Never colllected another thing until I discovered eBay in 1998. Have since picked up numerous cards of my childhood heroes (Mantle, Mays, Unitas, Chamberlain, etc.) as well as vintage cards of Jewish ballplayers and other sportsmen.

[drc]

I started collecting Topps sports cards in 1977-- in wax pack from the local grocery form. When I was a kid I collected all sorts of things, including political buttons, coins and 'important headline' newspapers.

Don't know the year of purchase, but bought my first Pre-War card, a 1933 Goudey Jack Quinn, from the Larry Frisch mail order catalog.

[ullmandds]

Mark...sorry...I misread...there should be a breathalyzer attached to the computer...no drinking and net54'ing!!!!

[Bocabirdman]

Originally Posted by ullmandds

Mark...sorry...I misread...there should be a breathalyzer attached to the computer...no drinking and net54'ing!!!!

Your questioning his math had me taking off my shoes to double check and I am relatively sober

[t206blogcom]

Since 1987...

[MMarvelli]

Since 1958 and I still have every card I collected that year and ever since with the exception of a few trades. I have never sold a card. I guess that makes me a hoarder. I am not sure if that is good or bad.

[chris6net]

Since 1972. I got hooked on those Psycheldic looking cards!

[ecRich]

Started in 1964 and have not taken any breaks. I'm either sick or a kid who won't grow up. Enjoy it very much even though I have stuff I have not looked at in twenty years. Have to go now and have a beer and look for more cards I don't need.

[z28jd]

Since age five in early 1981, still have a handful of those first cards. A kid brought a garbage bag full of cards into school and let us pick out a couple each. I took all Pirates players and for some reason, a Paul Dade card. Wouldn't trade those cards for anything.

Started vintage at age 16, bought a T206 Bresnahan portrait up in Cooperstown

[stewbacca]

My first packs were 1978 topps. Still remember getting 5 packs for a $1 around 1980 at 7-11 with my grandparents. Also used to buy the twinkees and ding dongs for the 3 cards on the bottom of the box. Never stopped collecting, though I should have from 1985 til....anyways. Just started
T206's late last year(dont know what took so long).

[E93]

I first started ripping packs in 1975 and went to my first show in 1979 in Los Angeles. Other than a brief break in my late teens and early 20's, I have been collecting pretty consistently since then. I got my first vintage cards (T206s) around 1980.
JimB

[Sean]

I started in 1965, when I was eight. I stopped in 1969 when I "grew up." I started again in 2002 and haven't slowed down since.

[T3s]

1972 - 6yrs old, still love that set - the colors, man, the colors

When I was 8, I noticed my 3rd grade teacher was giving out these really old and amazing cards (1955-1957 Topps) to kids who got top grades, etc. I was blown away, the other kids could care less. I worked out a deal with her and traded her a big stack of my 1974 doubles for all the "old" ones she could find. Lots of great 1955's - Koufax, Killebrew, Matthews. Ended up selling them in college to fix my broken-down car.

Picked up my first T3 Turkey Red in Anaheim aroung 1989 or so. Paid $60 to a guy named Lowell Katz for a beat up "Trying to Catch Him Napping". What a treasure, couldn't believe my luck.

[Kawika]

Started collecting tobacco cards when I was 10 in 1908, about when I started smoking too. Had boxes and boxes full of T206s although we didn't call 'em that then. Got myself killed in the World War. Don't know what happened to my cards.
Was reincarnated in 1950, saw my first Topps baseball cards in 1955 and got hooked again. Busted packs, flipped and traded through the fifties, then migrated to comic books and then to sex and drugs and rock'n'roll. Cards did not survive.
Came into the vintage card game around 2000, tentatively at first, but it's an all-consuming passion now.

[Bosox Blair]

Since 1976. Hockey first - then baseball. Still collect both but almost all pre-war now.

Cheers,
Blair

[larrie804]

I started in 1950. The amount of time spent "collecting" has varied greatly over the 62 years. The primary interest has, for most the years, been the cards of my teens (1950-62). There were various distractions over time( . The pre-war cards unfortunately didn't become an interest until the 1990s.

[tonyo]

First year collecting was 1972 in 2nd grade. Baseball Football Basketball. All wax packs and rack packs and cello packs. I bought a couple of complete football sets from Renata Galasso in the late 70's but that wasn't as fun as buying packs. Went to a random show and or shop a few times, but either I didn't see any prewar or they just didn't catch my eye - too bad. I always enjoyed reading about the history of the game, but it just didn't occur to me at the time that I could actually buy and collect prewar. I did accumulate a short stack of post war vintage somehow but at that time they didn't really catch on in my mind. Just wasn't in the right place at the right time regarding vintage cards I suppose.

Collected pretty consistently in that manner thru 1996 when my first daughter was born. Tailed off pretty rapidly and by 2000 I was pretty much in collecting hibernation until 2009 when I randomly decided to buy an upper deck goudey blaster box at Target. Then I bought a Topps Allen&Ginter blaster. then another then another.

While putting together those two sets and the mini version of the A&G set, I happened across a 33 Goudey Travis Jackson on ebay and decided to it would be cool to have an actual 33 Goudey to match the 09 UD version. Also bought a T205 Merkle for a good price "for the fun of it", happened across Net54 and soon jumped on the slippery slope. I've spent way too much money on cards the last 3 years, but it's been a fun hobby and a great diversion!

[EvilKing00]

I guess sinceI was about 8 years old so, almost 31 years.

[Joem36]

I have been collecting since 1980-1981. I was ten years old and my mom bought me Rickey Henderson's Topps Rookie card for a few dollars. I was hook. I still own the card. Smile.

I don't know if I should thank her or blame her for all the money I have spent on cards over the years. My passion now is to complete the Monster, which I started about 4 years ago.

[Brian Van Horn]

September 1972. I found a torn in half 1972 Jimmy Rosario card. I took it home. My mom stapled it together (I was six at the time). I still have the card, staples and all.

[EvilKing00]

Originally Posted by Brian Van Horn

September 1972. I found a torn in half 1972 Jimmy Rosario card. I took it home. My mom stapled it together (I was six at the time). I still have the card, staples and all.

Cool story and awesome that u still have it, very cool

[quinnsryche]

About 1974 when I was 8 yrs. old. My dad and 3 partners opened a card store in Chicago in 1976 and it was open there and 2 other locations until the late '90's-early 00's. I worked there every Sat. and summers until right before I got married in '92. Have collected cards and memorabilia ever since (on and off at times). I have also collected comics, military uniforms, paper money, Japanese art, signed astronaut books, signed WW2 pilot books and other stuff but I always come back to baseball cards!

[wolfdogg]

early 1982

[HRBAKER]

First packs I bought were in 1966. First real serious accumulation was 1967-1980. Stopped buying packs in college and really never returned to that game. Will buy a few packs of Topps Heritage each year but that's about it.

I bought my first pre-war card in 1989 ('39 Playball Charlie Gehringer) from a Kevin Savage ad in SCD. I have been hooked on pre-war basically ever since.