When did you start collecting pre-war/vintage?

[Leon]

Since we have been discussing the potential for diminishing values of our pre-war/vintage cards I think it will be interesting to see when folks started collecting this era. Someone made the comment that collecting pre-war came a bit later in their collecting careers as there were other things more important in the earlier part of their lives (for many of us that includes our 20's). Also, with the values/prices many of us might not have had the disposable type of income to be able to do it any earlier. It would seem that many collectors start collecting the older stuff a bit later in their lives. We'll see what the poll says.
For me, I started when I was about 33-34 yrs old...which was about 15-16 yrs ago. It was called "mid life" crisis. I was walking through the local Garden Ridge mall with my wife and there was a tiny, 20 table card show in the middle of it. I saw a '54 Banks rookie, on Smilin' Dave's table, that was a bike-spokes card, for $10-$15.......I was hooked and then went back in "collecting" time from there. Lets don't count your childhood collecting unless you started collecting vintage then and never stopped. regards