The Card That Got You Hooked

[Cmvorce]

A few weeks ago I started a thread here about your favorite card in your collection. I loved reading all the stories that were posted – so much history and nostalgia and sentimental value.

That got me thinking about another topic – the card(s) that hooked you on the hobby and whether or not you still own them.

In 1987 I was 8 years old and visiting my uncle in Bloomsburg, PA. During that visit we stopped at a gas station and my mom bought me a pack of 87 Topps. At the time I had only a passing interest in baseball, and had never even seen a baseball card before. In that very first pack my mom bought for me was an 87 McGwire. I remember getting back to my uncle’s house and him telling me that that card could be worth serious money someday – but that I couldn’t get ketchup stains on it or fold it up in my pocket. He told me about how his father, my grandfather, had owned a grocery store in the 50s and 60s and would give him and his friends packs and packs of Topps to play with and trade. How he treated so many Mantle and Mays cards like they were worthless, trading them away for Robin Roberts’ and Johnny Callison’s because he was a Phillies fan, and how I couldn’t do that and had to keep the McGwire safe – it felt like a treasure I had stumbled upon. I was hooked on the cards before I was hooked on the sport, and throughout the year my mom would buy me a pack or, if I was lucky, two, every time she went to the grocery store.

By Christmas, I probably had 75% of the 87 Topps set complete, but was still missing one of the key pieces – the Jose Canseco Topps All Star Rookie. I loved those cards with the Rookie Cups. Such a simple concept but the guy who came up with that at Topps should have won employee of the year. My friends and I held Bruce Ruffin, Robby Thompson, Pete Incaviglia, etc in such higher regard than we should have because of that cup, but the prize was the Canseco.

On Christmas morning 1987 I found the complete set of Topps under the tree and I finally had my Canseco. Buying 50 cent packs for me every so often wasn’t a big deal for my mom, but spending for the complete set was huge. At the time, I thought Santa brought it, so that was lost on me, but looking back I know it was something we probably couldn’t afford. But paired with the McGwire that’s what did it for me. I had my treasure.

However, because boys are idiots, a few years later I was enticed into a trade. I sent the Canseco to a friend for a package headlined by an 83 Bench. I had never seen a 1983 card before – it might as well have been a 1953. I pulled the trigger and my 87 set was no longer complete.
I immediately regretted it. By this time I knew that my mom had bought me that set, and I knew that it was a sacrifice. I think it was at that moment that cards became more than cardboard for me. There was something more there, about baseball, and family, and sacrifice, and history, and fun.

Anyway, luckily for me the story has a happy ending. By 1991, the kid I traded the 87 Canseco to still had it. I had spent a few weeks piecing together a complete set of 1991 Fleer Pro Visions by identifying the black borders hidden in the yellow base cards in the wax packs. I traded the set to him for the Canseco and a few other cards. Here is a pic of that exact Canseco, and the McGwire from the very first pack of cards I ever opened. They’re kept alongside my Mantle and Mays and Robinson.

Do you still have the card(s) that got you hooked?