So What’s Your Story?

[Archive]

Posted By: warshawlaw

I've recently realized that if it was not for the fine folks I've met here and elsewhere in collecting, I would probably have sold off my cards or gone inactive. I had such a blast at the National and at local shows that I now spend as much time shooting the breeze as buying cards at shows.

I have been collecting since I was 5 years old. Every Friday night, after dinner, my parents would take me for ice cream at the local ice cream place at the mall in Mahopac, NY where I'd get a conical scoop of ice cream (odd looking scoops) and more important a pack or two of cards. 1971 was my first big year; I probably had most of the set by the end of the summer. I saw my first really old cards a year or two later when my grandmother moved out of her big apartment and across town to be closer to my family. Along with my uncle's old toys (including a first year of issue Star Trek Enterprise model with flashing lights--wish I still had that) and penny collection, I got several 1960 leaf cards.

Since my parents were into antiques, I'd often get dragged along to the stores throughout the Hudson River valley, where I'd make a general pest of myself asking for old cards. My first one, a 1952 Topps Walt Dropo, was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen (and I still have it). I soon found an antique store in Mahopac that had a big box of old cards in the back and a nice dealer who would let my parents drop me off while they shopped so I could go through the box and buy 14 cards for a buck (Ah, the old days when parents in small towns trusted their neighbors weren't filthy pervs who'd assault their youngsters the moment they were left alone). I spent countless hours going through the box of cards and pulling 14 for a buck. During the week back in NYC, I'd sell the cards to my classmates for 25 cents each, then plow the proceeds into packs of new cards and into the 14 for a buck bin. Pure arbitrage. To paraphrase the book, everything I learned about business I learned from baseball cards.

By the time my parents exiled me to SOCAL, I had discovered the Card Collectors Company, attended an ASCCA show in NYC and had devoured everything I could learn about old cards. Once I got here, I started with the West Coast Card Club, attending monthly meetings and soon started holding a table each month, plus arbing cards at school during the week. I also pestered everyone I knew with older kids for old cards and received several great collections of 1950's and 1960's cards. I even got my relatives into the act, sending me cards they'd found in stores and from friends. I'll never forget opening a shoebox-sized package from my aunt with hundreds of 1972 Topps high and semi high numbered cards in it that she'd found in a local antique store.

About the only time I wasn't collecting was from 16-21, when I was interested in cars and girls. I was so adept at pursuing those hobbies that I ended up collecting again by the time I was 21 . Oh, I got the girl in the end, but she had to adapt to the card thing...