Show Your Oldest Card....

[triwak]

Pulled straight from the pack when I was 7 years old... And well loved!!

[RCMcKenzie]

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I bought a few 1975 Topps packs, but the first year I started to collect and sort the cards was 1977. Here are some still in the same sheets.

The 57 Solly Hemus was given to me by my Dad, sort of out of the blue one day in the late 70's. I did not know who the player was and did not understand until much later that Hemus had been a star for the local Buffaloes, the Cardinals minor league affiliate.

I ordered the Goudey from the a mail order ad in the late 70's and paid with my own cash. I think it was from Baseball Digest, not sure.

The oldest cards by cards are probably the OJ scripts.

[Matthew H]

My "oldest" card is my 68 Mantle that my dad bought me for my 8th birthday. He took me and my brothers to Portland OR for my birthday, took me to a local card shop and let me pick something out... I picked the Mantle, he paid $60 for it, it's probably still worth $60 today. It's priceless to me.

[Zone91]

atx840

Great story and great great Mantle rookie card!!!

[Eric72]

This is from the card shop I frequented as a kid in the early '80s, from when I was about 11 years old through maybe 15 or 16. Somehow, it managed to linger around in my possession for decades, tucked away with grade school report cards, etc.

A few years back, shortly before getting married, I revisited those things and got rid of the unimportant (read, from ex-girlfriends) souvenirs of my younger days. This was benign, though, and survived the purge.



Probably not what the OP was expecting; however, I have sold off my collection and rebuilt it from scratch many times. As such, this is the "card" I have owned the longest.

And it definitely brings me back. While writing this post, I remembered seeing a news article hanging in the window of this card shop during the first year or so I went there. It was about a '52 Mantle selling for (at least, I think...after all, childhood memories can be a bit fuzzy) $3,000 at a recent Christie's auction. Wow...three grand for a baseball card?!?

What a great hobby...and a great thread, in my opinion. Thanks for posting this, bcookie.

Best Regards,

Eric

[AMBST95]

Now to make you feel old, this is the card I've had in my collection the longest. I don't remember how i got it, but I clearly remember it being in my toybox with my He-Man and WWF action figures as a little kid.



I was six when it was released so I'm guessing I was good and got a pack of cards as a kid. I was a bigger fan of Garbage Pail Kids and Panini's baseball sticker books. I didn't really start collecting baseball cards until 1990 Topps.

[Sean]

I pulled this one out of a pack in 1965. Even though I was a Cub fan living in Chicago I wasn't a big fan of Ernie. I always wanted to open a pack and find Mays, Mantle or Koufax, so this card didn't mean that much to me back then.

When we moved to Phoenix four years later my mom threw away all my cards, and since I had "grown up" I didn't care. This card was spared because it had been stuck in a book, where my brother found it twenty years later. He sent it to me, and I have kept it as a reminder of my childhood ever since.

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[jimivintage]

Originally Posted by triwak

Pulled straight from the pack when I was 7 years old... And well loved!!

So, since you pulled this from a pack in '68, do you remember how the creases were made? Now THAT would add to the provenance.

[deadballfreaK]

I'm pretty sure my first cards were cut out the backs of Post Cereal boxes around 62-63. I still collect those, but not sure if any of those originals have survived. Really started collected in 1964 and I know I still have those. First series Topps #s 1-88. My first prewar war card was a Brown Hindu of Wilbur Goode I bought for maybe $1 in 1974 or 75. Still have that.

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by deadballfreaK

I'm pretty sure my first cards were cut out the backs of Post Cereal boxes around 62-63. I still collect those, but not sure if any of those originals have survived. Really started collected in 1964 and I know I still have those. First series Topps #s 1-88. My first prewar war card was a Brown Hindu of Wilbur Goode I bought for maybe $1 in 1974 or 75. Still have that.

I definitely remember cutting the cards off the backs of the boxes. It was rare that we got any, because the cereal they came on was stuff we didn't normally like. Once I bought my first pack in 1965, I threw away all the old cut-outs. I think the thing that impressed me so much about wax packs was what good scissors they used.

...and to Paul S: you are only allowed to appoint yourself as a thread policeman, if you actually participate in the thread (I just made up that rule).

[triwak]

Originally Posted by jimivintage

So, since you pulled this from a pack in '68, do you remember how the creases were made? Now THAT would add to the provenance.

Perhaps I should have said "well loved AND well handled!" Cardinal fan here, and Gibby was one of my heroes. 1968 was a decent year for him, I guess! Also for me, since that's when I started collecting. And I still have EVERY card from my childhood, as well as every card I've ever purchased since. I'm not a very good seller!

[deadballfreaK]

Originally Posted by triwak

Perhaps I should have said "well loved AND well handled!" Cardinal fan here, and Gibby was one of my heroes. 1968 was a decent year for him, I guess! Also for me, since that's when I started collecting. And I still have EVERY card from my childhood, as well as every card I've ever purchased since. I'm not a very good seller!

I'm a huge Cardinal fan as well. First game I ever attended was 1966. Gibby beat the Pirates 4-1. About a 5 hitter and Clemente had a couple of those I think. Awesome day. Gibson and Clemente were burned into my memory that day. They seemed like gods!

[mcap100176]

There was a long-running story that my grandmother babysat Sandy Koufax in Brooklyn when he was growing up. The ages work as my grandmother would have been in her mid-teens when Sandy was a kid, but there was nothing that could ever verify it; when I was younger it was just a childhood story (I am 36 now).

I remember being in a card store in the last 80's and my parent's buying me this. It was raw until a few years ago when I got back into the hobby.

[tedzan]

I started collecting cards in 1947 when my parents bought Bond Bread (B-B). My sister and I carefully removed these B & W cards from the bread packages.

Little did I know back then, that I was getting Rookie cards of Jackie Robinson, Yogi Berra, Stan Musial, and more. I still have the 44 BB players (don't know
what happened to the 4 Boxers in this set).






My favorite 1947 B-B card is the Johnny Lindell card....simply because he was my hero in the 1947 World Series....Yankees vs. Dodgers. Johnny batted .500
in 6 games (9 Hits, 5 Walks, and 7 RBI's). Defensively, in LF he made 2 unbelievable diving catches; and, with his strong arm threw out several Dodgers.






Hey guys......I even have an original 1947 Bond Bread loaf wrapper.






TED Z

[CW]

I pulled this card from one of the first few packs I ever opened. It's been in my collection since 1977 (36 years now), and I wrote a short story about this card which appeared on sportscollectorsdaily.com a little while back (my story is the third one, titled Mom Loves The Bird). Not only is this my oldest card, it's my most sentimental card as well.

[EGreenwood]

I started collecting in 1978 and still have some of my well-loved originals. I remember in around 1980 getting my first vintage - 54 Topps Jackie Robinson for $5 fm Wes' Hall of Fame in Paramount, CA. I got my first pre-war in 82 - T206 Stanage and Hinchman for $9 at a shop in Anaheim. Still have the Robinson and Stanage.

Erik

[Cooper1927]

I believe this is my oldest (memory is spotty at best, it could have been a 1960 Spahn). I picked it up from my middle school science teacher (he was my favorite teacher bar none) nigh on 22 or 23 years ago. I thought it was so cool that there was a card that folded!



Funny story about that science teacher. Rumor was that he got in trouble after I was out of middle school for splitting the lip of the principal (no one liked the guy and he wore a mustache that apparently covered the split). Whatever the real story was, he continued teaching after that for some years.