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[whitehse]

I may have mentioned this before (ok...maybe a few times) that one of my biggest collecting regrets happened when I was a third grader at Immanuel Lutheran school in the far Northwest suburbs of Chicago. The time would have been around 1974 and the setting would be old Mrs. Bickel's third grade class room which was in a classic old school house room with drafty windows and chalk boards all around the walls. It was in this class room that a collecting memory was burned into my young brain, never to be forgotten.

It was known to all of my classmates that I was a huge baseball fan and collected baseball cards. It was not unusual for a friend to bring in a card or two that they found around their house and give it to me to add to my collection. It was on a fall day, right after the World Series had ended that a classmate walked into the room before the first bell rang and handed me a large brown shopping bag and said I could have what was inside. I eagerly opened the bag and my jaw dropped to my cold, wooden desk with a thud. Inside this bag were treasures I had never before laid eyes on. Hundreds of baseball cards thrown haphazardly into a bag with little regard for condition. Cards that were bigger in size than any I have ever seen were now in my hands with names I could only recognize from the many baseball history books I had learned to read a few short years earlier. There was Pafko, Berra, Lockman and some guy named Shoendinst (or at least that is how my young mind pronounced it). There was Aaron and Banks and some guy named Mantle. I could not believe my luck that someone had decided they no longer wanted these treasures and had passed them on to me.

In all my excitement I failed to realize the final bell had rung, my classmates were all in their desks and Mrs. Bickel was standing at the front of the class, taking attendance. With my head still in the brown bag, discovering names I had never before seen I was tapped on the shoulder and brought back to reality. As I looked up to see who could possibly be ruining this incredible moment for me I realized it was the teacher who apparently did not like baseball cards nearly as much as I did because if she did she would have realized the importance of this moment. As I tried to explain my point of view, her old, boney hand reached out and grabbed by treasured bag and brought it to her desk where it hit the bottom of her drawer with a resounding flop. They were gone....all gone. Mickey, Yogi and Andy were now in my teacher's desk. All I could think about was getting those cards back in my hands but it was never to happen. The years have diminished my memory and for the life of me I cannot remember why I never got the cards back. Perhaps it was because this was literally and old school religious school where you never questioned the teacher and I was too afraid to ask. I would have never mentioned it to my parents as they would have probably kicked my back side for not paying attention in class rather than blame the teacher for taking away my prized possessions. Either way those cards are long gone but forever burned into my memory. I loved them for the nostalgia they represented with the color television theme and I loved them for the memory they gave me. I vowed that, one day, I would put that set together and relieve that third grade nightmare I have vivid memories of.

Flash forward to a few months ago. On these boards I saw someone advertising a small lot of '55 Bowman's at a decent price. I knew this was now the time to start putting the nightmare and quickly worked out a deal with the seller. As it turned out the cards I purchased were cards that were recently found at a garage sale and their only owner opened the packs as a third grader and put them aside for decades before selling them this past summer. The cards were even sold in the original Phillies cigar box from that same time frame where these new treasures rested all these years. After hearing this I knew this set was meant for me.

I then purchased another lot from another Net54 board member who graciously held even more cards for me for while I scraped the funds together to buy them. I made a few more purchases from Ebay and have found a renewed interest in collecting that had once escaped me. No shiny refractors or numbered parallels for me. Just musty smelling cardboard with a colored television border and names I had long ago forgotten, staring back at me. Andy, Yogi and yes, even Mickey. Hello old friends. Where ya been?