What Was The Hobby Like Back In The Day?

[FrankWakefield]

I grew up too far south to call them pop bottles... But I'd bicycle around to pick them up outa ditches on the road I lived on. Coke bottles brought 4 cents, Pepsi and RC only 3 cents. This was in 1965 - 1968 mainly. I bought a few 1964 cards from allowance money. Back then people would get soft drinks in bottles and pitch them outa their cars as they drove away from town. There weren't aluminum cans, nor paper cups, for the most part. Seems odd now to think about throwing out glass bottles. Anyway, I'd bicycle along eyeing the ditch, picking them up, usually starting about 7:30am. Morning dew was sometime on the bottles. I'd pile them into the bike basket, peddle home and hose the mud off the bottles, then bicycle to a small grocery store maybe 3 blocks away. And I'd turn in the bottles, I'd get credit for them, then I'd buy nickel packs of Topps cards. I'd bicycle home with one hand on the handlebars, chewing nasty bubblegum like it was nectar as I looked at the cards. In the day near the end of the season, kids would switch to football cards as their team faded from contention / Topps diminished card printing for the later series and would switch production to football cards. Good memories thinking about those cards... At that time I had no knowledge of any cards older than 1959; only had seen 1959 through 1963 cards from seeing them among other kids' cards if they had older brothers. Usually the newest year attracted interest, and cards from earlier sets had little 'swap' value. And I confess to having bicycled around with Mantle and Maris clothespinned to the frame so that the spokes hit the cards creating a pleasing motorcycle like sound. We were idiots...