Length of original card collecting run

[rjackson44]

1970

[butchie_t]

From 68 - 75

[Mark17]

1967-1971.

In 1972 my mom bought me the complete set from Stan Martucci (his ad in The Sporting News.) After that I got cards from publication ads like SCD and only occasionally bought packs.

[jh691626]

In earnest, 1981-1986

[ksfarmboy]

1977-1987 although I did open a bunch of 76 packs in 77.

[Eric72]

I started in 1977, although I may have had a single pack in 1976.

I never really stopped; however, these days it's just the occasional pack or two.

My main focus is picking up T206 and 1952-80 Topps, so singles are definitely the way to go. Buying packs (or boxes) for fun is fine when they're current year or recent products. Opening 42+ year old wax is a gamble that's much too expensive for my taste.

[thatkidfromjerrymaguire]

My run was similar to yours OP. Started maybe a year earlier. Bought a LOT of packs between 1986 and 1991. Sometimes a buddy and I would put our money together and split a wax box. Good memories and lots of worthless junk wax.

Stopped completely during high school and college, and then started up again buying an occasional pack in the early 2000’s. Honestly, I think was the relic cards (bat and jersey pieces in the cards) that got me interested again because I thought they were pretty cool.

Eventually relic cards got old, and then I got in to vintage around 2017.

[trdcrdkid]

1975-1982, with my peak being 1977-1981, when I collected the Topps set from packs every year.

In 1975 I got some packs and collected the entire 24-card MVP subset, a precursor to my interest in vintage.
In 1976 I bought more packs but didn't make any real effort to collect the Topps set, though I also started getting some older cards and visited my first card shop (which were very rare at the time). I spent $2.95 plus 25 cents postage to get one Topps card from each year from 1952 through 1975, all of which I still have.
In 1977 I collected the Topps set from packs and continued to get older Topps cards when I could.
In 1979 I got my first prewar card (T206 Jack Pfeister).
In 1981, when Fleer and Donruss first came out with sets, I collected the Topps and Fleer sets from packs, and bought the Donruss set. In 1982, I bought the Fleer set and started the Topps set but never finished it. At that point I mostly dropped out of active collecting, though in 1986 I went to a card show with my younger brother, who was into collecting and collected the Topps set that year.

Not until 1991, when I was in grad school, did I get back into actively collecting. I bought a box of Topps baseball and collected the set just for fun, and also got into Stadium Club (then in its first year) and collected about half of that set from packs (which generally cost $5 apiece). Soon my collecting moved entirely to vintage, mostly prewar, where it has remained since then.