Length of original card collecting run

[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.

[90feetaway]

Similar also to OP around 87-91. I remember buying 1985 S1 Garbage Pail Kids at the grocery downstairs for $.25 as my first pack. I was heavy into 1989 Upper Deck Baseball and 1989 Pro Set.

[slidekellyslide]

1975-1990. I bought a blaster box or two in a few years in the early 2000s and it wasn’t until 2020 that I actually purchased a full box of baseball cards.

[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.

[skil55voy]

I started buying packs in 1962 and bought them through 1975. Bought complete sets after that.

[nwfsteve]

1965 to 1971, took a couple years off then started buying complete sets from TSN ads.

[seanofjapan]

I also started collecting as a kid in 1987, but I was living on Ramstein air base in Germany so couldn’t buy packs of cards until I returned to North America in 1989.

Instead, I got into it by getting cards in trades for other things at the playground during recess from kids who had just arrived from stateside and brought their collections with them. In fact, for the first two years of my collecting life I wasn’t even aware that cards were sold in packs, they were just these things that the new kids had magically come into possession of somehow. It was hard to build a collection in that environment, two years of haggling on the playground netted me a random assortment of about 50 cards.

When I came back in 89 I got my first look at a card shop it just blew my mind. You mean you can just buy packs with 15 cards in them at a time? Or even whole sets? Crazy.

I then went through a really hard core collecting phase between 1989 and 1993 during which time my dad and I even started a little shop of our own. Then in 1993 he got transferred and we had to move again and I basically quit collecting at the age of 16 and wouldn’t pick it up again until many years later as an adult.

[angolajones]

1977-1989 Thought I was going to be a flipper and viewed those cards from 1985-1989 as currency. Started at age 4 with my mother and ended as a sophomore in high school. Now, I just buy what I like. Turns out I am a hoarder not a flipper.

[FrankWakefield]

I think 1964, I'm certain I bought bunches of packs in 1965, not quite as many in 1966, lots of 1967 packs, enough to get a set together, 69, 70, and on to about 1978, with just 2 or 3 packs a few of those latter years. I think that's right.

Life gets in the way, and it is different stuff depending on our age at the time. Girls, cars, a part time job, college, more packs, six packs, more girls...

I still get a pack or two, but I'm sure there are some gaps over the years. Mark, what a Mom, getting you a set in 1972!