Moms and Cards

[pete zouras]

I was often the beneficiary of other kids thrown away collections by moms, trash picking them in the wee hours of the morning as I made my rounds. I was always thrilled when I found cards from before mycollecting days.

[GrewUpWithJunkWax]

My mom saved my stuff as well. For 23 years, my collection sat in the basement under a set of stairs, somehow avoiding water damage. I knew she had kept some stuff from my room and had stored it in boxes, but I wasn't really expecting much. So when I finally decided to retrieve it all, I was was surprised to find everything. It was fun to re-discover it, and that drew me back to the hobby.

My father-in-law was an unfortunate one. In the mid-50s, he would bat boy for the local college team, and with the 50 cents he'd earn each game, he'd promptly run off to buy baseball cards. He lost his collection when he was still a kid though. One random day, he couldn't find his cards. When he asked his parents, they told him he needed to stop wasting money on cards, and that they had trashed all of them.

[John1941]

I'm a little young for this thread...

My grandma did not throw out my dad's cards, God bless her. My mom tolerates and partly understands my collecting - my dad's more supportive.

[Stampsfan]

My mom, sadly gone too soon, always said to me that she didn't want to see the cards out. So I kept them in a drawer, out of site. This would have been the late 60's to very early 70's.

After a bunch of time, they moved across the country, and they packed everything. When I got back into the hobby in the late 80's, they were still in the same shoe boxes I had as a kid. You can imagine I was thrilled, and they are still core to the collection I have built since then.

She did a lot of wonderful things for me, and this was was just another. While she passed in the 90's, she did see how much I enjoyed the same hobby when I returned to it.

[Kaneen]

This thread about moms and cards really strikes a chord with me, especially when it comes to its timing. My dear mother passed away a little over a week ago at the age of 91. Such a wonderful and amazing mom, I was so blessed to be her son.

I collected cards as a kid from around 1969 to 1977. When I went away to college in 1979, I left the floor of my bedroom closet covered with boxes of cards, probably 5,000 or so. A year or 2 later I came home to visit one weekend, and all my cards were sitting in the basement beside the door leading out to the driveway. I asked my mom why my cards were sitting by the basement door, and she told me she cleaned out the closet in my room so she could make room for some things she wanted to store. She said she sat the cards by the door waiting to sit them out on trash day. I had stopped collecting when I discovered cars and women, lol. While I hated to see my childhood cards go, I certainly had no place to put them in a small college dorm room. So I didn't put up too much of a fight.

A few weeks later when I came back home for a visit, much to my surprise all my cards were back in my former bedroom closet...this time well-boxed and wrapped in plastic garbage bags to protect them! I asked mom what the deal was with my cards? She said, "Well, the day after you left to go back to school, I was watching the evening news. They had a story about a baseball card that sold for 100 dollars! Can you believe that?! I thought maybe yours might be worth something, so I was afraid to throw them away and brought them back upstairs."

Whew, that was a close one! I was saved from disaster by the fortunate timing of a news story that my mom just happened to see. A few years later when I got married and got a place of my own, I retrieved my cards and took them to live permanently with me.

Thanks for everything mom...you truly were the best!

[kmac32]

When I was at college, mom threatened but asked first. I retrieved them and my wife encouraged my collection. At that time, I kept onlt the Topps Cubs and went on to complete a comprehensive collection of Topps Cubs from 1951 to current including all erroers and variations for base and update sets. Then got bit by the Prewar bug.

[Popcorn]

that’s awesome! my mom saved my junk was 80’s-90’s but unfortunately it had no affect on my net worth lol

[Leon]

Just seeing this.
Very sorry about your mom's passing, Kevin. My condolences. She did have a pretty long life so you got to have her for a long time. That is a great story about saving the cards.

Originally Posted by Kaneen

This thread about moms and cards really strikes a chord with me, especially when it comes to its timing. My dear mother passed away a little over a week ago at the age of 91. Such a wonderful and amazing mom, I was so blessed to be her son.

I collected cards as a kid from around 1969 to 1977. When I went away to college in 1979, I left the floor of my bedroom closet covered with boxes of cards, probably 5,000 or so. A year or 2 later I came home to visit one weekend, and all my cards were sitting in the basement beside the door leading out to the driveway. I asked my mom why my cards were sitting by the basement door, and she told me she cleaned out the closet in my room so she could make room for some things she wanted to store. She said she sat the cards by the door waiting to sit them out on trash day. I had stopped collecting when I discovered cars and women, lol. While I hated to see my childhood cards go, I certainly had no place to put them in a small college dorm room. So I didn't put up too much of a fight.

A few weeks later when I came back home for a visit, much to my surprise all my cards were back in my former bedroom closet...this time well-boxed and wrapped in plastic garbage bags to protect them! I asked mom what the deal was with my cards? She said, "Well, the day after you left to go back to school, I was watching the evening news. They had a story about a baseball card that sold for 100 dollars! Can you believe that?! I thought maybe yours might be worth something, so I was afraid to throw them away and brought them back upstairs."

Whew, that was a close one! I was saved from disaster by the fortunate timing of a news story that my mom just happened to see. A few years later when I got married and got a place of my own, I retrieved my cards and took them to live permanently with me.

Thanks for everything mom...you truly were the best!

[Leon]

Just seeing this.
Very sorry about your mom's passing, Kevin. My condolences. She did have a pretty long life so you got to have her for a long time. That is a great story about saving the cards.

Originally Posted by Kaneen

This thread about moms and cards really strikes a chord with me, especially when it comes to its timing. My dear mother passed away a little over a week ago at the age of 91. Such a wonderful and amazing mom, I was so blessed to be her son.

I collected cards as a kid from around 1969 to 1977. When I went away to college in 1979, I left the floor of my bedroom closet covered with boxes of cards, probably 5,000 or so. A year or 2 later I came home to visit one weekend, and all my cards were sitting in the basement beside the door leading out to the driveway. I asked my mom why my cards were sitting by the basement door, and she told me she cleaned out the closet in my room so she could make room for some things she wanted to store. She said she sat the cards by the door waiting to sit them out on trash day. I had stopped collecting when I discovered cars and women, lol. While I hated to see my childhood cards go, I certainly had no place to put them in a small college dorm room. So I didn't put up too much of a fight.

A few weeks later when I came back home for a visit, much to my surprise all my cards were back in my former bedroom closet...this time well-boxed and wrapped in plastic garbage bags to protect them! I asked mom what the deal was with my cards? She said, "Well, the day after you left to go back to school, I was watching the evening news. They had a story about a baseball card that sold for 100 dollars! Can you believe that?! I thought maybe yours might be worth something, so I was afraid to throw them away and brought them back upstairs."

Whew, that was a close one! I was saved from disaster by the fortunate timing of a news story that my mom just happened to see. A few years later when I got married and got a place of my own, I retrieved my cards and took them to live permanently with me.

Thanks for everything mom...you truly were the best!

[Kaneen]

Originally Posted by Leon

Just seeing this.
Very sorry about your mom's passing, Kevin. My condolences. She did have a pretty long life so you got to have her for a long time. That is a great story about saving the cards.

Thank you for the kind words Leon.