Oldtimers on this board?

[akleinb611]

It was 1961 for me. I was six and I came across my friend's older brother sorting through a bunch of cards he had. I was very much taken with them - I remember the 1961 Johnny Podres had a huge close up of his face, and the colors were really bright. My parents were immigrants and didn't know anything about baseball cards, but my father was a huge baseball fan, so he supported my desire to get these strange and wonderful things. He figured that a penny for a photo and stats of a ballplayer was a pretty good deal. The local candy store and newsstand in Queens, where I lived, was my regular haunt for the next few months (it was around this time that I also started buying comic books at ten cents a pop). Another friend's older brother also gave me a stack of about fifty 1960 cards, which introduced me to the idea that these things were different every year, and which probably changed my DN A to that of a collector.

My mother recalled getting movie star cards back in 1930's Germany, when she'd be sent to the store to buy cigarettes for her father.

At the end of the season, most of my friends were throwing their cards out, but my father told me that he hadn't paid for all the cards just to have them thrown out. He bought me a scrapbook and a bag of photo corners (remember those?), and I mounted all my cards. Which is why I still have them.

Alan