relatives who collect(ed)

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Posted By: Ben

The only person in my family (that I know of) who collected baseball cards is my dad. He was born in Boston in 1942, and grew up loving the Red Sox Especially Ted Williams and Sammy White (was he even any good???)

When asked what happened to his collection, he will give you the standard "mom cleaning out the attic response". I've shown him Topps cards from the early 50's, with hopes of triggering memories with no luck.

I'm sure many board members have more interesting stories to tell about cards their relatives and friends collected while the hobby was still in its infancy, so, LETS HEAR IT!!!

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Posted By: Charles E. Moore

My mother started collecting cards after WWII. Trouble was she stayed hooked on Bowman. Ah, the Topps she might have now!

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Posted By: shemp

About 15 years ago, I was showing my granddad (then 94) my T206 cards. They brought back great memories and he knew all of the players - even once shook Wagner's hand. Told me he had all of the cards, as he and his brothers would search the trains after rush hour in Boston, and pick them out of discarded cigarette packs. Then he said he may still have them, and to come back tomorrow and he would give them to me - what a thought!!! I was soooo excited, and rushed over the next day and he said, "I looked in the attic...then it dawned on me....when I was off to France during the war, my mom cleaned out my room - she must have tossed them away. Sorry" I was crushed, but it was nice of him to share the stories with me about the cars I had - made the players seem much more real!!!

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Posted By: Eric

I thought this was an interesting post, which I can highly relate to. My father and his father both collected baseball cards, for which I secured portions of both collections. My fathers collection (one shoebox full) was primarily mid-late 1960's Topps baseball cards, which he collected from junior high to high school. He said that he had collected Topps cards starting in the late fifties, but most of the early stuff was "pitched out" by his mother.
My grandfathers collection was much smaller, but much more rewarding. He passed along about 30-40 1933 Goudey cards to me when I was about 13 years old. This is when I completely fell in love with vintage cards. Although there weren't any great cards in the lot, the idea of having baseball cards that were (at the time) 50+ years old, was very cool. What was even cooler, was the fact that we had saved them all those years! He had mentioned to me at the time that he had hundreds of the Goudey cards at one time, but most were lost or given away (say it ain't so!). His Goudey's started my vintage card collection and interest though, and in the mid-1990's after I graduated from college, I began collecting again for good.

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Posted By: julie

My cousin Julie has two boys, Jonah and Caleb, who are twins' fans. After ascertaing that they didn't havre one, I sent them a 84 Fleer Update Puckett for Christmas. I asked Julie if they like it, and she said, dryly: "It was the only thing the talked about Christmas day..." Hee.

My son had about 1 friend I liked when he was growing up: studious, good sense of humor, didn't drink, smoke or use drugs, and did a lot of things with his family. Jewish. I gave him a rookie Koufax for either his birthday or his Bar Mitzvah. I had two, and this was the better one (just replaced the other one a month ago!). ten years later, he was in town and called to talk to Chris. "I still have the Koufax you gave me," he said. 'YOU DO? It was a little off-center, as I remember." "Yes, some uncle gave me a perfect one. I sold it. I kept yours for sentimental reasons."

I LOVE to give baseball cards away!

Noobody ever gave me one, unless i specifically asked for it for a special occasion...