Evolution of collecting habits (aka "slow Thursday")

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Posted By: Jay Miller

Like Peter I am older than most of the Board's participants and I see, like Peter, I also spent some time in the 60's at the Tute. I started my collecting in the mid-1950s buying packs of baseball cards at Sam Stoller's candy store. Although all of my friends and I worked on completing the sets I don't think any of us ever did. Growing up in the Bronx I was thrilled if I ever got a Mickey Mantle card. I also still remember the smell of that Topps bubble gum when you opened a pack. One time when we were visiting relatives a cousin of mine, who had "outgrown" his cards had a box of cards from 1948 to about 1956 and he said I could take the ones I wanted. That was my first experience with older cards. I collected until I was out of junior high school-about 1964. At that point I pulled out the star cards and saved those in a box and threw the others away. Just so I wouldn't forget I also wrote the year of each card on its front--nice move! I left these cards at home when I went away to college in Boston and later to grad school on the left coast. When I got back the cards were still there. Unfortunately, my collection of comic books, which included Superman comics back to the 40's and all the better comics from the 50's had been given to a long gone next door neighbor's kid. Being a collector at heart I collected hangovers until 1979 when I got married and moved from Connecticut to Houston. I got back into collecting while down there and started collecting shells(Murex shells--an ornate type of carniverous snail), and then football cards. We moved back to Connecticut in 1986 and after taking a few years to get settled I started to get into football cards in a big way. I got to the point in the very early 1990s where I had virtually every football card (with the exception of some regionals)that ever had been issued. I was getting bored with this and a friend suggested that I look at vintage baseball and he further suggested the Old Judge set as something that he thought I would like. The first card show I went to with him was the Greater Boston show and I saw my first Old Judge and was less than impressed. I think I bought one or two just to get him to shut up and didn't think much about them for a while but then I started looking in catalogs and looking at the cards some more and they just started to grow on me. What probably really got me going was the people who I met and talked to about these cards. People like Keith Mitchell, Barry Sloate, Bob Richardson, Lew Lipset, Rob Lifson and many others. I think what appealed and still appeals most to me about the set is that you cannot complete it. Why, because "it" is a moving target. Can you get one card of each player other than California League cards--not impossible. Can you get one card of each player in the set--virtually impossible. Can you get one card of each player by team--virtually more impossible. Can you get one card of every pose--NO. Can you keep trying, no matter what you set to be your goal--absolutely. My reason for collecting is not completeness. In a way for me that is the enemy. When you complete something there is nothing left to do with it and, for me anyway, it looses interest. The joy is approaching completeness without ever getting there. Such is the lot of the Old Judge collector.
BTW I have been a Yankee fan most of my life(I did root for the Red Sox in 1967 while at school) but I would love to see the Red Sox finally break through and win the series. It would just be good for baseball.