So What’s Your Story?

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Posted By: ockday

This is really a fascinating topic..so much so that I had to write rather than "lurk" as usual.
I grew up in Brooklyn, NY and from the beginning (till now of course) was a BIG Yankee fan. My earliest baseball recollection is watching on our old b&w tv the Mazeroski homer to win the 1960 World Series when I was but 8 years old .
I remember buying cello packs in the early 60's from a store near my home called Joes Variety store. Joe, bless his soul, would dump many boxes of cellos into a big bin and I would sift through them looking for my hero, Mickey Mantle with Joe keeping an eye on me so I wouldn't stick a few packs in my pockets. Occasionally I would get lucky and find a Mantle on top or bottom and would buy the pack so I could flip cards with my friends . BUT I nver flipped my Mantles. If I won any Mantles I would always put them aside. I accumulated literally dozens of Mantles over the years but unfortunately this part of the story does not have a happy ending. My family bought a home in 1969 and somewhere in the move my cherished Mantles vanished. But I was 17 and the '70s were upon us so it was soon an afterthought as I pursued the "joys" of that era.
Fast forward to about 1986 and remember reading one of the hobby peridicals ..maybe SCD or Baseball Hobby News and thought it would be fun to start collecting. I started with some of the new stuff (very bad idea) but also bought some cards from the 50's and '60s ..mostly Yankees and of course an occasional Mantle. After a couple of years I also began putting together a Yankee "type set" with a few cards from each set from as far back as T205, T206 T207. So for the next 15 years or so, I collected mostly '50's BaseBall but also football, basketball and hockey as they were relatively inexpensive back in the early 90's. Well, time passed and I had to sell alot of my cards as my kids were growing up and I needed the $$ but I always kept the vintage part of the Yankee "type set" and a couple of Mantle cards from the '60's. I really missed the hobby until about 4-5 years ago I remember looking at the few T205's and T206's that I had like Hal Chase and that triggered my vintage card collecting. And for the last few years I've been very active in the hobby.
Hopefully this wasn't too boring.
Thanks for reading..Alan