What got you into vintage cards?

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Posted By: pete

For me back in '85 my brother told me to look through my fairly big collection of modern baseball cards for an '84 Donruss of Don Mattingly, it was worth $5 at the time and I had 4 of them...he told me to hold onto them because he was going to be big some day and his cards would be worth big $....well, I got hooked on some of the '80s junk until one day I was at this place called "Boardwalk and Baseball" in Orlando, Fl (I think) I remember walking through a MINI-HALL OF FAME and watching a minor league KC Royals game, then I saw it...a Rookie of Mickey Mantle the '52 Topps I read so much about, I had to have it...It was priced in the Beckett at $5995.00 and it was worth every penny, probably an 8 or better...I immediately called my brother back here in California and told him to wire me $3000...he told me I was crazy, I was willing to sell my '85 Toyota MR2 to buy this card...
Needless to say, I drove home without the card...about 2 -3 years later I saw the Micks card sell at auction for $50k...I dumped about 98% of my modern cards and started picking up the '50's and '60's...then I read the story about Wayne Gretzky and Bruce McNall buying the Honus Wagner for some rediculous price, then it started again, I dumped about 99% of my '50's and '60's stuff and picked up a few T-cards, a Cap Anson, ty cobb, cy young, etc, etc, etc....snowballed from there!
since I started buying these cards, I found this site (by accident, kinda) started reading up on this stuff and BAM!!! here we are...
pete-
and to answer the question of if I kicked the sh*t outta my brother is no, but i remind him often