O/T but may be somewhat helpful

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Posted By: Al C.risafulli

This is a fascinating thread, you're all so interesting. Thought I'd chime in.

I'm Al. I'm 37 years old, married with three kids (11 year old son, 8 year old daughter, 6 year old son). For fun I coach youth basketball and baseball, go to NJ Nets games, watch the Yankees, and hang with my family.

Baseball has always been very important in my family; I started collecting cards in 1977, buying packs and trying to complete sets. In 1979 or so, I started collecting what we called "oldies" - the kids in my neighborhood and I started looking for the oldest cards we could find. I fell in love with 1951 Bowmans and T206s at that time, my first T206 purchase was the attached Waddell, bought for a dollar. I would buy the vintage cards and then sit with my grandfather and he would tell me stories about the players. My grandfather was a baseball fanatic who coached in Hudson County, NJ in the 40s and 50s (probably early 60s, too). From what I'm told, he would choose the kids who were least skilled for his team, then win the league championship with them every year.

Anyway, I collected pretty intensely until about 1985, then I discovered girls and music and whatnot. I got married right after college in 1991, and in the middle of a recession with no job, I sold most of my cards so that we could eat. I promised myself that someday I'd be in a financial position that I could start collecting them again.

In the early 90s, I ran my own punk rock record label while I worked in marketing in the wireless industry during the day. Gradually I became more interested in marketing, and as my career grew I slowly re-entered the hobby. A couple of years ago I started buying cards on eBay, and as an outgrowth of that I discovered the hobby message boards, which helped take a solitary hobby and make it more of a social thing for me. Today I work for a small ad agency in New Jersey (and am lucky enough to have several awesome clients who are part of the hobby), and collect HOFers, 1938 Goudeys, W502s, T205s, and now Henry Johnson backs. I've also got a website where you can see some of my collection, and where I keep a hobby blog: www.swingbattaswing.com



-Al