How long you collected as a kid ?...

[theseeker]

Collected some from the 1970 set but, really got drawn in by the playground discovery of the 1971 black borders-- still my favorate set. Got a paper route in '74 (delivering papers was once the work of grade school boys on bikes and not middle-aged men heaving papers from the open widows of beat up vans) which helped fund my first complete set. As my luck would have it, the first non-series issue.

A fond memory was playing baseball with freinds, during summer break, until the heat got to us. At which point we would all go to our respective bedrooms and meet under a shaded tree with card filled shoebox in hand. There, seated cross legged, we would look through each others collection and conduct card exchanges, with the familiar "got him, got him, don't got him" as background noise. You always knew the "spoiled" kids in the crowd by the size of their collection and you could tell the investors from the collectors by the trades being made.

As I entered middle school, I simply felt too old to continue. At this stage, irony, to say the least. Picked it up again during the frenzied late '80's/early
'90's-- although I can honestly say I never fell for the investment hype.

Now for the painful Mother story. I have three older cousins who had moved on to college and marriage by the time my parents would drag me along to visit my Aunt and Uncle's house in the mid '70's. Bored during a visit, I ventured from my siblings in the TV room to the garage were I found 2 brass ringed, cardboard industrial drums both filled knee high with cards from the 1950's through the early 1960's. Everytime I visited, I could be found sorting through these NrMt gems. And they were all there; Mantles, Mays', Sniders, Berras, Spahns.....

One day as my parents were preparing to leave, my mother along with my Aunt, went to get me. As they entered the garage and found me at my familiar spot, on my knees looking at the cards, my Aunt said "you seem so interest in those old cards, why don't you take them with you?" My mother jumped in" oh no, he's got too many of his own." My "oh please, Mom" went on deaf ears. If she'd only thrown my earl '70's collection away instead