Topic: What is your most powerful and important memory with baseball cards?

[dbussell12]

It can be anything at all! Please share with us if you feel comfortable and so inclined! Pictures, details, ideas, stories... all are welcome.

Cheers; happy Friday!!

[ClementeFanOh]

Great topic! When I was 12 and my father knew I loved cards, he arranged a meeting between me and one off his co-workers who was an avid card collector. Her name was Carole McCoy, she was in her 50s and collected only Reds players. She let me look through all her albums of Reds, by year and set, including tobacco. I still recall the T206s and my amazement at their age. It fired my imagination and passion for the hobby. My father and Carole McCoy made a big impact on that part of my life, that continues to this day. Trent King

[dbussell12]

Originally Posted by ClementeFanOh

Great topic! When I was 12 and my father knew I loved cards, he arranged a meeting between me and one off his co-workers who was an avid card collector. Her name was Carole McCoy, she was in her 50s and collected only Reds players. She let me look through all her albums of Reds, by year and set, including tobacco. I still recall the T206s and my amazement at their age. It fired my imagination and passion for the hobby. My father and Carole McCoy made a big impact on that part of my life, that continues to this day. Trent King

wow trent... this a fantastic story!! i can only imagine being that young and seeing tobacco cards for the first time. its such a profound encounter with history. this is a great memory. thank you a ton for sharing with us! it sounds like it deepened your connection to cards and history in a really profound way.

[jbsports33]

Happy Friday and collecting, everyone!

There are so many thoughts after over 30 years of being involved.
When I realized when I got my first real job after college, I could start collecting - buying and selling prewar cards. I was in Boston for my first job in Cambridge, did not have that much with a new job – no benefits at all for almost a year. What I learned is I could use my paycheck every two weeks on Friday’s and buy buy buy, what fun it was. Really have never looked past that and to this day I have it as a side job and small business and I am so grateful. This hobby has given so much over the years. Hopefully I can do it at this pace for another 30 years! I have paid for part of my wedding, house, cars with small collections over the years and I have enjoyed it so much. Jimmy

[dbussell12]

Originally Posted by jbsports33

Happy Friday and collecting, everyone!

There are so many thoughts after over 30 years of being involved.
When I realized when I got my first real job after college, I could start collecting - buying and selling prewar cards. I was in Boston for my first job in Cambridge, did not have that much with a new job – no benefits at all for almost a year. What I learned is I could use my paycheck every two weeks on Friday’s and buy buy buy, what fun it was. Really have never looked past that and to this day I have it as a side job and small business and I am so grateful. This hobby has given so much over the years. Hopefully I can do it at this pace for another 30 years! I have paid for part of my wedding, house, cars with small collections over the years and I have enjoyed it so much. Jimmy

that's such a great feeling isn't it jimmy -- when you realize you can start to buy with your money!! its like connecting with that inner child + getting him the best and coolest cards you always wanted. its awesome. i'd love to support your business sometime!! thanks for being here with us in the hobby and community. best thing about it for me is sharing the passion and joy with everyone who cares and loves it just as much.

-- david

[Balticfox]

Originally Posted by dbussell12

that's such a great feeling isn't it jimmy -- when you realize you can start to buy with your money!! its like connecting with that inner child + getting him the best and coolest cards you always wanted. its awesome.

+1! Yes, that's another way of putting what I've been doing for the last few decades!

[Brent G.]

My greatest memories of the hobby are going to my uncle's card shop as a kid in the mid-'80s. We lived in a major college town and he was the first shop to open (it swelled to around 10 by the early '90s). He always gave me 50% off, and since I primarily got my money by mowing a handful of cemeteries at $20 a pop, that made a big difference in what I could buy.

I was out of the hobby for 30 years but returned in late '23. My uncle got out of the business 20 years ago and isn't in great health, but we've reconnected through my pickups. I got married two years ago and he gave me a super-clean 1980 Topps baseball set where the Rickey graded an 8. It was my favorite gift.

[Hendu]

Every easter, instead of hiding Easter eggs, my parents hid baseball packs around the house. This was in the early 80s. My older brother and I would see who could collect the most. He always did, but my dad made sure they were always distributed evenly afterward.

And it seemed that he always end up with the better cards, too.

Now, I do it with my kids with a mix of baseball packs and Pokémon packs lol

[ValKehl]

Originally Posted by dbussell12

It can be anything at all! Please share with us if you feel comfortable and so inclined! Pictures, details, ideas, stories... all are welcome.Cheers; happy Friday!!

David, what is YOUR most powerful and important memory with baseball cards?

[dbussell12]

Originally Posted by ValKehl

David, what is YOUR most powerful and important memory with baseball cards?

ah val! great to talk with you on here, not just on ebay. we may have both been at the chantilly show on the same day this year! i was there sunday; will definitely be back for the next two this year too. it was awesome.

for me it has to be getting my first vintage card with my dad at aj's sports stop. do you remember it? right over in vienna. little shop full to the brim with pages and pages and boxes and boxes of vintage. 1960 topps warren spahn. when i got back into collecting, last fall, i got a bob gibson 1960 topps signed card.

this week was another big moment. 1953 topps satchel paige, in a beautiful well worn piece. wonderful, wonderful card.

[jingram058]

I have told this tale a few times around here, but here it comes again. I had a converted ham radio room for my bedroom, just big enough for a twin bed. I started collecting baseball cards in 1967, during a trip to Dallas, Texas where my sister Linda was living at the time. I built complete (by the checklists) sets of 1967-68 Topps, and quite a few 1969-70-71 also, along with over 500 1962 Topps that one of the older kids gave me. I kept my collection under my bed. When we all went our separate ways, the card collection stayed under the bed, with Hardy Boys books and comic books on the book shelves my dad built. Some models that survived my destructiveness, antique bottles I dug up, and some steam machinery souvenirs from Sheahan and Parkway Pumping Stations (waterworks). When I moved out, that stuff stayed. Finally my mother sold the house and moved into a mobile home, and she took the bed and my stuff and put it into one of the spare bedrooms in the mobile home. She asked me over and over, did I want any of it? I told her over and over to just get rid of it. Some time in the early 1980s, my best friend Louis found a box of old baseball cards in the house where he grew up that he thought was long since gone. He took them to the flea market they used to hold at the fairgrounds, to a guy who bought and sold baseball cards. He gave Louis several hundred dollars for his cards; Mickey Mantle, Sandy Koufax, Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, etc. We both thought it was amazing. On the way over to the flea market, he gave me a 1963 Topps "Dodgers Big Three" card (I still have it, as the first card in my re-collection). I immediately got hold of mother, asking if she still had my baseball cards. "Oh, I gave all that stuff to the Goodwill. You said you didn't want it." So, yes, you could accurately say, I threw my cards away!

[ValKehl]

Originally Posted by dbussell12

ah val! great to talk with you on here, not just on ebay. we may have both been at the chantilly show on the same day this year! i was there sunday; will definitely be back for the next two this year too. it was awesome.

for me it has to be getting my first vintage card with my dad at aj's sports stop. do you remember it? right over in vienna. little shop full to the brim with pages and pages and boxes and boxes of vintage. 1960 topps warren spahn. when i got back into collecting, last fall, i got a bob gibson 1960 topps signed card.

this week was another big moment. 1953 topps satchel paige, in a beautiful well worn piece. wonderful, wonderful card.

David, I have been going to all of the Chantilly Shows for as long as I can remember, but never on Sunday. I was at the very recent Show on Saturday.

Yes, I remember AJ's Sports Stop in Vienna. I didn't go there very often because it was a fair distance from Haymarket, where I lived at that time. I do recall picking up a few of my N172 Old Judge cards of Washington players (the only N172s I collect) at AJ's back in the 1990's.

[campyfan39]

I wrote a whole book about mine!

My Dad went in 1978 (I was 5) to my grandparents' house to retrieve his grocery bags of cards from his childhood. His grandpa ran a grocery store and would give him packs on their weekly Sunday visits in Durham, NC. The first ones Dad remembered were 54 topps.

He knew they were "cleaning house" now that his younger sister had moved out. Unfortunately, they had thrown his cards and comics out two days before he arrived. He would have been happy to dumpster dive, but they used a burn barrel!

Dad then went on a journey to "Buy Back" the cards of his youth, and he took me along for the ride! He passed at barely 54 years old. I was only 29. I now treasure those times together, those cards, and the people we met. I documented them mainly for my boys and friends, but it has sold a decent number of copies. Rich Klein even did a nice article on the book when it came out 14 years ago, and Leon let me make a post here. I am in the process of editing and updating it now! (Grammarly and professional editors have humbled me haha!)

And YES my thumb looks terrible! I smashed it during a mission trip to western NC last weekend!

Great to read everyones stories!

[dbussell12]

Originally Posted by campyfan39

I wrote a whole book about mine!

My Dad went in 1978 (I was 5) to my grandparents' house to retrieve his grocery bags of cards from his childhood. His grandpa ran a grocery store and would give him packs on their weekly Sunday visits in Durham, NC. The first ones Dad remembered were 54 topps.

He knew they were "cleaning house" now that his younger sister had moved out. Unfortunately, they had thrown his cards and comics out two days before he arrived. He would have been happy to dumpster dive, but they used a burn barrel!

Dad then went on a journey to "Buy Back" the cards of his youth, and he took me along for the ride! He passed at barely 54 years old. I was only 29. I now treasure those times together, those cards, and the people we met. I documented them mainly for my boys and friends, but it has sold a decent number of copies. Rich Klein even did a nice article on the book when it came out 14 years ago, and Leon let me make a post here. I am in the process of editing and updating it now! (Grammarly and professional editors have humbled me haha!)

And YES my thumb looks terrible! I smashed it during a mission trip to western NC last weekend!

Great to read everyones stories!

wow chris you're ahead of the game on this one!! what's your doctorate in by the way? im a masters in philosophy + systems theory

this sounds like a great tale of redemption... have to look into it!! my best -- david

[Balticfox]

This ad for Salada-Junket Baseball coins in the DC comics that were on newsstands in April of 1962:



I mean, wow! Not just Hockey coins but Baseball coins now too!

And this mouth watering ad for 1962 Post Cereal cards that appeared in Saturday newspaper comic sections across Canada:



Yeah, as if I needed any more incentive to get my mom to buy Sugar Crisp!

[marcmandel]

Originally Posted by dbussell12

It can be anything at all! Please share with us if you feel comfortable and so inclined! Pictures, details, ideas, stories... all are welcome.

Cheers; happy Friday!!

That's an easy one. I'm 60 this year and collected vintage baseball cards and memorablia starting back when I was 9 or 10 years old in the mid 70's. I grew up in New York (Long Island) and bought Ruths, Cobbs, DiMaggio's, Mantles, Gehrigs, Mathewsons, etc. even back then as a little kid. It was such a joy learning about the players and the game itself from those cards and the stories they held.

One weekend in the mid 70's I asked my folks to bring me to NYC to a hotel card show and walking inside I couldn't miss a wonderful '52 Topps Mantle in a case for sale. I asked the seller for the price and he said something along the lines of "$300" and it was in (from memory) decent shape.

Well, $300 may have been a billion to a 10 year old so I asked my Mom whether I could "borrow" $300 to buy it to which she said, "$300 for a baseball card?!?!? What are you CRAZY?" which was clearly a hard no. Case closed.

Well, I never forgot that card and dreamed of it for decades, even when I gave up buying cards by the early 80's, not to return to the hobby until early in the Pandemic looking for a hobby and feeling nostalgic.

I could not forget the '52 Mantle that got away and as I eased my way back into my hobby life that was amongst the big mountains I felt I needed to climb - getting one.

I was contacted by a dealer who's since become a dear and important friend, Ashish Jain who offered me a decent SGC 2 for $40K and I was able to sell a couple of my bigger cards at the time and excitedly bought the Mantle. I was over the moon.

I've since substantially upgraded the Mantle to a beautiful, centered 4.5 example that I plan to be buried with it in my permanent PC as having never given up the chase and now can enjoy the fruits of those dreams.

[brunswickreeves]

Originally Posted by marcmandel

That's an easy one. I'm 60 this year and collected vintage baseball cards and memorablia starting back when I was 9 or 10 years old in the mid 70's. I grew up in New York (Long Island) and bought Ruths, Cobbs, DiMaggio's, Mantles, Gehrigs, Mathewsons, etc. even back then as a little kid. It was such a joy learning about the players and the game itself from those cards and the stories they held.

One weekend in the mid 70's I asked my folks to bring me to NYC to a hotel card show and walking inside I couldn't miss a wonderful '52 Topps Mantle in a case for sale. I asked the seller for the price and he said something along the lines of "$300" and it was in (from memory) decent shape.

Well, $300 may have been a billion to a 10 year old so I asked my Mom whether I could "borrow" $300 to buy it to which she said, "$300 for a baseball card?!?!? What are you CRAZY?" which was clearly a hard no. Case closed.

Well, I never forgot that card and dreamed of it for decades, even when I gave up buying cards by the early 80's, not to return to the hobby until early in the Pandemic looking for a hobby and feeling nostalgic.

I could not forget the '52 Mantle that got away and as I eased my way back into my hobby life that was amongst the big mountains I felt I needed to climb - getting one.

I was contacted by a dealer who's since become a dear and important friend, Ashish Jain who offered me a decent SGC 2 for $40K and I was able to sell a couple of my bigger cards at the time and excitedly bought the Mantle. I was over the moon.

I've since substantially upgraded the Mantle to a beautiful, centered 4.5 example that I plan to be buried with it in my permanent PC as having never given up the chase and now can enjoy the fruits of those dreams.

GREAT story and journey! Ash is a great guy and done a lot for the hobby and 52T Mantle collectors in particular. By chance was the SGC 2 this one?