Looking back...

[itjclarke]

Like you Mike, I've had the bug since I a very young kid... earliest memories are of my dad buying me 1980 wax packs (I was 3) from his office lunch truck. Within a few years, once I learned how to write my name, I scribbled "Ian" on the backs of all my cards. I still have many and got a handful of them signed at spring training and/or baseball games (gotta love the 1981 Fleer Dusty Baker with his auto on the front and mine on back)... however I traded most away as a kid. Seeing the famous F Scott Fitzgerald stamped T206s makes me wonder if any of my worthless "Ian(s)" are still floating around.. or laying around anywhere right now. If anyone stumbles upon at a flea market, or penny/card box at a show please PM me.. I'd pay 1000 times the actual worth to get any of those back.

[freakhappy]

Originally Posted by itjclarke

Like you Mike, I've had the bug since I a very young kid... earliest memories are of my dad buying me 1980 wax packs (I was 3) from his office lunch truck. Within a few years, once I learned how to write my name, I scribbled "Ian" on the backs of all my cards. I still have many and got a handful of them signed at spring training and/or baseball games (gotta love the 1981 Fleer Dusty Baker with his auto on the front and mine on back)... however I traded most away as a kid. Seeing the famous F Scott Fitzgerald stamped T206s makes me wonder if any of my worthless "Ian(s)" are still floating around.. or laying around anywhere right now. If anyone stumbles upon at a flea market, or penny/card box at a show please PM me.. I'd pay 1000 times the actual worth to get any of those back.

That's an excellent story and exactly what I was hoping would come out in this thread! Thanks for sharing! I think that's awesome how you got some of those very first cards that you signed, signed by pro ball players too...classic move! Paying 1000 times what they are worth would still only bump the price to $.50

Another good memory for me is trade night at Jim's Dugout! Every Tuesday, me and my cousin would grab our binder and rendezvous at the Dugout for some crazy trading with a few dozen other small kids...it was special. The two things that stuck with me during my times there was winning a box of 1988 topps baseball on a raffle (wow that was great when you were only 10!) and trading away my '89 Score Aikman RC for a Jose Canseco Sportflic...I'd like to forget that last one but nonetheless a good memory for me.

[Rickyy]

I wish I had pictures...but whenever I think of cards...it ultimately comes back to memories of child hood friends and wondering what ever happened to many of them... Gary, Robert C and Robert M...we'd spend many a summer afternoons going over to each others houses, eating cookies, drinking soda pop and looking at and swapping cards, before heading out to play ball... Gary especially knew cards...and he always was a tough negotiator when it came to trades..., but he did ultimately give me the 1974 Topps Dave Sells card so I could complete the set...

Ricky Y

[Vintagevault13]

Great thread. My best memories are from 1974 when I was 8 years old and just beginning to collect baseball cards. This is a special memory because I kept them at my grandmother's house (so my little brother wouldn't bother them!). I can remember spending countless hours sitting in the floor at her feet going through the cards and absolutely absorbing the stats on the back. On Saturdays she would take me with her shopping and buy me some packs at the local Woolworth's store. I still remember the anticipation of getting back to her house to open the packs to see what I got. This was a time of pure collecting innocence as I had absolutely no idea that these cards held any value to anyone other than me. It wasn't a business or an investment, it was just a wonderful hobby that let a small boy from Georgia visit ballparks and meet players in my imagination. To this day I almost feel like I personally know the players from the mid-70's because of what I learned about them from these cards. My grandmother passed away last year and these "baseball card memories" have provided me with a wonderful connection that I will never forget.

[dabigyankeeman]

Hey Mike, I have a few things I remember from childhood. I remember even as a kid spending every penny I had on cards. I remember when the 1955 Bowmans came out how neat it was that they looked like little color televisions! This is the oldest set I remember, I was 7 at the time. I remember selling a model ship to another kid and using the money to buy packs of cards. I remember when none of us kids could get a Stan Musial card (we didnt know there werent any) and one kid claimed he had one and we went to his house to see it and he seached and searched but couldnt find the non-existant card!! We flipped them and put them in the spokes of our bikes, had fun with them, all the cliche's are true, we did those things. And of course ultimately my mother threw them away.

I bet a lot of the cards I have been buying the last 30 years are cards I owned as a kid growing up in New York!!! I also wish I had someone to sit and share my cards with, but never had any kids, and none of my friends are into the hobby! Oh well, I love the cards anyway, and have my whole life.

[Sean]

I started collecting cards when I was seven. I collected the 1965 Topps set. My father gave me my first cards, and after that I spent what little money I had on packs of baseball cards. They were 5 cents for a pack of five cards. For some reason it seemed like every pack had a Gary Bell card in it.

Back then my friends and I always searched for Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, or Sandy Koufax. I got a Mays and Koufax, but not the Mick.

A few years later my cards were thrown away when we moved. I only have one card left from my childhood:

scan0001.jpg

[Rich Klein]

when you traded the Aikman RC for the Canseco -- I'd bet that was an 86 SF Canseco you traded for and if that was the card with Mike Greenwell on the card, that was a pretty sweet card back then. That was when that was Greenwell's only 86 card and we all thought he had a great future based on his early years/

Just goes to show, you never can tell as Chuck Berry sang.