What Are Your Earliest Card Show Memories?

[Jeff1970Red]

My first show was at a hotel near LAX in my early teens. I hopped a ride in the bed of my friends Toyota pick-up. The drive was 30 miles. The show itself was overwhelming, what I remember most was a dealer selling fake Rose rookies for $50. On the way home I dropped a couple hard plastic sliders with Ripken rookies, they slid out the back of the bed of the truck and onto the freeway. I think I cried.

[62corvette]

My first "show" was in 1973. Around our enlarged dining room table in small town central Wisconsin, Dick Miller, George Husby, Jack Urban, Ron Greenwood and I shared stories, and traded many cards.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Local Boston area shows starting in the early 90s when I got back into collecting. Mostly guys with new wax going on about how it was drying up fast and I really needed to buy it and the first waves of shiny stuff; a few vintage guys here and there such as my good friend Pete Lalos.

[VoodooChild]

1987 show at the Expo Center in Monroeville, PA. I was 12. For some reason, the two things I remember most are a complete 1938 Goudey Heads-Up set and an unopened 1980 Topps basketball pack with the Bird/Magic rookie showing through the back. I left with a '61 Clemente which I still own.

[brianp-beme]

Like Jeff1970Red and Midmo my first show was also at a hotel near LAX. Later I wondered if I had attended the first National, but the year I went was 1981, not 1980, so I guess it was just a local card show (evidently a popular one).

Anyhow, after seeing an ad in the newspaper, and my folks needing to go down that way from the San Fernando Valley, my vintage fate struck. I think I brought all of perhaps $12 to $15 (on a 50 cent per week allowance, a dollar if I had mowed the yard that week, so practically a fortune) to the show. The first dealer inside the door on the right, the first card show table I had ever seen, had a few vintage cards for sale, and I couldn't pass them up. I instantly spent most of my wad ($11.00, an amount I will never forget) for the following cards:

T206 Christy Mathewson black cap
T206 Walter Johnson pitching
E98 Cy Young
T205 Roger Bresnahan mouth closed
T205 Zach Wheat - Broadleaf

They were all in Fair to F-G condition, and you could say they eventually and inevitably made me a Net54 member. They have definitely helped foster a love of Pre-War cards, and a fondness for lower condition cards. It was still way too early for people to pay any attention to a rare back llike the one on the Wheat. Still have them too. If I were ever to sell all my cards I would still keep the Matty...that card fired up my collecting imagination, and still does. No scans, maybe some day.

Brian

[runbrett]

In 1976 my older brother took a bunch of us to a card show in the northern suburbs of Chicago driving his late 60s Mustang. It was a Friday and we hit a big traffic jam. I remember my brother using his CB radio to get alternate directions from a truck driver.

We got to the show about two hours later and it was quite unlike shows of today. There were some 1976 cards , but most tables just had old cards in stacks. Missing were the fancy displays, storage devices and the likes.

I had $35 from my paper route and I bought lots of cards for $0.10 to $0.50. There were a bunch of T206s, many with the price lightly written on the back in pencil - I saw that a lot in those days but only on the really old cards. My splurge was a T206 Mathewson for $2.00.

[DixieBaseball]

Late 70's/Early 80's at the Nashville Flea Market at the old Nashville Fairgrounds (Nashville Speedway). I looked forward to every 4th weekend of the month, to go hunt for cards, memorabilia, etc. - Dealers were set up and scattered about the fairgrounds in pavilions as well as outside. You had your regulars, but there was always some new dealers each month and material was fresh. I remember purchasing a crisp Ryan rookie for $40, Carlton rookie for $22, 60' Mantle in stellar condition for $20 and so on... The memories are vivid, and I wish I could go back in time to experience again. That's where collecting "vintage" started for me as a kid. Spent many years at the Ole Nashville Flea Market (It was a large scale event with thousands of various vendors...) - I would save my money each month and go buy 50's, 60's, and 70's cards for years. Just a lot of fun, and especially sharing those hunt's with many friends and family.

Good times...

[ullmandds]

i don't remember exactly where or when my 1st card show was but i'd guess early 80's. I remember Tom Seaver rookies at $7...aaron rookies at $25...babe ruth goudey $100 nmt...all way over my budget!

I purchased my 1st t206 a beat up matty white cap for $2...and a fake mayo lave cross!

[trdcrdkid]

My first card show was in early 1980, when I was 14 years old, even though I had been going to card shops since 1976, soon after I started collecting. This was in the Chicago area, and I'm not sure exactly where that first show I attended was, except that I'm pretty sure it was in the northern suburbs somewhere. I mainly remember how big and overwhelming (in a good way) it seemed. There was a rumor going around the show that somebody had ripped an unopened pack of 1952 Topps high numbers and gotten a Mantle, which was just starting to become the hot card it became. I didn't have much money to spend, and the only thing I specifically remember buying at that show was a Saran-wrapped lot of 1956 Topps with Koufax showing on the top -- and then it turned out there was another Koufax inside. I'm not sure what I paid for that lot, but it can't have been more than $20. Eleven years later, I traded that second 1956 Koufax to a dealer for some other 1950s cards.

On October 11, 1980, my family was out on a Saturday afternoon and we stopped at a little card show being held at a mall, where I remember seeing a bunch of 1938 Goudeys at one table and wishing I could afford them. I remember the date because it was the same day as game 4 of the 1980 National League Championship Series between the Phillies and the Astros, a crazy game that I missed part of because we were out at this show.

In 1981 and 1982 (and maybe in 1980 and/or 1983) I went to several card shows at the Hillside Holiday Inn (a suburb of Chicago about halfway between Glen Ellyn, where I grew up, and downtown Chicago). It was at one of those shows in 1981 that I paid $10 for my first Old Judge, which I still have. The Hillside Holiday Inn is just off the Kennedy Expressway, the easiest way to get between the western suburbs and downtown Chicago, and whenever I go past there I think of those card shows from the early 80s.