Who had a positive impact on your collection ?

[JollyElm]

What got me back into card collecting in the early 90's was a card shop owner my friend and I referred to as the John Gotti of baseball cards. He was mean as all heck, had ridiculous prices (Dean times 5) on everything displayed, and to top it off all of his display cases sat in the sun all day, every day. The one absolutely faded card I remember to this day was a 1961 high number Warren Spahn All Star that was priced at $100. This was probably in 1992 or thereabouts, and he was completely firm on his prices. He wouldn't even think of negotiating. It was so faded (like everything around it) that it looked like it had been bleached like some Hollywood bimbo's hair. Eventually (surprise surprise) he went out of business, which made us chuckle. But the shop was within walking distance, so it got me interested in all of the old stuff again.