What Was The Hobby Like Back In The Day?

[GasHouseGang]

Originally Posted by 2dueces

Went around the neighborhood getting glass pop bottles
for the (I think it was $.02) so I could buy $.5 packs of
1966 Topps baseball and Monster Laffs. Traded with friends
To make whole sets. If I remember no card was valued
More than others. Mantles and Mays were just #’s to complete sets

I remember looking for those pop bottles like they were gold! Two cents apiece added up fast. I mostly bought Batman or other non-sports cards or a Chocolate Soldier Soda. Baseball cards were up against some stiff competition for those pennies back then. Once in awhile I would get some baseball and hope for some Cardinals.

[TedWill1939]

I started ripping wax around 1980. Found my fathers 1950s cards in grandma's basement a few years later and was hooked. As was stated, people thought vintage was junk. I found cards at yardsales, thrift stores, ect. By 1986 I found mail order companys, and was buying current sets and found opportunities to buy vintage. Being a kid, the prices were out of reach. Around 1987 or 88 cards exploded, everybody was buying and selling cards. In my small area we had 3 card shops that sprung up. People started to travel to shows. The rest is history.
It was a special time, learning about the Golden Era players, viewing the great designs, reliving your parents childhood, for free or short money.

[rjackson44]

Remember going to the corner store buying 71 topps packs and supers.then going to the school yard to flip them .those were the days

[skil55voy]

I grew up in Detroit. I started collecting in 1962. I went into the Army in 1978 and was stationed in Maryland. I met Denny Eckes. He had a shop in Laurel, Maryland. He helped Beckett make his first price guide and he also published the first T206 checklist book. (For the author, he didn't write) There were a few shows around the area the, Nick Schoff and Bill Scott had a "store" near DC that was great. When I got out in 1981 and returned to Detroit it was booming with shows. Lloyd and Carol Toerpe put on a "National" in Plymouth with dealers from all over. John Stomen did shows and was producer of Sports Collectors Digest. He was a great guy and would trade cards. Jim Hawkins produced some great shows with autograph guests. A few of the dealers got together and managed to get most of the 1968 Tigers to come around for a whole year to sign. I used to trade cards with Kevin Savage of Ohio. The atmosphere back then was great. Most of the dealers knew what I was collecting and would look for things I needed. They were always willing to cut the price. There were lotsa shops to go to. Ebay changed it all. In some ways it's good and in some ways bad. The Nationals back then were great. There were NO corporate booths. It was great meeting people for the first time from other parts of the country. (Dr. Mcavoy, Joe Colabella, etc.) It's too money driven now and I detest the "grading" of cards. No standards, just someone's opinion.

[toppcat]

I've been reading through several hundred old hobby pubs, mostly from the 60's and 70's, during quarantine and can say that the 70's were really a time of convention growth, which went from semi-informal gatherings in homes at the beginning of the decade to taverns, motels then hotels by the middle of the decade and of course the first National in 1980. Mainstream media coverage started kicking in around 1974 as well.

I came onto the scene in 1981 and there were card shops springing up everywhere and almost countless shows by 1983-84 at the latest. In terms of being able to buy awesome stuff at great prices though, by about 1971-72 it was getting harder and harder to do so. Really tough times were still available and sold but they were already drying up. And superstar pricing began around 1970 as well, although it took a couple years to catch on. But there was still a lot to buy at fairly good prices as early Willow Grove attendees will no doubt attest. And no one knew what full checklists were for many sets still in the 70's, which was a constant theme in the hobby pubs and info was sent around to fill things in. Richard Egan in particular was a catalyst for this.

[bnorth]

Back in the day for me was mid/late 80s. I didn't get into cards till my late teens. As a player collector(Wade Boggs) it was hard to find the oddball cards. Actually all cards in general were rare at the time. I lived in a small town with one card shop. We did have card shows about every other weekend with around 5/6 dealers.

I was lucky and my mom worked at a place that gave 20% off to employees. Her boss would let her sell my little brother and me cards(wax packs, boxes, cases) at cost. Then we got the extra 20% off so we got cards at 20% under dealer cost. Man did we rip a ton of wax in the late 80s/early 90s.

Then ebay hit the scene. The cards that sometimes took months to find could now be found in days. A lot of the error, variation, regional issues, and test issues were still rare. It wasn't till early 2000s that pretty much everything was super easy to find. I would find anybody selling rare(at the time) stuff and buy out their entire inventory to resell myself with out any competition.

[DHogan]

I was in 3rd grade in 1967, in catholic school. I wasn't really a collector. More of hoarder. We used to play card flipping games in the play ground at recess. If the nuns saw us with cards, they would take them. One kid use to rat me out even when I didn't have my cards out. He would tell the nuns Dave has baseball cards in his pockets. The nuns would go thru my pockets, take the cards. And give me detention. The nuns must have retired rich on all the cards they took from us.

[lumberjack]

Someone mentioned Dr. Beckett's first price guide. He would set up at shows in Michigan after the guide came out. I once heard him tell a collector that he was afraid that the guide would become not so much a guide, but a bottom line for what a card would sell for and this is what happened. Nobody, nobody would sell a card for less than what his guide listed as its price.
lumberjack