What Was The Hobby Like Back In The Day?

[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

[toppcat]

First Beckett Price Survey Results (1977):

[Rhotchkiss]

Price guides were great. I used to study them for hours and I memorized the prices of all the cards in all the conditions.

Remember checklists? Do they even make those anymore?

[Exhibitman]

Originally Posted by Rhotchkiss

Price guides were great. I used to study them for hours and I memorized the prices of all the cards in all the conditions.

Remember checklists? Do they even make those anymore?

Sure. I checklist the sets I cover in my books. If you want modern checklists try baseballcardpedia.com. There are also quite a few checklists available readily online.

[Mark17]

Originally Posted by toppcat

First Beckett Price Survey Results (1977):

I love the article by Barry Halper, pumping his T206 Collins proof card as perhaps being worth more than a Wagner. Best line is where he stakes his reputation on it.

I wonder whether Barry knew the copious amount of fraudulent stuff in his collection would one day be exposed, and if so, what he thought of that.

[FrankWakefield]

I grew up too far south to call them pop bottles... But I'd bicycle around to pick them up outa ditches on the road I lived on. Coke bottles brought 4 cents, Pepsi and RC only 3 cents. This was in 1965 - 1968 mainly. I bought a few 1964 cards from allowance money. Back then people would get soft drinks in bottles and pitch them outa their cars as they drove away from town. There weren't aluminum cans, nor paper cups, for the most part. Seems odd now to think about throwing out glass bottles. Anyway, I'd bicycle along eyeing the ditch, picking them up, usually starting about 7:30am. Morning dew was sometime on the bottles. I'd pile them into the bike basket, peddle home and hose the mud off the bottles, then bicycle to a small grocery store maybe 3 blocks away. And I'd turn in the bottles, I'd get credit for them, then I'd buy nickel packs of Topps cards. I'd bicycle home with one hand on the handlebars, chewing nasty bubblegum like it was nectar as I looked at the cards. In the day near the end of the season, kids would switch to football cards as their team faded from contention / Topps diminished card printing for the later series and would switch production to football cards. Good memories thinking about those cards... At that time I had no knowledge of any cards older than 1959; only had seen 1959 through 1963 cards from seeing them among other kids' cards if they had older brothers. Usually the newest year attracted interest, and cards from earlier sets had little 'swap' value. And I confess to having bicycled around with Mantle and Maris clothespinned to the frame so that the spokes hit the cards creating a pleasing motorcycle like sound. We were idiots...

[whitehse]

Originally Posted by 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

I remember being at a mall show in suburban Chicago around the mid-90s and being set up to a husband and wife team who had been hobby dealers for decades. She had a man sitting at her table going through the quarter cards who looked vaguely familiar but I could not place him. He moved on to my table and bought a few cheap cards and kept moving but it wasn't until later when I asked the wife of the dealer team next to me who that man was and she casually mentioned it was Dr. Beckett. She had known him from the beginning and were good friends and to say I was shocked was an understatement. In a world where his name was synonymous with baseball cards and likely helped to push ahead the card boom, he was just a quite and totally unassuming man who was still collecting like the rest of us. Of course, this was after he sold the business so there was no conflict of interest at that point.

[hysell]

Yes, i got started collecting in 1974 , at that time ALL cards come out at the same time , NO series runs , then ? I got $ 5.00 ever 2 weeks for my chores around the house , did meow yards & scooped snow in the winter time & in 1976 I got a paper route , also . 10 cents per pack in 1974 , then . 15 cents a year or two , later , so, around $ 6.00 could get you a whole box of cards back then , now it's a pack at that price ?....LOL I would sell & trade cards at school and with other friends also .The 1st card show I went to was in 1981 & that was SO COOL , back then . Card trading seems to be a lost form , but I still do a lot around here & other places to this day

[jefferyepayne]

This is an awesome thread. When I opened it, I was expecting to see lots of stories about collecting in the 50s and 60s but after reading a few posts I realized I'm one of those old guys you are referring to!

I started collecting football cards in 1972. Got serious about opening packs in 1973 and had complete or near complete sets for Topps football from 1970 to 1983 before life got in the way (college, grad school, work, marriage, kids). Also collected baseball but started doing that a bit later than football ... started around 1976. I had most of the Topps baseball cards from the 70s as well by the time I went to college.

Mostly I put each year's sets together by opening packs and trading doubles with friends. I used my allowance pretty much year around to buy packs or boxes, sometimes getting lucky when a store would want to dump bunches of them after the season(s) was over. Always hit the local Ben Franklin after baseball and football season ended to clean them out of their inventory they didn't want any more and were willing to dump ;-) I also used to try and convince older kids to sell me their cards once they lost interest and was able to pick up some late 60s / early 70s collections this way.

A buddy and I discovered a card shop in the nearest city, three flea markets where dealers would sometimes set up, and two antique stores that would occasionally have cards. Through these avenues, we picked up older cards (mostly 50s and 60s) although I had a t206 and a '20s baseball strip card as well. But cards weren't expensive like they are today so picked up lots of stars for a song including a '55 Ted Williams, '58 Hank Aaron, '62 Mickey Mantle, '64 Rose to name a few. Always was looking for star players I could add and tried to get a type card for each older set I knew about.

When the Beckett books began being published my buddy and I were in heaven as we loved looking up our cards to see how much they were worth ... never mind some of them were complete beaters but we didn't care. Also loved to learn about all of the sets we didn't even know existed. Cracker Jacks, Goudey, National Chicle, etc. were all sets we had never seen a card for before. I really wish I had paid attention to the ads in the Beckett books as when I go back and look at them today (I still have the first baseball and first football price guides) I realize that we should have been thinking outside of our local area and reaching out to dealers, participating in mail-in auctions, maybe getting our parents to drive us to a show or card collecting group but none of that crossed our minds at the time. We were just too busy playing sports, chewing bubble gum, trading cards, and just being kids at that point.

Unfortunately I took a 25 year hiatus from the hobby but lugged my 15,000+ cards with me pretty much everywhere I went during that timeframe. Oh, the deals I could have had during that timeframe if I had been collecting as I had the cash to buy lots of stuff once I started working and prices were still very cheap through the '80s for vintage cards.

My kids got me back into collecting when they started playing sports and I've been doing it ever since ... more than a decade at this point and it is great to be back in the hobby. I focus pretty much exclusively on all things football at this point but always appreciate reading the Net54 threads on baseball too as, yes, I am still lugging around my childhood baseball sets. Such is the life of a collector.

jeff

[IndyDave]

I was probably 12 or 13 when I discovered the hobby in the early 70's.

I know I requested a catalog from some of the early sellers with ads in the Sporting News and somehow got a book that had Topps and Bowman checklists. I remember having my mom write a check so I could get some cards from some of the neat old sets I saw.

I'm not sure what got me "subscribed" to some of the early newsletters of the day - most likely a response to an advertisement in the Sporting News, Baseball Digest or Street and Smith's.

I grew up in a suburb of Youngstown Ohio. Somewhere along the line I placed a classified in one of those newsletters and shortly thereafter received a letter from Bill MacTaggart, inviting me to a baseball card show he was having at his house in Grove City, Pennsylvania, about an hour away. My dad agreed to drive my brother and I over and we had a wonderful time.

Bill eventually moved the show to a hall in Grove City then to a larger place in town. My brother and I started setting up at the shows to sell some of our duplicates and my parents would drive us over. Bill and Jean and their kids were great hosts. I still correspond with Bill all these years later and received a letter from him earlier this week. Made good friends with dealers Ray and Joyce Lingard, their son Dale from Ontario, George Sebo from Youngstown and collector Glenn Vasbinder from the Pittsburgh area. I've lost touch with all of them, although my brother ran in to George last year at a show. Pretty sure Ray and Joyce have passed away.

We would set up and those shows and be thrilled to sell $40 or $50 of stuff. I guess at the time my brother and I were "modern" dealers - we had nothing older than 4 or 5 years. We spent more time walking around buying things than at our tables. And spending time talking to our friends. I lost track of how many different card issues that I couldn't get in Youngstown, that Dale or Bill would buy for me and ship to us. I know Dale sent us all kinds of OPC hockey issues and pretty sure Bill got us some of the 1973 Topps candy lids and some Topps hockey that we didn't get.

One of my favorite things to buy at that time at shows were "bricks" of older cards. 25 or 50 or 100 different cards from an older set, wrapped in Saran wrap or some other cling wrap. The cards would usually be different conditions but as whole would be very cheap.

Sometime in the mid 70's we talked my parents in to driving us to one of the shows at the Troy Hilton. I had never seen so many baseball cards in my life. I distinctly recall being talked in to buying a brick of 1958 Topps by a dealer. I think it was 50 different cards for I'm sure either $10 or $20. Hank Aaron was on top. Yeah I had to be talked in to that. I often wonder which of the hobby legends sold me that brick.

Other shows started to pop up in our area. Jim Borgen started a show at the McKinley Memorial in Niles Ohio. We set up at Jim's show for several years as well. Bill's show in Grove City was in June each year and Jim's show in Niles was in July. Jim added autograph guests with the first one being - who else in NE Ohio? - Bob Feller.

Bill's show eventually died off as we had more and more shows in Cleveland and Pittsburgh to go to and occasionally set up. Jim's show couldn't compete either after awhile.

The hobby as whole was never as condition conscious as it has become. The grading scale was poor - fair - good - very good - excellent and mint. I think we were all generally happy with very good or better. Centering? As long as the card didn't look cut off we never worried about. Much more concerned about corners and creases.

The first "big" card I remember. No, not Mickey Mantle. I remember when the prices of the 1967 Brooks Robinson high number went to $20 and I thought that was absolutely absurd.

Eventually I had subscriptions to Sports Collectors Digest and Traders Speaks. Used to devour those when they arrived to get my orders out quickly and hopefully get what I wanted. I ran in to John Stommen of SCD fame at a show after I moved to Indiana. I introduced myself as Dave Carson of Poland Ohio and he told me my street address. Guess I was a long time subscriber.

Somewhere along the line Frank Nagy sent me his auction catalog and I was hooked. Oh how I could not wait for that package to arrive in the mail, wrapped in white butcher paper and tied together with a string. With my "winnings" on approval. The first time they arrived with me having to send a check I was amazed. I always made to sure to pay Frank as soon as I could.

As I've read since then about the vast quantity of cards Frank had, I've often wonder how many "winners" there were for certain cards. I seemingly won a lot of bids. I do have a 1963-64 Parkhurst hockey set, completely assembled through Frank's auctions.

Sorry for rambling on - I know I've posted much of this in other threads on the board. I was more or less on a hobby hiatus from I got married until my son went off to college. I've gotten back in over the past five years with vintage stuff and have made several good friends in the hobby in the Indy area.

My son is an absolute sports freak but never got in to collecting. We look at my cards occasionally but the time is coming to get my stuff in order and start paring down the collection. I'm hopefully 2 - 2.5 years out from retiring from work on my terms (if I can be so lucky) and then its time to start selling stuff off, starting with all the duplicates including some of those card bricks sitting in the basement that I put together for the last shows I did as a dealer nearly 30 years ago.

[jefferyepayne]

Originally Posted by IndyDave

Somewhere along the line I placed a classified in one of those newsletters and shortly thereafter received a letter from Bill MacTaggart, inviting me to a baseball card show he was having at his house in Grove City, Pennsylvania, about an hour away.

Case in point. I grew up 1 hour from Grove City as well but on the PA side. :-(

jeff

[judgebuck]

I first started collecting baseball cards in 1958 by buying packs at the local small town grocery store in west Kentucky. I was heavy into buying cards from 1958-63. Packs of five cards were five cents each, and there were also one-card packs for one cent. A box of 36 five-card packs was $1.80.

Football cards were popular as well, with Fleer joining Topps in 1960. Hartland statutes were special about this time, too. I remember ordering a few cards from Card Collector Company in NY. The 1961-62 Fleer basketball cards were popular with us young collectors, but it seemed they were a little hard to find.

We all liked the 1961-63 Post Cereal baseball cards and the 1962 Post Cereal football cards. We would accompany our mothers to the grocery store and inspect the back of the cereal boxes before deciding which cereal we wanted to eat that week.

I returned to collecting around 1979. I believe that was when the first Beckett softcover price guide came out. I was then in the workforce, and I sometimes bought collections from others who needed or wanted the money for something else. I guess it was early-mid 1980s that I began to go to shows in St. Louis. Often, when someone brought cards into the show to sell, an auction would be held on the spot. I remember turning down an offer from a dealer in St. Louis to sell me two Aaron rookies for $125. I thought that was too high. I would frequently buy lower grade 1933 Goudey Babe Ruth cards at the St. Louis shows for $150 and bring them back home and sell them to other local collectors for $300 each. Local card shops began to pop up in the 80s as well.

Looking back, here is the biggest regret I have: I don't regret having bought any card or collection; but, I regret having sold many cards. The values just seem to go up and up. That's why now, at age 68, I'm having a hard time downsizing my collection. I know I'm not going to be here forever, and I can't take them with me!

[lumberjack]

Tom Tuschak, a dealer who was associated with Charles Brooks always had a table at the Detroit shows. He had been around for a while.

On one occasion, someone knocked a Detroit Tigers gas station giveaway tumbler off of Tuschak's table to the floor. Tuschak never missed a beat, "Rare Aurelio Rodriguez puzzle glass, Aurelio Rodriguez puzzle glass right here."
lumberjack