Personal Collecting History

[Exhibitman]

Interesting OP and subsequent posts. It is fascinating to see the varied routes we took to getting here.

I started collecting when I was a tyke, with Topps baseball and football cards. My first big year for those sports was 1971. In 1972 I started ripping packs of basketball cards. 1975 is the year I started buying hockey cards in earnest. I quickly moved on to the chase for older cards. My uncle gave me The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book (Little Brown, 1973; Brendan C. Boyd & Fred C. Harris) and I read it until it fell apart. Still cannot see a Coot Veal card w/o adding a "?" to it. It was my first real exposure to the art of golden age Topps and Bowman and those cards were now on my radar. I found The Complete Book of Baseball Cards: For the Collector, Flipper and Fan [1975; Steve Clark] and was hooked on T cards. I realize now that many of the cards I coveted were desired because of those books.

My first card show was Thanksgiving 1976 at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York, sponsored by the ASCCA. I’d become a Willie Mays fan when he returned to New York in 1973, so my first great project was to collect an example of every Mays card. I finished the Topps run at that show with the 1952 and 1953 cards. My mother nearly ripped my father’s head off when she found out that he loaned me $45 to buy them.

We moved to L.A. in 1977 and the only good thing about the move as far as I was concerned was that I fell ass-backwards into perhaps the richest collecting environment around. I quickly became involved with the West Coast Card Club, which held monthly meetings in a church basement and later a social hall in Northridge. I also lucked into several collections that were given to me by family and friends.

My collection at that point was pretty much about the four sports, Topps, Bowman and a smattering of T cards. It was during that time that I focused on a few Western regional issues that have ever since fascinated me: Zeenuts, Bell Brand, 1968 Atlantic Oil.

I put away the cards after the 1980 baseball season and really did not return to them for nearly a decade, when I decided to attend a massive show at the Moscone Center in San Francisco as a welcome diversion from law school. Unfortunately, in a moment of existential panic in 1987 I sold off a big chunk of my collection to raise some cash before law school. I really did not buy much at the Moscone show but I was re-energized to start collecting. I then attended shows throughout the Bay area if I could get to them on BART or other public transit.

When I returned to L.A. after graduating and got a job and started having disposable income, I really got back into collecting, aided by the abundance of shows. It was a rare weekend that I did not have at least a show a day to attend.

My collecting changed immeasurably around that time owing to two meetings at shows. At one, a fellow had 1948 Leaf cards of Barney Ross and Benny Leonard. I sort of knew that boxing cards existed but seeing these, I was instantly smitten. I bought the pair for a few bucks and took them home to show my father. He looked at the Ross card and said the words that changed my collection forever: “I think my cousin Ray fought him.”

You could have knocked me over with a puff of air. “Dad,” I said, “if you have a cousin who was a boxer that means I have cousin who was a boxer.” He then told me about Ray Miller for the first time and I realized that I, klutz of the month, was related to a world-class athlete.

The other collection-changer for me was meeting an old-time collector named John Spalding. Some of you might have known John. He was a collector from the Bay area with a strong background in PCL history and sports. But that isn’t what got me interested. It was his album of prewar Exhibit cards. I knew of and had collected the postwar cards from time to time, but I’d never seen anything like these. Love at first sight. Over the course of several shows I purchased stacks of them from John, while making a general pest of myself picking his brain about the issue.

I have never been a ‘own ten top flight cards and nothing else’ kind of collector, yet I’ve also never fallen into the completist category. In other words, I have a big-ass pile of stuff: i call it "The Festival of Bric-a-Brac." I like such a wide variety of cards and memorabilia from many eras, sports, cultural segments, etc. My collection was is a rambling, varied thing with tons of backwaters and tidal pools of micro-collections. The broad strokes are:

--A world boxing type card collection, represented whenever possible by favorite fighters Benny Leonard, Joe Louis and Jim Jeffries
--Some boxing memorabilia, mostly photo premiums.
--A boxing HOF collection represented by career-contemporary cards whenever possible, which I use as the backbone of the type card collection (e.g., I have a type card from the 1931 Bigott set from Venezuela that happens to be HOFer Pedro Montanez).
--Prewar baseball cards and ephemera
--Exhibit cards
--Postwar mainstream collections of baseball, basketball, football and hockey, especially the 1970s (I am a 1970s kid after all).
--Autographs and cards of Star Trek TOS, musicians and comedians.

Modern mostly leaves me flat. There are a few sets I like and I do collect some modern issues, mostly basketball cards devoted to my Showtime Lakers, but it doesn't hold my interest the way a 1976 Topps Fred Lynn will (i mention it because I just bought a stellar raw one to replace a PSA 9 I am going to sell).

Speaking of selling, this crazy market definitely gives an OG collector like me pause; do I sell into it or not? There are some tremendous profits to be taken but if I still want to collect, I am not going to take them: what am I going to do, sell my Aaron RC and then try to replace it a third time? Yeah, not. A nice problem to be sure, though...

And since we need some pictures to go with all the verbiage:

[Frankish]

Terrific story. I can relate.

And I knew there was a reason I always like Colavito, even if I wasn't an Indians fan....

[Mutton Chop Yaz]

Thank you, everyone, for responding so kindly. And thank you for adding your story (as well as your help with that Paige Exhibit), Adam. Really great to read.

[ASF123]

I have it because I used to go to the same barbershop as Mr. Colavito. If you were a boy who liked baseball and left a card with the barber, Mr. Colavito would sign it.

Sounds to me like you have a card signed by a barber with a good gimmick .

Seriously, though, thanks for sharing your story. A lot of parallels to my own.

[todeen]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

I have never been a ‘own ten top flight cards and nothing else’ kind of collector, yet I’ve also never fallen into the completist category. In other words, I have a big-ass pile of stuff: i call it "The Festival of Bric-a-Brac." I like such a wide variety of cards and memorabilia from many eras, sports, cultural segments, etc. My collection was is a rambling, varied thing with tons of backwaters and tidal pools of micro-collections.

I liked this very much. I told my wife that I want my collection to be like a museum with rotating exhibits. Right now my allowed display space has my Tris Speaker stuff in it, but it once had Reds memorabilia and autos. I'm thinking of doing a modern-vintage (1989 - 1995) exhibit next.

Last summer I told my wife I would support her in paying off debt and reduce my monthly card money. So I picked up some of the modern cards I'd always been wanting, were widely available, but I'd never gotten around to purchasing. The 89 UD Griffey, 93 Topps Gold Jeter, and 93 SP Jeter were all at my LCS. I'm glad I bought them in June last year, because I got them just before they went crazy in price. The Griffey Tiffany I bought at the beginning of its climb on ebay, and I thought I got a nice example for a 7. Then, the more I've been on this site, the more I've learned about regional and SGA cards. I've explored that, and I learned about the Kahn's sets that have many a Reds star. So I picked up the Kahn's Larkin RC to add to my collection.

All of these cards came out in the hey-day of my youth. I wanted to pull a Griffey out of a pack, so I purchased lots of 89 UD and never got one! That's when I decided buying packs was foolish and I hated the chase. I'd rather just pay the inflated price for a single card, or the complete set.

[Exhibitman]

That's funny, Tim, how similar our pack-busting experience has been. I have busted dozens of boxes of cards since 1990, and the only good card I ever pulled was this one:



To compound the injury, when Jeter got popular in the Yankees' run of the late 1990s I thought about getting a RC but figured why bother since I already had the coolest Jeter ever. D'oh!

[cornhusker]

Chris, they are still selling plenty of cards through the bid board auctions up there in the Schuylk. Mid level vintage weekly it seems. Interesting place.