What are your favorite card/hobby stores from your youth?

[drmondobueno]

back in 1961-63 I bought rack packs of Topps. When the market closed, my parents were so upset and concerned about our young egos being deprived of the American Right to piss away...err, spend our hard earned nickels, dimes and quarters on baseball cards, so we packed up and moved to San Bernardino where I migrated down Del Rosa to R&S Liquor, Sage’s and White Front where baseball cards sucked every dime out of my young pockets. Little did I know the Baseball Gods would prevent me from EVER owning a Mantle portrait until I turned 30.
Life is unfair, so eat the desert first, as you sort through wax....

[JustinD]

I remember growing up in a small town called Coopersville Mi until age 8. We would ride our bikes to Main St. and buy packs at the Quik Stop with Slush Puppies and Fleer Quicksand gum on allowance day.

After moving to Lansing in 82’ my mom would sit outside of a tiny shop called The Sports Collector Dugout run by a shady guy named Elliott and his wife while my brother and I were in. The shop had a permanent haze of smoke from Elliott and smelled horrible. He didn’t care about the kids in the shop while telling his secrets and spent the day talking to friends about his many exploits of ripping off buyers and sellers for braggadocio. I still have all my wax wrappers as I saved everything and they are all scalded from resealing poorly with an iron. I never knew a thing.

Thank god for the 1983 Michigan Topps packs, those were the first ones I would ever find a good card in. Amazing the stuff you just completely overlook as a kid.

[JollyElm]

The 'card shops' of my youth were our friends-who-had-older-brothers' houses. If Hendrix and Floyd posters suddenly started appearing on bedroom walls, we knew they were too busy learning how to play guitar or chase nubile tail to give one crap about shoeboxes filled with old cards, so they passed them off to their younger siblings. It was like looking in a museum, seeing all of these 'ancient' cards from the 60's...which was only a decade earlier. Then the trading of our brand new cards for some oldies would commence.

[pete zouras]

Originally Posted by JollyElm

The 'card shops' of my youth were our friends-who-had-older-brothers' houses.

Well put and for me coming across collections throw away by moms during my morning paper route.

[Exhibitman]

In 1977, my parents took me along to their friends' house. The friends' kids were adults and gone and their entire collection was in a 2 x 2 box in the garage. When they found out I was card-crazy they pulled out the box and said "take what you want". By the time my parents were ready to go home I'd pulled a 6" stack of HOFers from baseball and football. Seeing I was reluctant to leave that box, the friends asked if I wanted the rest.



I spent hours going through that box at home, on the floor in my room.



Around 11:00 I found the grail, the oldest card in the box: a 1955 Ted Williams.



That had been a card I'd lusted after ever since I saw in in The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book. I was so thrilled I ran down the hall to show my parents. They did not share my enthusiasm for Teddy Ballgame, but I knew...

[icollectDCsports]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

That had been a card I'd lusted after ever since I saw in in The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book.

I can relate. That book also made me lust after that card, so I purchased one through the mail for approximately $25 around 1981. I was nervous about spending that much for a baseball card.