Oldtimers on this board?

[akleinb611]

It was 1961 for me. I was six and I came across my friend's older brother sorting through a bunch of cards he had. I was very much taken with them - I remember the 1961 Johnny Podres had a huge close up of his face, and the colors were really bright. My parents were immigrants and didn't know anything about baseball cards, but my father was a huge baseball fan, so he supported my desire to get these strange and wonderful things. He figured that a penny for a photo and stats of a ballplayer was a pretty good deal. The local candy store and newsstand in Queens, where I lived, was my regular haunt for the next few months (it was around this time that I also started buying comic books at ten cents a pop). Another friend's older brother also gave me a stack of about fifty 1960 cards, which introduced me to the idea that these things were different every year, and which probably changed my DN A to that of a collector.

My mother recalled getting movie star cards back in 1930's Germany, when she'd be sent to the store to buy cigarettes for her father.

At the end of the season, most of my friends were throwing their cards out, but my father told me that he hadn't paid for all the cards just to have them thrown out. He bought me a scrapbook and a bag of photo corners (remember those?), and I mounted all my cards. Which is why I still have them.

Alan

[Balticfox]

Originally Posted by akleinb611

He bought me a scrapbook and a bag of photo corners (remember those?), and I mounted all my cards. Which is why I still have them.

Your father was a wise man. He also knew the value of a penny!

[Collectorsince62]

As my screen name implies, it was 1962 for me. I saw that bright green wrapper on a trip to the Glaser drug store (next to the A&P where the following year I searched through Jello boxes looking for Cardinals while my Mom did the weekly grocery shopping) and a lifelong passion was born. Just a few 5-cent packs of 6th series that year before they suddenly disappeared. 1963 saw a few more purchases but in 1964 all my friends collected cards and we had lots of front porch trading sessions. Cardinals were highly coveted. Mantle for Javier - sure. We continued buying packs for the next few years using cash from soda bottle returns pulled in a wagon to the A&P. The Glaser store charged five cents a pack but the nearby Ben Franklin Five and Dime gave you six packs for a quarter. In 1967 the sixth series was nowhere to be found so we just kept buying seventh series packs hoping the sixth would show up. Another Brooks Robinson? Oh well, into the Orioles stack. By 1968 many of us started umpiring, which paid really well. Now we could afford boxes of packs. A box of 24 packs cost $1.00 plus three cents tax. My friend John got an entire series out of one of those '68 boxes and I was so jealous. The fact that the Cardinals were successful during those early collecting years really added to the fun. I'll never forget the feeling of seeing that 1965 Cards Celebrate World Series card. As Tom Stanton wrote in The Road to Cooperstown, baseball's appeal is about holding on to a piece of your childhood. That's why I still collect today . . . with my grandkids.

[BuzzD]

My father had a pharmacy in Olean NY and tried to sell baseball cards. I would take entire boxes down in the basement of the store and open all the packs. Got a 1955 Mantle TV Bowman that was a treasure. I was 8. Somehow he never got mad..