Oldtimers on this board?

[mark evans]

I collected only two sets as a kid -- 1958 Topps football and 1961 Topps baseball. I threw out the football cards after completing the set but still have the baseball cards, which I bought with my allowance at a Peoples drug store in the Wards Corner neighborhood of my hometown of Norfolk, Va.

[lumberjack]

An older boy (he was eight) gave me Topps cards of Sam Jones and Jackie Robinson as they were "doubles." Hey, why would you want TWO.

He said you could buy them at Kresge's in downtown Pontiac (Michigan).

My father took me there and sure enough there was a box of Topps cards right next to the weird-ass orange drink machine that kept the juice swirling from the top down.

We bought two packs and as I remember it, most of the cards were either Cleveland or the Browns and for the life of me, I have no idea what the wrappers looked like.

I was so thrilled by the idea of the cards that I had no idea those were drawings.

[Balticfox]

Originally Posted by mark evans

...which I bought with my allowance at a Peoples drug store in the Wards Corner neighborhood of my hometown of Norfolk, Va.

Did that People's drug store have an old fashioned soda fountain or luncheonette counter?

[Yoda]

This post reminds me of the loss we suffered this year with the passing of Teddy Z.

[Hankphenom]

I'm a leading-edge boomer, so it was Topps cards of the late 1950s for me, but not in any methodical way or thinking of my cards as a "collection." We did trade them, put them in the spokes of our bikes, and flipped them against the wall. I just liked seeing pictures of and learning about the ballplayers I heard about on the radio or saw in the occasional game on TV, along with the stats, cartoon, trivia questions, etc. The gum wasn't bad, either, though not my favorite. I also had some pennants, pins, scorecards (we always kept score) and other things bought at the ballpark. I got into collecting memorabilia of my team in the late 1970s, then became a dealer in the 1990s. It's been a lot of fun.

[kmac32]

1970Topps cards for me as I wanted cards for my 1969 Chicago Cubs. I was addicted for life.

[RayW]

My earliest memory of card collecting was buying packs of 1962 Mars Attacks at the now long gone Garfield Market in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood on the way to school. The cards featured violent events of a Martian invasion. For a seven year old, there was nothing like it. After getting a large portion of the set, I lost my entire collection, running around on the playground. The cards were only available for a short period, due to the violent nature of cards and subsequently pulled from store shelves.

In the early seventies, I discovered Baseball Digest and The Sporting News. I found a mail order company named Wholesale Cards that had most of the Mars Attacks cards. I was finally able to build a complete set through The Trader Speaks and found the final card at King’s Cards located in Berkeley in 1977. The original Mars Attacks is still my favorite card set of all time.

[Balticfox]

Originally Posted by RayW

My earliest memory of card collecting was buying packs of 1962 Mars Attacks at the now long gone Garfield Market in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood on the way to school. The cards featured violent events of a Martian invasion. For a seven year old, there was nothing like it. After getting a large portion of the set, I lost my entire collection, running around on the playground. The cards were only available for a short period, due to the violent nature of cards and subsequently pulled from store shelves.

In the early seventies, I discovered Baseball Digest and The Sporting News. I found a mail order company named Wholesale Cards that had most of the Mars Attacks cards. I was finally able to build a complete set through The Trader Speaks and found the final card at King’s Cards located in Berkeley in 1977. The original Mars Attacks is still my favorite card set of all time.

The Mars Attacks cards were not to my knowledge sold in Canada back when they were first released. I did though manage to score the "Hairy Fiend" card in a generic wrapper while trick or treating in 1963 or 1964:

(Not mine.)

It was the wildest card my buddies and I had ever seen but without the wrapper we didn’t even know it was part of a set called Mars Attacks. Nonetheless, it became our favourite card.

But since Mars Attacks cards had not been distributed in Canada, I just never saw any more for over two decades. It wasn't until I bought the first edition of Christopher Benjamin’s Non-Sport Price Guide in the mid-1980’s that I realized that the “Hairy Fiend” card we’d had twenty years ago belonged to the fabled Mars Attacks set.

With the notoriety within popular culture that the cards gained when the Mars Attacks movie hit screens nationwide in 1996, the cards have become demand scarce and thus egregiously expensive. As a result, I still have only these nine in my present day collection:

[Casey2296]

Originally Posted by Yoda

This post reminds me of the loss we suffered this year with the passing of Teddy Z.

+1

[Hankphenom]

Originally Posted by Yoda

This post reminds me of the loss we suffered this year with the passing of Teddy Z.

+1. The knowledge and memories that went with him are unimaginable.

[nickedson]

Got my first pack of cards, albeit non-sports, with the 1958 Zorro cards. Then in 1959 - at age 6 - purchased my first Topps baseball pack. My folks made such a fuss over the fact I got a Detroit Tiger (Red Wilson) that I became a collector for life. Set up at the Troy Hilton for my first show in 1973.

[50sBaseball]

I started collecting with 1953 Topps Baseball with my older brothers buying me packs as I was too young (age 6 at the beginning of the MLB season) to go to the local Kingswood Drug Store outside Hartford, CT. I remember looking at the cards for hours and learning what teams were in the American and National Leagues by the color (red or black) at the bottom of the card. Still have my Mantle card. In 1954 I was allowed to go with my brothers to buy cards and we would open the packs the minute we left the store, with the colorful card backgrounds very attractive to a young collector. The drug store also sold the NY Journal American, and as a young lad interested in any image of MLB players, I would search the nearby bushes where the NY Journal American "cards" - actually pieces of paper - were discarded or fell from the newspaper. I have since sold many of those, but still have a few. I should have picked up more - for free! And those were the days before checklists, but my brothers and I would help each other with trades, not knowing exactly what cards may come out. And we traded with friends. I bought and collected until the 1960s set, then life had other priorities. I started up again in the late 1970s when our sons came of age to collect. Good times.

[mark evans]

Originally Posted by Balticfox

Did that People's drug store have an old fashioned soda fountain or luncheonette counter?

Yes, good for cherry Cokes and french fries.

[1880nonsports]

my dad was in the navy with "uncle eddie" and "uncle arthur" of Shorin/Topps fame - close friends their whole lives. I think it was 1964(?) they sent me a 500 card vending box and the next year as well when I was at camp. Never thought about making a collection - they were much more valuable for flipping, leaners, and color games. Now wait for it - never owned another card until in 1992(?) I bought a set of Stadium Club unfinished cards that had made it's way out the back door of topps! An Alan Haeger undertaking :-).
I actually brought up a question about the set maybe a year or two later to one of the brothers (CRS) when they visited my father in the hospital (I went ostensibly to ask the question). No response. Ha! I still have it.
All I remember before that was funny valentines.....

[Hankphenom]

Originally Posted by Balticfox

Did that People's drug store have an old fashioned soda fountain or luncheonette counter?

I'm guessing they all did back in the day, also Drug Fairs and other chain and most mom-and-pop drug stores. And I remember them as uniformly wonderful, with great soups, grilled cheese sandwiches, open turkey platters, etc., to go with the soda fountain favorites like brown cows, sundaes, banana splits, etc. You couldn't beat the price for what you got. What memories! When CVS bought Peoples, I couldn't understand why you would want the name of your store to be "CVS" rather than "Peoples." That was probably my first clue as to what corporate conformity was all about. They didn't care what anyone thought about the name or about making every one of them exactly the same, in fact that was the goal. If they could wave a wand and make each of us consumers exactly the same, too, they would do it in a heartbeat.

[Balticfox]

Originally Posted by Hankphenom

I'm guessing they all did back in the day, also Drug Fairs and other chain and most mom-and-pop drug stores.

Well a lot of them did anyway!

Does anyone know of any drug store soda fountains still in operation?

[Hankphenom]

Originally Posted by Balticfox

Well a lot of them did anyway! Does anyone know of any drug store soda fountains still in operation?

Here's a town with two of them!
https://abyss.davidmlawrence.com/dru...oda-fountains/

[Balticfox]

Originally Posted by Hankphenom

Here's a town with two of them!

https://abyss.davidmlawrence.com/dru...oda-fountains/

The closest extant one I can find to my neck of the woods is the Saugatuck Drug Store in Saugatuck on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan just a few miles southwest of Grand Rapids, Michigan along I196:

[MikeGarcia]

.. " The camera adds ten pounds ".

[Hankphenom]

Originally Posted by Balticfox

The closest extant one I can find to my neck of the woods is the Saugatuck Drug Store in Saugatuck on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan just a few miles southwest of Grand Rapids, Michigan along I196:

Love it!

[frohme]

Originally Posted by Balticfox

Well a lot of them did anyway!

Does anyone know of any drug store soda fountains still in operation?

The local one in my previous location was in operation till 2023 - we left Corydon in 2021, but I go back occasionally as my PCP is still there. It was a pretty cool place.

https://www.wdrb.com/news/business/s...02d9a59f9.html

--
Mike