What was the salvation of the Prewar card hobby

[BillyCoxDodgers3B]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

"In 1955, there were 77,263,127 male American human beings. And every one of them in his heart of hearts would have given two arms, a leg and his collection of Davy Crockett iron-ons to be Teddy Ballgame."

Inspired me to get a 1955 Topps.

I wanted the beater with the red and blue pencil crayon checkmarks on the front!

The funny part is, I guarantee you every one of the actual cards featured in that book would today command a significant premium. Just like the great 80's movie Mask inspired me to buy every '55 Rube Walker I saw. Back then, that amounted to two! Hard to believe it was a challenge to find something like that in those days, but I was a kid in Canada. Much different than all of you lucky NYC kids with your legendary church basement shows. We didn't have autograph guests yet back then. The best show find I made didn't really become anything of note until years later, and it's really nothing in the way of show finds. I picked up an autographed '69 OPC Hank Aaron. It's still the only OPC version I've come across. It was $18, which was actually very big money to a kid at the time. I was offered that or a Munson RC for the same price. I'm happy with my decision. Still have it, too.