Topic: What is your most powerful and important memory with baseball cards?

[ValKehl]

Originally Posted by dbussell12

It can be anything at all! Please share with us if you feel comfortable and so inclined! Pictures, details, ideas, stories... all are welcome.Cheers; happy Friday!!

David, what is YOUR most powerful and important memory with baseball cards?

[dbussell12]

Originally Posted by ValKehl

David, what is YOUR most powerful and important memory with baseball cards?

ah val! great to talk with you on here, not just on ebay. we may have both been at the chantilly show on the same day this year! i was there sunday; will definitely be back for the next two this year too. it was awesome.

for me it has to be getting my first vintage card with my dad at aj's sports stop. do you remember it? right over in vienna. little shop full to the brim with pages and pages and boxes and boxes of vintage. 1960 topps warren spahn. when i got back into collecting, last fall, i got a bob gibson 1960 topps signed card.

this week was another big moment. 1953 topps satchel paige, in a beautiful well worn piece. wonderful, wonderful card.

[jingram058]

I have told this tale a few times around here, but here it comes again. I had a converted ham radio room for my bedroom, just big enough for a twin bed. I started collecting baseball cards in 1967, during a trip to Dallas, Texas where my sister Linda was living at the time. I built complete (by the checklists) sets of 1967-68 Topps, and quite a few 1969-70-71 also, along with over 500 1962 Topps that one of the older kids gave me. I kept my collection under my bed. When we all went our separate ways, the card collection stayed under the bed, with Hardy Boys books and comic books on the book shelves my dad built. Some models that survived my destructiveness, antique bottles I dug up, and some steam machinery souvenirs from Sheahan and Parkway Pumping Stations (waterworks). When I moved out, that stuff stayed. Finally my mother sold the house and moved into a mobile home, and she took the bed and my stuff and put it into one of the spare bedrooms in the mobile home. She asked me over and over, did I want any of it? I told her over and over to just get rid of it. Some time in the early 1980s, my best friend Louis found a box of old baseball cards in the house where he grew up that he thought was long since gone. He took them to the flea market they used to hold at the fairgrounds, to a guy who bought and sold baseball cards. He gave Louis several hundred dollars for his cards; Mickey Mantle, Sandy Koufax, Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, etc. We both thought it was amazing. On the way over to the flea market, he gave me a 1963 Topps "Dodgers Big Three" card (I still have it, as the first card in my re-collection). I immediately got hold of mother, asking if she still had my baseball cards. "Oh, I gave all that stuff to the Goodwill. You said you didn't want it." So, yes, you could accurately say, I threw my cards away!

[ValKehl]

Originally Posted by dbussell12

ah val! great to talk with you on here, not just on ebay. we may have both been at the chantilly show on the same day this year! i was there sunday; will definitely be back for the next two this year too. it was awesome.

for me it has to be getting my first vintage card with my dad at aj's sports stop. do you remember it? right over in vienna. little shop full to the brim with pages and pages and boxes and boxes of vintage. 1960 topps warren spahn. when i got back into collecting, last fall, i got a bob gibson 1960 topps signed card.

this week was another big moment. 1953 topps satchel paige, in a beautiful well worn piece. wonderful, wonderful card.

David, I have been going to all of the Chantilly Shows for as long as I can remember, but never on Sunday. I was at the very recent Show on Saturday.

Yes, I remember AJ's Sports Stop in Vienna. I didn't go there very often because it was a fair distance from Haymarket, where I lived at that time. I do recall picking up a few of my N172 Old Judge cards of Washington players (the only N172s I collect) at AJ's back in the 1990's.

[campyfan39]

I wrote a whole book about mine!

My Dad went in 1978 (I was 5) to my grandparents' house to retrieve his grocery bags of cards from his childhood. His grandpa ran a grocery store and would give him packs on their weekly Sunday visits in Durham, NC. The first ones Dad remembered were 54 topps.

He knew they were "cleaning house" now that his younger sister had moved out. Unfortunately, they had thrown his cards and comics out two days before he arrived. He would have been happy to dumpster dive, but they used a burn barrel!

Dad then went on a journey to "Buy Back" the cards of his youth, and he took me along for the ride! He passed at barely 54 years old. I was only 29. I now treasure those times together, those cards, and the people we met. I documented them mainly for my boys and friends, but it has sold a decent number of copies. Rich Klein even did a nice article on the book when it came out 14 years ago, and Leon let me make a post here. I am in the process of editing and updating it now! (Grammarly and professional editors have humbled me haha!)

And YES my thumb looks terrible! I smashed it during a mission trip to western NC last weekend!

Great to read everyones stories!

[dbussell12]

Originally Posted by campyfan39

I wrote a whole book about mine!

My Dad went in 1978 (I was 5) to my grandparents' house to retrieve his grocery bags of cards from his childhood. His grandpa ran a grocery store and would give him packs on their weekly Sunday visits in Durham, NC. The first ones Dad remembered were 54 topps.

He knew they were "cleaning house" now that his younger sister had moved out. Unfortunately, they had thrown his cards and comics out two days before he arrived. He would have been happy to dumpster dive, but they used a burn barrel!

Dad then went on a journey to "Buy Back" the cards of his youth, and he took me along for the ride! He passed at barely 54 years old. I was only 29. I now treasure those times together, those cards, and the people we met. I documented them mainly for my boys and friends, but it has sold a decent number of copies. Rich Klein even did a nice article on the book when it came out 14 years ago, and Leon let me make a post here. I am in the process of editing and updating it now! (Grammarly and professional editors have humbled me haha!)

And YES my thumb looks terrible! I smashed it during a mission trip to western NC last weekend!

Great to read everyones stories!

wow chris you're ahead of the game on this one!! what's your doctorate in by the way? im a masters in philosophy + systems theory

this sounds like a great tale of redemption... have to look into it!! my best -- david

[campyfan39]

Thank you
I have a Doctorate in Christian Apologetics. It's been the most useful education I've ever had. Thanks for your kind remarks. I hope to have the book redone by the end of the year, and hopefully, Leon will allow me to post about it again like he did 14 years ago.
God Bless, and I have enjoyed reading everyone's stories on this thread.

Originally Posted by dbussell12

wow chris you're ahead of the game on this one!! what's your doctorate in by the way? im a masters in philosophy + systems theory

this sounds like a great tale of redemption... have to look into it!! my best -- david

[dbussell12]

Originally Posted by campyfan39

Thank you
I have a Doctorate in Christian Apologetics. It's been the most useful education I've ever had. Thanks for your kind remarks. I hope to have the book redone by the end of the year, and hopefully, Leon will allow me to post about it again like he did 14 years ago.
God Bless, and I have enjoyed reading everyone's stories on this thread.

I'm sure we could have a great dialogue about Kierkegaard, Meister Eckhart, and Hildegaard... and the deeper Christian texts + scrolls. awesome.