Evolution of collecting habits (aka "slow Thursday")

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Posted By: TBob

At the age of 8 I bought my first pack of Topps cards, a 1958 penny pack and was hooked. I was amazed by my friend Tommy Dragonmueller's neatly arraned sets in shoe boxes which included cards I had never seen before, i.e. 1956 and 1957's. I collected the 58 and 59s at Wyberg's drug store on Nicollet in Minneapolis until we moved to White Bear Lake, where I collected the 1960's and 1961's. In 1962 we moved to Hamilton, Ohio and I collected the 1962 set. I never knew there were high number cards in the 61 or 62 sets until years and years later. I dropped baseball card collecting when I turned 13 as Babe Ruth and later high school baseball were all I needed and because as an 8th grader, girls didn't think guys were cool who collected cards.
In 1981 I returned to collecting at the ripe old age of 31 as I chewed the gum to quit smoking (that worked for about 5 years) and in 1983 turned to the T206 set and later went in to the T207s. I collected complete sets of the Topps cards from 1959-1988. After I sold off all my vintage cards in the early 90's, I began anew collecting vintage cards and started collecting and completing the sets from E-90-1 to E-98 and T205, T206, T207, T212 and the majority of T213.
One thing I should mention is that in 1985 I was one of 3 partners who bought the largest "find" of T213s ever. It is still called the "Southern Find." I had a complete set of T213-3s (how many of those exist? One?) and sold it to Bill Mastro for a ridculous price. The cards were all around EXMT. I also sold off the duplicates which included the very rare T213-3 Cobb with overprinted back which was graded SGC 50. I still have one of the overprints, the McGraw with hat and that's never going anywhere. I wish I had kept the Trader Speaks, BHN and SCD issues I purchased along the way, just for nostalgia purposes.