The Find that Never Was....

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Posted By: Anthony S.

My grandfather was born in Sacramento in 1900. In the 1920's he moved to San Francisco and married by grandmother. They bought a house around 1930 that they lived in until their passing(s) in the early 1990's.

Around 1975-6, when I was 8, my father took me to my first card show. Bought my first three tobacco cards that day, a T206 Mullin and Leifield, both of which looked as if they'd been beaten with a stick every day since 1910, and a Bender felt. That didn't last long. Felts in the hands of an 8 year old have a shelf life of about 4 months, before they magically decompose into sewing thread

Every Sunday, my mom tried to take us to church. I say tried, because she was a late sleeper, and none of the rest of us shared her zeal for salvation, so every Sunday morning was tiptoe and whisper time, with my father watching the 10am pro football game (west coast) on mute. On those occasions she did wake in time, we would stop off at my grandparents house afterwards.

When I told my grandfather about the tobacco cards I'd purchased, he explained that he too had collected cards as a kid and that he was pretty sure there was a shoe box of cards somewhere in the attic. Before he finished the sentence, I was in the attic. It was huge. Four separate rooms, all filled to the gills with boxes. Nobody in my family ever throws anything away. Ever. It's annoying.

I spent the better part of every visit to their house over the next 2-3 years looking for those cards. I did the math. If my grandfather had started smoking when he was 9, there might be a Honus Wagner up there. At some point I migrated to the equally enormous and cluttered basement to continue the hunt. Among the things I did find was a 1917 personal letter on White House stationery from Woodrow Wilson to my great grandfather (they had both been professors). In retrospect, very cool, at the time, so what. But no tobacco cards, no Honus Wagner.

Finally, after 2 or 3 years of tearing their house apart, my grandfather decided that his mother must have thrown them away. I practically had to be restrained.

The cool part is that knowing how excited young boys get about boxes and boxes of old baseball cards, I left all the 1970's cards I collected as kid at my parents house (okay, admittedly that's not the only reason I left them there). We're talking maybe 30,000 cards. So now when my sister swings by my parents' place with her kids, the 10 year old, Lou, immediately races upstairs and cherry picks the cards he wants. He even brings friends along. I've told him he can take any card he wants, but my mother always feels compelled to call me just to make sure. So occasionally, in the middle of the day I'll get a phone call, and my mom will just start saying "Dane Iorg. Willie Wilson. John Montefusco. Ron Cey."