How long you collected as a kid ?...

[CW]

I stuck with it for awhile, collecting from '77 (age 7) through '85 (age 15). While I kept one geeky vice (my love for Rush music), I did fall out of baseball card collecting for about 15 years, getting back into collecting in '99.

[Bob Lemke]

I was very much into baseball cards from age 3 (1954) through 9 (1960). Football card interest spanned the years 1954-62. I think the last serious non-sports set I pursued was Civil War News in 1961.

I generally bought one pavk of the new baseball cards each spring to see what they look like, through the 1960s.

[dherm360]

I have been truely passionate since 1977. When I was younger I couldnt wait for each weekend to go to the local bowling ally or VFW. Luckily my parents were very supportive. Up until a few months ago I had never sold or traded any of my cards(then I sold four 2009 autos and bought a T205).
In the last year I have even come to enjoy the hobby even more by pretty much going exclusively with prewar. It has become exciting learning every day something new, and this board had a great deal to do with that, so thank you very much!

[novakjr]

Started in '86(age 6) picking up a pack here and there from the concession stand at the t-ball fields. Was pretty serious in '87. I just loved the '87 topps set. Collected somewhat seriously until about '93. A combination of too many sets coming out, the downfall of Bo Jackson, and somehow lost interest between Topps series 1 and 2. Going through my old collection, I've got a crapload of series 1 singles, and nothing at all from series 2 that year.. After '93, I really only collected casually for a few more years. A random pack here and there. But I still went to shows and collected a few of my favorite players. Cal, Molitor, Brett, Murray and pretty much my favorite Indians.. I got back into it for a bit in '98 when I started putting together the '98 Bowman set, but that quickly fizzled and I found myself completely out of collecting by '99(other than the 1982 Topps Traded Ripken that I bought in '01)

I started back up late in '04, when a buddy was showing me a t206 of his, and I decided I wanted one too. So to ebay I went, and I ended up with a beat to shit Krause pitching for under $10. And the collecting has been back on since then. Almost everything I have from my childhood collection is worthless, aside from a handful of HOF rookies. My childhood football collection is even worse, aside from having almost every possible Drew Bledsoe rookie(I think the number of rookies he ultimately had was another reason I lost interest in collecting altogether). I've never really gotten back into football, aside from slowly putting together the '56 topps set and some HOF rookies. Never got much into basketball other than star/HOF rookies.

[vintagetoppsguy]

I, too, started in '86 (age of 15 - late bloomer) and got very passionate about it in 1987. I sitll love opening '87 junk wax!!! I never quit the hobby and have been collecting for 25 years straight now. I will be 40 next month and I don't plan to ever stop.

[steve B]

A bit different here.
1969 - 1 pack
1970 - none?
1971 -1 pack
1972 -none?
1973 - none till we moved late in the year then some
1974- 77 a fairly typical ammount for a kid
late 77 - moved again to a town with a card store! It's been downhill ever since - a few periods of relative inactivity, but still collected a bit.

Steve B

[Robextend]

Originally Posted by vintagetoppsguy

I, too, started in '86 (age of 15 - late bloomer) and got very passionate about it in 1987. I sitll love opening '87 junk wax!!! I never quit the hobby and have been collecting for 25 years straight now. I will be 40 next month and I don't plan to ever stop.

I have the same love for 1987 Topps, I was 6 years old and that was the first set I started collecting. I must have bought (well, begged my mom anyway) 3 wax boxes worth of packs, and the rest is history. I did take a long layoff from the mid-90's up until I discovered my love for vintage around 2006. I was so disenchanted with the insert craze of the 90's that I just gave up for quite a while.

[bbcard1]

Started in 70, stopped in 1978, restarted in the early 80s. Haven't stopped yet.

[novakjr]

Originally Posted by Robextend

I have the same love for 1987 Topps, I was 6 years old and that was the first set I started collecting. I must have bought (well, begged my mom anyway) 3 wax boxes worth of packs, and the rest is history. I did take a long layoff from the mid-90's up until I discovered my love for vintage around 2006. I was so disenchanted with the insert craze of the 90's that I just gave up for quite a while.

That '87 Topps set sure did suck a lot of us in....All things aside, it's probably still my favorite Topps set for sentimental reasons...

[Bob Lemke]

My second childhood memory is of stepping out of my grandfather's maroon 1949 DeSoto in front on our house with a red-amd-green pack of 1954 Topps. The only card I remember (maybe it was a penny pack) was Ray Blades, who, amazingly, bore a strong resemblance to my grandfather at that time.

I had three older brothers and we all collected to a greater-or-lesser degree. I still have a few of those choldhood cards that I inherited from them and from older kids in the neighborhood who outgrew them.

I remember in 1955, when the local groceries ran out of Johnston Cookie packages with the Braves folders before we could get a full set, that my mother wrote the company and they sent both me an my brother full sets of 1953s.

[BradH]

Originally Posted by CW

I stuck with it for awhile, collecting from '77 (age 7) through '85 (age 15). While I kept one geeky vice (my love for Rush music), I did fall out of baseball card collecting for about 15 years, getting back into collecting in '99.

CW-
You and I must have been separated at birth. The ‘77s were my first true love and I too took a “Rush break” in the 1980s. I came back to the hoppy and turned to tobacco cards when I landed my first “real” job in the mid 1990s, although I now collect as much 1950s football as I do old baseball.

I bought a few packs in 1976, but really dove in as a seven-year-old in 1977. I still have 500 or so of my original ’77 Topps cards in the same wooden box I housed them in (decorated with my little drawings of the team logos). I have since gone on to complete two very high-grade ’77 sets, and I’m working on a third, but I will always keep those originals because of the fond memories.

I collected for a few years until 1982, when all three card designs that year really turned me off, so I really didn’t buy any cards that year. A high school buddy and I bought a ton of 1986 and ’87 cards, most of which I sold a couple years back in a yard sale. Mom and Dad never really supported my hobby, but somehow a few packs always made their way into my Easter basket or under the Christmas tree.

[CW]

Originally Posted by BradH

CW-
You and I must have been separated at birth. The ‘77s were my first true love and I too took a “Rush break” in the 1980s. I came back to the hobby and turned to tobacco cards when I landed my first “real” job in the mid 1990s, although I now collect as much 1950s football as I do old baseball.

I bought a few packs in 1976, but really dove in as a seven-year-old in 1977. I still have 500 or so of my original ’77 Topps cards in the same wooden box I housed them in (decorated with my little drawings of the team logos). I have since gone on to complete two very high-grade ’77 sets, and I’m working on a third, but I will always keep those originals because of the fond memories.

"Brother from another Mother," as they say. 50's football?
I also appreciate those cards -- I had a blast while building a
NM+ '55 All-American set a few years ago.

I've always thought about putting together a high grade subset of
'77 Topps, collecting all the "All-Stars" from that set. The photography
and card layouts in the '77 set are some of the best from that era,
no doubt!

[Davids]

This is my first response as a relatively new member. I swore that I would just be a spectator but can't sit this one out! My first cards purchased were 62 Topps baseball in the spring of 1962 (end of grade 1) bought at Edwards' corner grocery store. I played "dropsies" only once and lost all my cards so never played again. I also placed high value on condition and my sets never came to school (only doubles for trading). I continued to buy baseball (and hockey and football, some non sport like pirates and civil war) every year until and including the summer of 1968 (between grade 7 and grade 8). It then became uncool and, after 3 aborted attempts, vividly remember throwing virtually everything else out (I still believe there is a box in the ceiling joists of our former family home which I would love to figure out how to gain access to). Included in the disposition were many cards that I had acquired from older kids going all the way back to 1953 (had the Mays but no Mantle) but, for some reason, no 1952s.
Every subsequent year I would buy a couple of baseball packs just to see what they looked like up to 1990. That year we were still playing in a seven a side touch football league but decided that we (all around 35yrs old) needed some youth if we wanted to continue to compete so we recruited some junior players. One of these kids didn't drive and lived near me so I became the driver and got to know him well. Guess what, he collected baseball cards so I decided to put together a 1990 Topps set card by card. I was again hooked and have collected ever since, I currently concentrate on 1952-1967 Topps along with all Bowman Baseball 1955 and prior.
As a postscript to this rant, I suffered my 56th birthday this year and got an amazing gift from my younger brother. Ready for this, he had found a calendar from non other than Edwards' grocery store which had been demolished probably 30 years previously!!

[CW]

Originally Posted by Davids

As a postscript to this rant, I suffered my 56th birthday this year and got an amazing gift from my younger brother. Ready for this, he had found a calendar from non other than Edwards' grocery store which had been demolished probably 30 years previously!!

Good stuff!

What a great thread this has turned out to be! I've enjoyed reading
every entry.

[Kalineman]

Bought my first pack in 1959 at age 6. While opening it in the kitchen, I pulled a Detroit Tigers card of catcher Red Wilson. My folks - both school teachers - made a big fuss about pulling a Tiger player in my first pack. My dad was a coach and I was always a manager on his baseball, basketball and football teams in elementary school. He let me show my Red Wilson card to the varsity team. I never stopped collecting after that and my folks saved all my cards when I went away to college.

[brickyardkennedy]

Bought packs of sports cards from 1957, through 1965, when, at the age of sixteen, I became a serious adult. : D Since '57 Topps Baseball was my "first", plus the fact that I find the pics so attractive, I've always had an attachment to them - to the point where I put together the set, not my usual collecting style (team collector).

[sb1]

I bought Football in 68 and then Baseball in 69, packs were still a nickel in 69 and my grandmother would give me a dollar so you can imagine how many I had, I can remember getting so many 1st series Al McBean's I thought he was in every pack. That same year in little league baseball we bought packs at the concession stand that had the rub offs. We were really inrigued by prior years issues that we were not familiar with, a 1968 BB card was like ancient to us!

Oddly one of the small grocery stores in town was selling black and white cards with cat eye marbles?? they had left over 1960 Leaf cards and I bought a ton of them.

I quit in 1975 and sadly sold it all in 1981.

I have put together sets of most of these years 1969-1973and they bring back more memories and mean much more to me than all of rare turn of the century stuff. I sold all of my 1952-1967 sets that I put together after the fact, years ago. I still enjoy putting together the insert material and the Kelloggs 3-D cards.

Scott