When did you start collecting pre-war/vintage?

[ls7plus]

I collected as a kid, of course, starting in the late '50's and continuing part way through 1969 (I am presently 58). My return to collecting, I believe in hindsight, was orchestrated through fate. At my law office about 1990, a younger associate who was a collector, would regularly bring his cards into the office, ostensibly to organize them. I believe now, however, that his purpose for bringing them in was because his love for them simply wouldn't allow him to be apart from them all day! Others made fun of him, but I thought his cards were fascinating, and that provided all the stimulation I needed to return to the field. Unlike more sophisticated collectors, but probably like many others, I bought mostly the wrong cards at first (read modern rookies) because the speculative investment fever was still running amok throughout the hobby and its various publications (SCD WAS 300+ PAGES LONG) in those days. However, I was interested in vintage '50's and '60's cards from the start, and bought them at that time too, in as high a grade as I could afford, as they depicted the heroes of my youth.

With regard to pursuing pre-WWII cards, I have to give a lot of credit to Alan Hager, of all people. While other hobby writers were pushing modern rookies and/or cards dating only back to the '50s in high grade (often out of self-interest, as they were not only authors but also dealers, and that was the type of stock they had to sell), Hager was at least authoring books and price guides which were recommending pre-war cards as far better investments, based on their greater scarcity/rarity and the status of such upper echelon HOF'ers as Ruth, Cobb, Wagner, Matty and Johnson. He was also providing quality photos of an incredible number of different cards and sets from that era, and I was just snatched by the collar and dragged into focusing on such cards by those books. This coincided with the fall from grace of the over-hyped modern rookie cards, when it began to become evident even to those as initially naive as myself that these cards existed in truly humungous quantities in high grade and offered extremely limited potential for value retention or gain ( I sound like an invester here, but am really more of a collector/connoiseur who loves to hold the history of the game from generations past and the great players from those earlier times right in his hands. As a kid, and later as an adult, I not only spent countless hours playing baseball, but reading about its history, and playing stratomatic baseball with cards of not only the players of the time, but the greatest of all time. I just happen to like the idea and to believe that well-selected items will appreciate in value also). So, to cut this long-winded dissertation short, I was in my early forties when I migrated to pre-war collecting, wading in slowly at first, as I learned more about the cards, then damn the torpedos, full speed ahead!

Kudos to Clayton--great post!

Larry