Best Memory of Opening Wax Packs

[brass_rat]

This thread is great, thanks to everybody for sharing. Chris, I can only imagine you looking at veggies and then the cards, back at the veggies, then making a "tough" decision...haha.

I remember my very first pack was 1987 Topps (I was 7 at the time)...it was during a summer camp visit to the batting cages and the associated arcade. I was really excited and promptly went home to tell my parents that I now collected baseball cards.

In the early 90's my mom would take my sister and I to the mall and to the local card shop, Extra Innings. I'd use my allowance to buy a box of cards, I vividly remember the yellow boxes of 1990 Score and green boxes of 1991 Score. My family would order pizza for dinner and watch the four shows that made up TGIF on tv, and I would open my cards. Great times...

Steve

Originally Posted by Chris Counts

In the spring of 1970, when I was nine, my mom sent me to the grocery store to buy some vegetables. As I walked into the grocery store, I was awestruck by a box of baseball cards. At the time, I knew little about baseball, although I collected other stuff, like bugs, Hot Wheels and Odd Rod stickers.

For reasons I can't explain, I spent the money my mom gave me on several packs of Topps baseball cards. I can remember getting a poster of Ollie Brown in the first pack and one of Willie Davis in the next pack. As I was walking home, my father passed by in his car and offered me a ride home. I explained to him what happened and he was surprisingly sympathetic. He drove us back to the grocery store, where he bought my mom the vegetables she wanted — and he bought me several more packs of baseball cards ...

From that day on, I lost all interest in bugs, Hot Wheels and Odd Rods ...

[slantycouch]

Love all these stories! So good.

My favorite memories of opening packs are the ones my mom would get for me and we'd open together. She always was into my hobbies whatever they were. She was as excited as I was when we'd pull the last card needed for a set. I submitted this story to another site a few years ago, but I think it fits well here too:

My somewhat unhealthy obsession with baseball cards began in 1987. After purchasing my first card -- a 1986 Sportflics Pete Rose -- from my neighbor, I was hooked. Spring came, and the green and yellow boxes of cardboard gold arrived in our town. Don Mattingly, in my eyes less a baseball player and more a deity, was on the box. It was fate. Sure, those wood borders were ugly as sin, but I couldn't have cared less. How does an eight-year-old kid scrounge up enough money to attempt to build a 792-card set, you ask? He runs to his mother and begs, that's how. I did my share of chores that summer. Dusting. Vacuuming. Sweeping. But my mom's weakness was breakfast. She loved going out and enjoying her morning coffee, eggs and toast. I knew that if I went with her, she'd always surprise me with a few packs. I know now she just wanted to spend time with me, and if she had to bribe me a little, so be it. After my mom passed in 2004, I found a box of 1987 Topps neatly hidden in our basement where countless Christmas presents had undoubtedly been nestled over the years. One more reminder of those fun summers with my mom, Don Mattingly, and a whole lot of stale bubble gum.

[abothebear]

I remember walking down the main street with my best friends on the way back from the dime store opening up the '85 Topps packs we just bought hoping for the team USA cards. I don't remember it so vividly because of the cards I pulled, but because of how cool it was to be downtown unsupervised as a 7 year-old and buying cards myself for the first time. I think I got an Obie McDowell.