What was your first vintage baseball card??

[steve B]

Sort of two parts for me.

In 74 they had the Hank Aaron specials showing all his cards. I told a friend of mine I'd really like to get some of them. he said his brother had some, but not Aaron and he'd see if he could get one. But I'd have to swap somereally good cards.

A couple days later I swapped what was probably a fistful of 74s, likely all As and Red Sox for a 68 Matthews. It's pretty beat but I still have it.
(Ok, it was only 6 years old at the time, but I was 11 and my oldest card was from 1969. At the time it seemed like an ancient card)

Around 77-78 I had moved to a new town and Halls was on my way home from school. Wow, stuff that was very old, T206s, boxes full of cards from the 50's and 60's all sorts of fascinating stuff. I wanted T206, they were 1.50 and they'd mounted them on 3x5 cards with a piece of 9 pocket page, and the cards had some stats typewriten on them. Must have been a few months later, they weren't doing the 3x5 card thing anymore. One day I stopped in and they said "look at this before you buy something" It was a truly awful T206 Beckley. Polar bear, no stains, but totally beat. Held together by tape. But it was only 20 cents! And they'd set it aside just for me.

I still have that one too. It got me started on older cards, and although I didn't know it at the time, it taught me a great lesson about how to really run a hobby business right.

Steve B

[Howe’s Hunter]

Saw it at the Burlington Arcade antique store in Lincoln. I couldn't move away from the case. The next day, we went back and bought it as my anniversary gift, which was the next week.

It is one of only six of the original collection I had that I didn't sell when I decided to pursue Howe's collection. The others are the portrait versions of Tinker/Evers/Chance and a Johnson/pitching that were all my 10th anniversary gifts, and a Bliss portrait my son picked for me as a Father's Day gift when he was three.

[triwak]

First pre-war. Bought on eBay in 2004 to begin an attempt at a complete HOF collection, expanding on what I had acquired as a kid (still ongoing). Knew nothing about pre-war until this arrived. I was now hooked!

[Kalineman]

I bought my first vintage cards at the 1973 Troy (MI) card show. Actually, I was intrigued by the look of the T-206 cards, so I bought Tinkers, Evers and Chance as a trio for the princely sum of $11 total.

[bjcunningham]

I was probably 14 or 15 at a card show, my Dad let me borrow $20 to buy a T206 Evers.

[Robextend]

This is what started it all...

[Hot Springs Bathers]

I think I have told this story before but my first card show was 1976 in Ft. Smith, Arkansas. After seeing a complete set of T205s for sale I was hooked.

On my way out the dor I stopped again to see hobby legend John England's table. I asked about an Old Judge card and paid $4.00 for it. It was a Bushong Browns Champs. It was my largest purchase at the show.

[brianp-beme]

My first vintage cards came as group in the early 70's from an older brother, mostly 1959-64 Topps.

My first Pre-WW2 cards came together in lumpy fashion. I was driven by my folks to a card show near LAX in 1981, and the first dealer inside (yes, I remember it was on the right side) had some beat up old cards in their case. I took them all for $11.00, pretty much all I had to spend. I ended up with:

T206 Mathewson Dark Cap
T206 Johnson pitching
E98 Cy Young
T205 Breshnahan
T205 Wheat (Broadleaf back)

All around Fair to F-G condition. These cards started me on the path to low-grade collecting bliss. I still have each card, and if I had to get rid of all my cards I have collected except one, I would hang onto the Matty.

Brian

[glchen]

Looking back at my records, my first prewar cards were a bunch of 1933 Goudey's which I picked up at the same time I was picking other modern 80s cards from my youth. I purchased these raw, and they were described by their sellers as VG-EX to NM and ended up grading poor to fair when I sent them into SGC. You can say that was my baptism as a newbie collector, and one of the reasons I am strongly TPG now.

For vintage, when I was a kid, my older cousin gave me his collection of beater 1973-75 cards which I always liked. I remember I had reprints of T206 Wagner and Magie which I looked at with reverance, but I never thought about collecting prewar then. It's like many people have said. A $6 card was a lot of money back then. I didn't even think about being able to afford really old cards. Just picking up a few 87 wax packs was enough for me back then.

[7nohitter]

When I was 16 I bought a '69 Ryan at a card show I ONLY paid $200 for it as there was a ding in the right hand corner...for a 16-yr old dropping $200 from a 'rough week' at Star Market in Natick was a big deal!!

[Zan]

[Big Six]

a T205 McElveen...I had that card for several years until high school...don't know if I traded it or just lost it. In fact, I don't know where it came from either...it just appeared in my collection...an odd fish in a sea of late-1970's and early 1980's cards. Flash forward many years and I finally replaced it in my collection with the one below...



Because of this card, I am now working on a modest collection of T205s...