Childhood Baseball Card Memories
phelda
Posts: 207 ✭✭✭
My first complete set was 1985 Topps, mom got it for me for Christmas from the Sears catalog. I sorted those cards so many times and loved every minute, but never sorted numerically. I would spread those cards out carefully covering every inch of my bed. By team, by cool name, by funny hairstyle. My brother always wanted the Phillies cards because he went there on a Cub Scout trip and instantly became a fan. I had not yet developed a love for a particular team, one week it was the Astros, because they had a cool uniform, another week it was the Expos. That set will always be my favorite.
I also remember laying in the grass in my grandmother's back yard during our big family get picnics and trading cards with my cousin. We each had those huge binders with the 9-pocket pages that you could barely close. Our cards were always sorted in our own "kids mind" way. Our best cards usually were in the back, because those were our "keeps". I remember my cousin desperately wanting the 1987 Donruss Mike Greenwell card, he would drive me crazy calling him "gator! gator! gator!". I probably made out well trading him. I also remember having a few random 1975 Topps cards that were some of my favorite, a Tom Seaver, the MVP cards from 1975 and a few 1968 Topps cards.
In elementary school there was an after school chess club, but it was actually just all of us trading and showing off our cards. For some reason the drug store near my house only had Topps and Sportsflics. When I saw the 1983 Fleer set I was memorized. When Score came out a few years later I wanted those so bad. I know this is all junk era stuff, but for me and many others it really ignited our love for the hobby.
Doing baseball card shows when I was only 12, and my mom was such a big supporter. She never threw my collection out, she actually helped me sort cards. She helped me get a tax I.D. number and even surprised me with my own business cards. It was corny, but very sweet. She would sit with me and help. When I made a few bucks, I would secretly stash the cash in her purse. I think she knew I wanted to help with the family bills.
And I don't know why this one really cheers me up, but any time the sun is really bright out and I have to squint, I always think of sitting in the back seat of our crappy station wagon with my brother, looking at that ridiculous huge binder of cards, the sun reflecting off those plastic pages, but the warmth didn't just come from the seat or the lack of air conditioning.
One of my current jobs is teaching math to kids, and I make these bundles of sports cards. At first I thought they wouldn't like them or not even be interested, but they are insanely popular even for the girls. Its good to know that even though the hobby feels mostly dominated by fat 40ish year old dudes like me, the future is pretty bright.
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One of my favorite childhood memories till today, is when a new series of baseball cards would come out.
For you younger collectors thru 1973 baseball cards would be issues every three to four weeks starting in early March. There was nothing like going to the store and seeing the new series for sale...
Great post. It’s fascinating how one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. I collected religiously from 1974-1980, and never liked the new companies putting out cards. As a result I have always viewed Fleer and Donruss with disdain.
I remember a trade session with a neighbor in the early 90s. We did about fifteen 1:1 trades. AFTER, we looked up how we did with a beckett. The total book value of the trades was something like $1.70 to $1.35.
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Nice Posts , Great memories, I can remember Triple Play Sports cards in San Pedro, the year was 1989, walking in and picking out a 1968 Topps Bob Gibson from the glass case, bought it for $8 , getting it graded in 2005, and coming back back a PSA 8
Building skyscrapers with my baseball cards on my bedroom floor until they fell over. And starting over again and again all afternoon on rainy Saturdays.
As a Sox fan you can imagine how this one hurts and why it is still burned in my brain. I had a 1975 Topps Jim Rice Rookie, I think I was maybe 8 years old. A kid in the neighborhood, maybe he was 11 or 12 had a ton of cards. This was the first time I saw a "price guide". Of course he held the book without me seeing it and offered me a 1983 Fleer Dave Righetti for the Rice. I said no way, I hate the Yankees. He replied trust me the Righetti is worth $10 bucks and the RIce is only 25 cents. Before I knew what happened the deal was done, the door was slammed shut and I was riding my bike home. I felt like I was punched in the gut. I didin't care what each card was worth, and at that moment I didn't know the kid was lying. Its strange when that moment comes for a kid to realize what "value" and "worth" mean in terms of dollars rather than your own desirability. I guess I still do that, I forget that people like what they like to collect for a multitude of reasons, not just the cash equivalency.
One other one really stings. My neighbor at the time, I was 10 or so had a father that was always in trouble with the law. Unrelated story, but I lived in a really bad little section of town in a housing project. Our apartment houses were connected and a hole was cut in our basement wall. The kids dad would stash drugs and other things of which a 10 year old has no idea what it is, in our side of the basement. I always avoided stuff down there because it was a basement and smelled and was often damp and musty. One day the police were searching my neighbors house and the kid is freaking out because he had to get something from the basement. I didn't know if he was trying to get those drugs or not. I was naive at that age, although when I got older I realized and was exposed to too much. Turns out the thing he had to get was a bunch of basketball cards. We sat on the curb in front of the house and he handed me a stack of them and said here, you can have half of these if you don't tell the kids at school about my dad. I said no thanks, I only collect baseball. Those cards....1986 Fleer. I didn't say anything at school, because I really had no idea what was going on. Its not the basketball cards that I wish I had, its the sad look on my neighbor kids face that I can't shake. And again it goes back to "value" of cards. Even if those Jordan rookies were worth back then, what they are worth now, I still think he would have given them in exchange for not having the humiliation in school.
I think its fine that I grew up in the junk overproduction era, but man I always wonder what it would have been like to grow up in say Brooklyn in the 1950's. You could have watched Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle and Duke Snider and had stacks of Topps and Bowman bundled with rubber bands. For me, I watched the Sox loose to the Mets in 1986. I had the corner store where my brother and I got comics, grape soda, slices of pepperoni, Snickers bars and tons of those 1987 Topps. Yes, they made enough of that stuff for everyone on earth, but it was what I remember collecting. Wax packs, rack packs, cello packs, super cello packs, all kinds. We wanted the Canseco and McGwire, the Bonds and Bo Jackson, the Wally Joyner, the Todd Zeile, and of course the Boggs and Mattingly. There was also an arcade of Centipede and Pac-Man that we would play. The corner store was kind of far and most kids in my neighborhood when we were little were not allowed to cross over those busy streets to get there. My step-dad had a rule, "you can only go as far as I can yell for you guys to hear me and to get your butts home for dinner." My brother and I were lucky, our dad could yell incredibly loud, so we figured the corner store wasn't too far.
There was a card shop, I think it was called R Jays or 3 Jays. It was one of those little pop-up stores that were everywhere in the late 80's early 90's. Card collecting, investing, speculating was booming. 1990 Leaf baseball, 1992 Bowman, 1991 Stadium Club were all $8-$10 a pack. The 1990 Leaf Thomas was a $100 card ungraded, the 1992 Bowman Piazza, Cliff Floyd for some reason and I think Carlos Delgado were popular cards? Stadium Club had such a great photography design, but man those packs put off some terrible chemical plastic smell. Which brings me to another weird baseball card childhood memory. Please consider me crazy, because I am, but does anyone appreciate not the search, the quest, the digging, or the scouring for specific cards, but the RANDOM and purely enjoyable surprises. I do. I remember the first time I saw a 1975 Topps mini, I picked up a common for a quarter. It was the coolest card I owned for a while. My first card from the 50's was a big deal to me. It was a beat up 1956 common. Players I never heard of, teams I didn't know existed (Colt 45's, Seattle Pilots, Washington Senators). The show case had some expensive cards, that are so funny to think of what little they go for now. 1985 Topps Eric Davis $10, 1984 Fleer Strawberry $40, 1984 Topps Boggs $5 (I always crack up with the whole "its his second-year card!!, so what!). I do remember seeing cards from the 50's going for much less than they do today obviously. Condition was soooo far off from what it is now. Centering wasn't that big a deal. A dinged corner was still Near Mint, ridiculous. Some shops that sold currency, coins and stamps as well as cards had very inconsistent grading terminology. Very fine, brilliant, un-circulated, I had no idea as a kid how to differentiate. Creases were the only deal-breaker for me, unless the card was "old", which for me was 1980 back. Oh yea, that Henderson Rookie, I never got one as a kid. It is still one of the best looking cards. Mom never once complained as she sat in the car and waited for me to spend my $3 or $4 dollars. I took hours I think, stretching out those coins to maximize the haul. A quarter here, a dime there. If I considered spending an entire dollar on a card, man it had better be in a snap-tight holder (remember those abominations). And screw-downs, give me a break. And there it was, the card I had to get. Three players, all on the same card, all Hall of Famers (not at the time). What value, what a deal, and the card had no creases, and it was only $2 bucks... 1984 Topps Highlights Nolan Ryan, Steve Carlton, Gaylord Perry. It fit so well, the card was made for me. Nolan Ryan played for the Astros, a team I liked for a couple of weeks because the uniform was cool. Steve Carlton because my brother was obsessed with the Phillies (he went on a trip there once), and Gaylord Perry, because a kid is immature, uninformed and foolish calling people all kinds of names. With the card in hand, I checked out, hit the car and mom knew I had found a gem.
When my mom went grocery shopping, me and my two brothers would always want to tag along, so we could talk her
into buying us baseball cards (wax packs) at the checkout line. This is like 1971-76 mainly, I think our record was something
like 8 packs apiece, usually about 5 packs apiece was typical. Then my big decision was opening them in the car(lived in the country) or waiting until we got home. I sorted my cards by team and kept rubberbands around them. Counted and recounted them.
I've told my mom several times if she would have bought herself as many packs as she bought us kids and put them
in a safety deposit box unopened or somewhere safe from us that she would be amazed how much they would be worth now.LOL.
Jim Rice signs in the mail for $10
I was brought up in the Detroit area we were in awe when a childhood friend showed us his Al Kaline rookie card at the time it seemed to be a very hard card own .
I grew up in Detroit also. I moved to a new neighborhood in the early 1970's. I was six and didn't know anyone in the new neighborhood so I rang about 20 doorbells on the street and asked if they had any kids my age I could play with. One lady had three boys who were 3 years. five years and six years older than me. The one three years older than me had a baseball card collection, comic book collection and a Sports Illustrated collection (he had every issue from about 1967 to 1973 in great condition.) That got me started and hooked. I bought baseball card packs and Wacky Packs with all the money I had in 1972, 1973 and 1974. I also bought two 1974 Topps sets from Sears when they had them in the special boxes in 1974. In 1975 I bought as many Mini's as possible. In Michigan the regular sized cards were rare and the mini's were more plentiful. In I975 I would also go to a local card/coin shop owned by a local dealer named Uncle Ed. I was talking to him one day and learned he need to get a crown for this teeth. My father was a dentist and I made a deal with him for a rookie Hank Aaron he had and some other cards for a crown from my father. I negotiated with my father to do it in exchange for some work around the house, but somehow I got busy with something else and i let the deal slip away. In 1976 my neighbor who go me started collecting bough a vending case of 12,000 cards and made sets out of them. He had them all over his bedroom floor and he spend hours sorting them. I remember he spent about $45 for the case of 12,000 cards and sold the sets for around $10. So I did the calculations in my head that he could get around 1200/6600=18 sets and make $180 after sorting the sets. The next year 1977 I wanted to do the same thing. A local dealer from Grosse Pointe named Brooks, (I can't remember his first name). had a store on Harper and Chalmers in Detroit and I would beg my parents constantly to take me there. My father's office was in Hamtramck so it wasn't that far, but they rarely relented. Finally I was able to them to take me and he wanted $60 for a case of 1977 Topps baseball. I didn't have that much money and he wanted $35 for half a case but I was able to negotiate him to $30 because I would attend some of the baseball card shows he put on at local hotels. In 1978 and 1979 I was able to affoed full cases for I think around $65 or $70 dollars. I would spend hours sorting these cases into sets and I got so mad when my younger brother would knock over the piles of cards I had on the floor. I would ocasionally get my parents to drive me to a show to set up a table as a dealer selling sets and singles. I remember in 1978 a guy raided my 1978 singles and bought about 10 Bump WIllis Error cards from me about five minutes before I figured out they were valuable because they were error cards. As some of the boys in my neighborhood got older and needed money for cars and girlfriends I can remember buying their cards. In 1978 I bought a 1959 set for $100 from one that I still have and have gotten graded over the year. I also remember getting $20 from my grandfather that year and buying a 1973that amount. I didn't realize until about ten years later that the set was mostly OPC, because 1973 OPC are worth slightly less than topps. I can remember many of the trades I made. In 1976 I traded a 1974 Topps Sears set for a 1972 unopened wax box. A few years ago I got the packs graded and about 20 packs were graded out of the 24 I submitted and they were worth much more than that 1974 set would have been. Brooks ran many of the bigger Detroit shows in the late 1970's and early to mid 80's. He let me pick up Willie Mays from the Airport for a show at the Southfield Civic Center just after I got my driver's lIcense. Greg Businneau, who is now a big dealer in Traverse City, lived just outside Lansing in the early 80's and ran a 7-11 with his father was a frequent dealer at local Detroit shows and i got friendly with him and would often watch his table at shows while he was wandering around the shows. Once the Fleer error cards came out in 1981 and created a frenzy and with Donruss and Fleer creating increased competition the market changed dramatically, and not necessarily for the better.
s
Earning $5 mowing lawns then immediately riding my bike to the Ben Franklin to buy $5 worth of 1968 Topps baseball.
Coming home and opening the packs to see who I got and who I needed to out in my set.The doubles would be traded with the neighbor.
Nothing better than seeing Mickey,Willie,Hank,and any Cub,especially Ernie
...........those were the days
i used to get baseball cards from my neighbour growing up when i did my paper route.. he'd give me a card a week from his collection.. when he passed i got part of the collection.. rest went to his son
We used to have a chain of toy stores K-Bee Toys. I would buy baseball cards, Garbage Pail Kids cards, Starting Lineups and Transformers. Man I wish I still had those Transformers, those are quite valuable too I see.