Dreams of "The Find"...

FB

Last week, I received a call from my mother inviting my wife and I to dinner. During the conversation, she mentioned that the 80 year old widow across the street had told her that her husband had been putting away the excess baseball cards from the candy distributor he worked for for years before he died and she wondered if my mother knew anyone who could tell her what they were worth.

Her husband passed away in 1992 and had worked at the same distributor for 35 years. I remember him giving the kids in the neighborhood packs when I was a kid (early 70's).

So, needless to say, I was pretty excited about seeing what she had! My mind was racing thinking of all the 60's and 70's material that might be in there!

To make a long story short - when I got to her house, she asked me if I could get the boxes out of the attic because they were too heavy for her to lift. So, I quickly went upstairs and brought down 4 "copier paper" boxes weighing about 30 pounds each. When I removed the tape from the first one, I found a full box of loose 1988 Donruss. The next box was mostly 89 and 90 Topps. The 3rd was 90 Topps and Score and the last one was 89 to 92 Donruss...

I don't know who was more disappointed... (probably me...) She asked if they were worth anything... I told her that she get more enjoyment out of them by giving them to her great grandkids than she would ever get money for them.

mrc32

funny

metalmike20

Great story!!!!!! I myself was getting excited as I read each sentence until I saw the "88 donruss", what a disapointment! I had a similar thing happen to me, a few years ago a family friend passed away. Well his wife called me and said that her husband had collected cards for years and years and they were all safely stored in boxes. Then she surprised me even more by saying she was just giving them to me since she knew I collected. I thought I was being sent a gift from God, all I could think about was all the 60's and 70', heck maybe he had some 50's still. I couldn't wait to go through all the cards one by one looking for star cards. Well, I patiently waited for all the boxes to be shipped from Colorado and then the day finally came. I was shaking from excitement, I'll never forget it when I opened that first box and as I removed some packing, there staring at me right in the face................Box after box marked 88 topps and 86 topps. There was nothing, just late 80's and early 90's JUNK. I wanted to cry, what happened to "collected for years and year", the oldest cards were from 1986. Oh well, you win some, you lose some.

Mike

Krems

Thats funny...what a tease...I was getting excited too until I saw the 88 Donruss, etc. Oh well, it could have been something big and thats exciting.

BobS

The one thing I have learned about this hobby: EVERYONE in the USA collected cards during the late 1980's and early 1990's, EVERYONE. And you must admit, for those who don't know any better, cards that are from 1988 (15 years old) are "Old Cards", therefore they MUST be valuable

zardoz51

Frank

You had me going there for a bit!

I'm thinking to myself "He's hit the mother lode the lucky so and so"


Good one!

LuxuryWines

Frank,

Why so glum ... I here cards from the late 80's make great wall paper...Just think you could be proactive and suggest to your sweetheart that you want to redecorate

ROCKDJRW

I agree with BobS about everyone collecting during that time period. My local card dealer has a radio call in show on Saturday mornings and every week a couple of people call in and say that they collect alot of cards in the late 80's and early 90's and are now looking to sell because they need the money. He is far to nice to tell them the stuff is worthless but always gives the standard "You're better off to hold on to them because right now they are probably not worth what you paid for them" answer. Great story FB thanks for sharing, I hope the next "Find" works out better

mikeschmidt

Zardoz:

Here's to the hope that collectors will have a Jose Canseco Renaissance and start collecting him again en masse (e.g. 100 and 500 card lots of his rookie card)

Hear hear!

coachh

Great story. I love it when people find out I collect and they tell me about their collection of 88 topps, 90 score etc. I am trying to help with the Canseco Rookie Renaissance. I gave my only copy, in its screw-down holder, to my 21 month old last night so he could hammer some pegs on his work bench. He loved it.

thejam

i had 2.5 "finds in 1990 i went into a old old old general store in a old old town and asked if they had any old old cards in storage, the lady found a wax box of 1984 football (oh well) with 8 packs left in it.... .... i did buy them for 35 cents a piece in 1969 i found a 1957 billy pierce laying on the street ( had to have it psa graded and it is a 1 of 2 --- ---- graded PSA 1 ; therefore rare , but not desirable and lastly in 1988 i was at a show at a mall where gentleman brought in a box of 432 E cards from the 1920s -- multiple ruths etc condition approx psa 5-7 , he wanted over a $1000 a deal , but i had spent my money on t202s, t206s, 70,71 scratch-offs , 1971 coins, and 1969 poster inserts.

crazysc

I get a call like that at least once/week...it's almost sad when you get to the person's house (though I rarely even bother now) and they have 90 Upper Deck Ben McDonalds and 87 Topps Bobby Bonillas in screwdowns, and they just made a find of a 88 Topps Tom Glavine rookie.

It always sucks being the bearer of bad news, because if I give the person the most straightforward & honest advise I can, they still think I'm trying to rip them, because they have 10x as much into it.

I went to one guy's collection where I swear he made a conscious effort to buy the worst possible deals. Cards had little value outside of some complete sets. He had a few autos, but they were so bad it wasn't even funny. Like a 16x20 Mantle/Maris auto photo - I'm reading the cert dated '96 that said "Mickey and Roger were very good friends of ours and signed this before they passed away. We love you & miss you guys!" It kinda sucked to point out that this cert was dated over a decade after Maris' death...

Wabittwax

When I was about 15 (about 1990ish), my friends neighbor was getting a divorce and as "punishment", she sold all here husbands baseball cards to my friend for $20. It was mostly tons of 50's and 60's stuff. Off the top of my head I remember about 40 Mickey Mantle's, 13 Yaz RC's, 75 Topps set, Maris's, Aaron's etc..... He was about 16 and slowly took the cards to shows coming out with about $1000 a show in his pocket and basically blew it on shoes, clothes, having fun etc.... He didn't even care what the dealers offered him because it was all free money to him. One thing that hurt is he had an 800 count box of vintage 50's and 60's Football with about 20 Jim Brown's with 6 of them being his RC not to mention tons of other FB cards. He sold them to a dealer for $80 because he thought they were almost worthless. 3 months later the #1 Issue of Beckett Football came out and he felt like he just died. I tell him today that if he was smart enough to have invested the money from those cards 12 years ago, he'd probably never work a day in his life. He tells me to be quiet. LOL.

BBCI

Great post.

During the mid-late 80s, I was able to get my sister interested in collecting cards. About 5 years ago, right around the time PSA took off, we looked through her cards and basically found nothing (e.g., 87 Topps McGwire). Every year since then when we get together for the holidays she asks "So what are my cards worth now?"....I just keep shaking my head.

BUT, I am saving the best for last:

In the late 1980s, just as I was entering college, I was cutting lawns/landscaping to earn some extra money. One gentleman and his wife would always invite me in for lunch. One day, we started talking about where we grew up. He said he grew up in Evansville, Indiana. My ears perked up. I said did you know Don Mattingly (they were about the same age), and before I could finish my sentence, he said he grew up playing local baseball with Mattingly's older brothers. As if that was not "cool" enough, I proceeded to tell him about the Boggs, Gwynn, and Mattingly rookie cards I had stacked up in my bedroom. His ears perked up.

Oh, so you collect baseball cards he said....I have a bunch down in my basement. My ears perke up. Oh really, do you have them in protective holders (I assumed he was a dealer or someone in the know). "Oh, no, they are just in shoe boxes." He went down in the basement and brought up a couple of shoe boxes. In the boxes were cards from about the mid 1950s thru the mid 1960s, and most were in really decent shape. We quickly sorted through the big names and reviewed the conditions. I began to tell him about the baseball card show circuit that I was part of and told him he could make a lot of money selling these cards. When we finished looking through these boxes I was about to get ready to go out and finish the lawn when he said do you want to see the rest? The rest? Well, needless to say that afternoon I did not finish the lawn. He had boxes upon boxes upon boxes of cards. I never had some much fun just going through the cards. He probably had 5-10 of each player (equalling 5-10 complete raw sets) from the mid-1950s through the mid 1960s. Now, the cards were not in mint condition, but they all appeared well kept and in the mid to high range (e.g., PSA 6,7,8).

After working with him all summer, he ended up giving me some of his lesser quality Mantles & Fords (as a Yankee fan). In late 1990s I had them graded by SGC and they came back SGC 70, SGC 80, etc....right around what I would have expected.

So, a VH1 "Where are they now", well, I helped him sell most of his cards through card shows over the next year or so....and he made a ton of money. He never did tell me how much, but he said he did well. Oh for PSA just a few years earlier...

Don

JasP24

I had a large collection of late 50s- early 70s football given to me by a family friend who knew I was collecting. I just knew there would be some great mint condition RCs in there. While there were many HOF RCs in it, the average grade of the cards was probably PSA 3. It was tough looking at all these great rookies that I was getting for free, but NOT ONE of them worth getting graded. What a waste...lol

JasP24

gemint

Sad but funny story Frank. We're all still waiting for that case of '52T nickle wax to show up. One of my scavenger hunts led me to a lady who wanted to sell a box of cards. Of course they were all mid to late 80s material. I guess her cat was into collecting cards as well because she said it would always get into the box and spread the cards around the room. It showed too. I still remember an '85 Fleer Roger Clemens RC with scratch marks across the surface. Since there were a few NM+ McGwire rookies in the lot, I gave her $25 and threw out the 75% of the cards which had "cat damage".

AlanAllen

Cat damage... when my parents cat was in his latter years he lost control of his bladder and "hermitically sealed" my brother's star box. I'm telling you, we could barely pry the penny sleeves apart.

My "find" was at a small flea market in rural Ohio in the summer of '96. A middle-aged guy with a scraggly beard and wearing fatigues had a small pile of 1915 Cracker Jacks laying in the back of one of his display cases with metal bracelets and various junk. I asked to see them and they were in very nice shape, NM or so. I had $40 on me, with which he let me pick out 5 cards because "he knew they were worth something." When I got back and took the Matthewson et al from the Ziploc bag he had them in, I couldn't believe how glossy they were... just a little too glossy I thought? Nah... sure enough, they were all reprints and all but one had been stamped "reprint" and gently rubbed off. He gave me a refund without much trouble.

Joe

CreeperKat

I got fairly close to "a find". My mother-in-law handed me a box of old cards from the early to mid 70s. Mostly football cards but had some hockey, basketball, and baseball cards in there. Bad thing was they were all rubber-banded together in groups. I fished a couple popular ones out and sent them in for grading but didn't get any higher than a 7.

gemint

<< <i>Cat damage... when my parents cat was in his latter years he lost control of his bladder and "hermitically sealed" my brother's star box. I'm telling you, we could barely pry the penny sleeves apart. Joe >>



They must have been valuable cards to make you handle them after being soiled.

Virtualizard

Maybe PSA could add the dreaded "CD" to their list of qualifiers for cat-damaged cards. The odor would probably alert the grader as soon as they opened the package!

I grew up with cats in the house, but I believe I was luckier than some of you here - My collection survived with no evidence of "CD".

JEB.

toppsgun

About 10 years ago, the neighbor kids down the street (twin boys) came by our garage sale. I had a few old baseball cards lying out. The boys noticed a few '67 Topps and said, "My dad has a bunch of these."

I asked, "What's he got?"

They said, "A lot of Rod Carew cards with that other guy on the same card."

I sent them back home with explicit instructions to bring back the cards to prove it to me.

They scampered off and returned a few minutes later. Sure 'nuff. He had six (6) 1967 Rod Carew Rookie cards. So beat up, not a one would have graded above PSA 1.

I think I sold them some of my commons so they could have better cards than their Dad had.

acowa

<I had $40 on me, with which he let me pick out 5 cards because "he knew they were worth something." When I got back and took the Matthewson et al from the Ziploc bag he had them in, I couldn't believe how glossy they were... just a little too glossy I thought? Nah... sure enough, they were all reprints and all but one had been stamped "reprint" and gently rubbed off. He gave me a refund without much trouble.>


That is so funny...it's a clear case of who can rip off who (if they're not reprints, they're clearly worth much more than $40)...and as usual...the dealer wins 90% of the time.


Regards,


Alan

pebblyjack

My big "find" occurred in 1986.

I had collected baseball cards as a kid from 1974-78, but quit collecting as I entered high school and found other "ventures" upon which to waste my limited funds.

In the spring of 1986 I had just finished college and, while waiting to go to graduate school, went to work for an old "Greek" guy who ran a railroad salvage company. (He is a complete book all unto himself). In any event, in conjunction with his salvage yard he collected junk (not to mention ex-wives). One day, as we were finishing work, he said that we would be working overtime to clean out one of his storerooms. The room was stuffed with bottles of fruit juice, boxes of candy, etc. As I was moving some stuff, I found 4 boxes of 1985 Topps baseball cards. I quickly covered them up and went to the Greek and asked him if any of the stuff was for sale. He laughed at me and said we weren't being paid. Our pay would be whatever we could carry out of that room and take home with us. I quickly snagged the cards and put them in my car trunk. I ended up working about an hour for 4 boxes of cards, 2 boxes of 1985 Topps stickers, several cases of juice, candy, etc.

The cards netted me a little more than 1 1/2 sets (one Dion James short of a full set, however), 4 Mark McGwires (I felt screwed I only got 1 Oddibe McDowell. I knew who he was. I didn't have a clue as to McGwire) and a couple Roger Clemens. That "find" kick-started me on this particular road to perdition. I then started buying 1986 Topps and have been at it ever since.

I recently had two of the cards from my "find" graded and earned a PSA 8 McGwire and a PSA 8 Clemens out of the deal. Not bad pay for an hour of unpaid overtime.

Thanks

Randy


I am always looking for mint and gem mint George Brett cards.
roseyx@aol.com

crazysc

Hey - has anyone ever bought one of those great Shop At Home packages? They're each an incredible find onto themselves - I saw them open one of those Blue Chip boxes on air for $69.99 and pull out a 1986 Fleer Michael Jordan rookie!

ROCKDJRW

<< <i>Hey - has anyone ever bought one of those great Shop At Home packages? They're each an incredible find onto themselves - I saw them open one of those Blue Chip boxes on air for $69.99 and pull out a 1986 Fleer Michael Jordan rookie! >>

It is a well known fact that those "Finds" will net you at least 1k book value

jimrupprecht

DOH! DONT FORGET, YOUR SUPPOSED TO SCREAM WHEN TALKING ABOUT SHOP AT HOME CARD COLLECTIONS!

robstar

Randy ( Pebblyjack )

Welcome to the boards. Great story.



Rob...

dakota

Heres a recent semi- decent find for you guys.My next store neighbor is about 45 years old and doesnt work or drive (probably due to his alcoholism and numerous DUIs) but is a very pleasant guy.
Over the past year he is constantly asking for an extra beer or a ride down to the liquor store.I would almost always politely decline or come up with an excuse so I wouldnt be contributing to his problem.
One very chilly day...There he is walking down the street with a big box in his hands.Well,I pull over to offer him a ride.He gets in and I ask where he is going.He states he was on the way to the bus stop to go to the local card store to sell some more of his cards he has in the box.I figure its your typical 80s and 90s thing or if they are old,
they would be in horrible shape.
I said that I collect herand there and ghtbe interested.
Well....he had most of the 66 and 67 topps set minus the big stars in solid nm shape with some hi#s and short prints sprinkled in.
I ask him how about 100.00 for all of them sounds and he says that would be way more than the guy at the card store pays him.
The next day I ask him where the Mantle,Mays,etc are.
He says ...I have been selling them for the past few months to the card store whenever i need some cash but would have sold them to you had I known you collected.DDOOOOOOOOHHHH!
All and all ...a pretty cool find.But now I have to finish those sets!!

dakota

Oh yeah....I guess I ended up contributing to his addiction because of my addiction after all

BigKidAtHeart

<< <i>My next store neighbor is about 45 years old
and doesnt work or drive (probably due to his
alcoholism and numerous DUIs)

but is a very pleasant guy... >>



Now THAT is hilarious stuff right there!!
Funny!

SayitaintsoJoe63

At the newspaper office I work at, most people know I collect and deal in baseball cards, so one day, one of the sportwriters who is about 25 years old, walked up to me and asked me if he brought some baseball cards in, if I would look at them and see if they were worth anything.
In the same sentence the guy is talking about having several Pokemon cards in plastic sheets.....so I'm thinking to myself......man...don't bring me a bunch of this late 80's junk in and expect it to be a downpayment on a new home or car.

So the next day, the guy brings in this big binder and one of my friends who also collects cards called to me in the break room, and said to come look at the guys cards.......I said...yeah..yeah...I will in a little while. He said....no....you don't understand.......you better come look at this guys cards.

So, I get up and walk out to this guys desk.......before me.....spread out in this huge binder are pages after pages of beautiful 1949, 1950, 1951, and 1953 Bowman Baseball cards, not to mention several pages of very sweet early Bowman football cards.

I stand there with my mouth hanging open, and the guy is telling me is mom and dad gave these cards to him and he had no clue what they were worth.
So, I'm sitting there going through his cards, and trying to make him understand he had a small goldmine laying out there before me.
I'm looking at a 1953 Bowman color Stan Musial in top grade, and telling him the appromimate value, and I swear.....he's standing there telling me that he's got his prize cards in another binder....some 1991 Topps cards......I wanted to strangle him and give his cards a good home where they would be appreciated......However, instead of doing that, I suggested a friend of mine who would be interested in looking at them to buy.

A few days later he sold them to my friend, and still to this day, talks about those damn Pokemon cards.....

FB

In the late 80's, I had the opportunity to have the shoe on the other foot for some guys looking for a "card find"...

One of my neighbors was having a garage sale and her son had set up a table selling off cards of his own. He had been working for me for four years sorting vending boxes into complete sets. Rather than take money - he wanted the cards instead. So, for every 4 boxes that he sorted, he got 1 box for free.

Two guys in their late 30's/early 40's got out of their car and went up to his table. They looked through a bunch of his stuff and probably spend $50 buying rookie cards and stars for resale. Then, they asked him if he had any older cards.... To this day, his answer still cracks me up. He told them "No", but see the guy over their washing his car? He's got a ton!" and then he didn't say another word. He didn't tell them that I was running card shows. He didn't tell them that I had tractor trailers pulling up to my house from Topps and Donruss. He didn't tell them that I was making more money buying and selling cards than I was as a DP Manager.

These guys come over and introduce themselves and ask if I've got any "old" cards... Since I had already been taken to the cleaners when I was 16 by the local "townie" card dealer, I was a little more savy 12 years later. So, I told them "yeah... I've got some old cards". I spent the next 10 minutes pulling out sets from 55, 56, 57, 58 through 67 (probably EXMT) across the board as well as assorted singles from 39 to 41 and a bunch of early Bowmans. It was truly funny to see them suppress their excitement so that I wouldn't realize what they were worth!

They checked through all of the sets and told me that I had some pretty nice stuff. I lied and told them that my father had saved them for me until they were ready to make an offer. Then, they talked amongst themselves and told me that they could give me $500 for the whole load!!!

After contemplating their offer, I told them that if they raised their offer to $1500, they could have the 55 set. Then, I got the "oh... everyone thinks that they have GOLD, but the reality is that Yes, these cards are worth something, but NOT as much as you think!"

After that, I couldn't hold it any longer and let them know that I knew EXACTLY how much they were worth and why.

In the end, they bought almost everything from me over the course of 6 months for between $6,000 - $8,000. But, it was nice having the advantage of them knowing that they tried to short-change me up front. Plus, they became pretty good customers at buying unopened cases from the early 80's.

helionaut

In my old position as a HR person one of my jobs was to clean out the lockers of people who left. I found some interesting stuff in those lockers from time to time, but the best was the time I found 3 Ken Griffey Jr. insert cards, BV around $50 at the time. I kept them in my office for a while like all the other junk people left behind, in case he came back for them, but they "became mine" eventually.

My other best find was of my own cards. After collecting as heavily as I could at ages 11-13, I stopped after the 1983 season (my Phils losing crushed my enthusiasm, I guess). I bought a few Topps packs in 1987. I remember scoffing at 99-cent packs of some fancy new brand in 1989. But then in 1991, I got back into it with both feet because of Topps' great design. Digging my old box of cards out of the attic, I had a lot of fun seeing who was who, finding that those 1983 cards of Sandberg and Gwynn had become valuable and were still in great shape somehow, that I still had a lot of 1980-81 hockey, and that I still had a bunch of 1975 minis. But I hadn't looked at them in almost half a lifetime, so it was almost like looking through someone else's stuff. Despite the fact that I had jettisoned a good chunk of my collection in stupid trades, details of which are too painful to explain, I still had a nice nucleus of a 70s-80s collection, not to mention all the memories.

Fabfrank

I just got back from vacation and stumbled on this thread. These are my favorite stories and here's my "almost find" story. My friend and I began collecting again in 1985. We quickly discovered Fleer and Donruss cards and how difficult it was to find them. Especially Donruss. We began to cultivate relationshipe with the store managers of the area McCrory's, Walgreens and Woolworth stores. These guys would sell us the unopened Donruss boxes and cases at the same price as Topps, and than would give us a 40% discount on top of it. When the product came in, they would call us and we would come and pick it up.
One day as we were waiting for the manager to bring out older Donruss boxes (84 and 85), we strolled by the candy aisles and found the stockboy sweeping packs of cards off the floor and dumping them in the garbage. We asked him why he was throwing the cards away? He said he couldn't stock them on the shelves because there wasn't any room. We looked up and on the top shelf of the aisle were boxes of cards stacked to the ceiling. Occasionally the packs or a box would fall to the ground and be swept into the garbage. The manager asked us if we wanted to take the boxes off his hands for a cheap price. He said that not only did he have all this inventory on the top shelves, but he also had cases in his stockroom he couldn't move. We declined. Nobody collected basketball than, even Fleer basketball. That's right, 86 Fleer Basketball stacked to the rafters and being swept into the garbage. I still get sick thinking about this lost opportunity.

Tipem

Fabfrank,

Great story!!!

I once had this "dead" case of 90 score football sets(unopened)that I traded for a case of 90 pro set wax(unopened,of course).I am pretty sure that I made a mistake,considering I still have that case of wax(still unopened).Go Figure!!

I did,however,run an ad in my local paper on a lark(no idea why I did it)and it turned out to be the best find that I ever had.I bought a run of sets from 55-59 along with a 75% complete set of 55 Bowman,(all EX-MT) for 40% of book.This happened in 89.I eventually sold all the cards. That buy is the reason why I am collecting the 56 set today.The only card that I have ever regretted selling out of all the cards that I have sold was the Mantle that was almost perfect drop dead MINT.I still see that card in my sleep sometimes


Vic

dbj77

These stories are amazing. They make me cringe and laugh. I'm only 25 so I haven't really had any super finds, just some decent ones. There's a retail chain here that sells discounted things, pretty much a discount department store. It's called Big Lots. I think this was 1992 or so. I was browsing there one day and found their section of cards. After grimacing through pile of ProSet Musicards and Jurassic Park cards, I found several wax boxes of 85 and 86 topps baseball, as well as 87, 88 topps and 88-91 donruss. The good thing was that they were all only $5 bucks a pop so I picked up all they had excluding the non-sports and the 88's(LOL).

2nd story. I worked at McDonalds in high school. when mcdonalds would have sports cards I would beg the managers for the extras, I always tried to work with this one manager because she would let me take home tons of stuff. I have probably 1000 packs of unopened Upper Deck Basketball from 92-93 (Shaq's rookie year) and maybe 800 different NFL Gameday (oversized cards in sheets by regional teams and superstars) about half Detroit Lions (since I'm from Michigan) and Half superstars sheets. Not bad since I didn't pay a dime for any of them.

THe last story always makes my dad cringe more than me. He used to collect cards in the 50;s and I showed him some of my vintage cards. He would remember the card designs and say he had lots of this set or that set. (mostly 52-59 topps) Then he said, "I used to have hundreds of those cards that were televisions, probably enough for 4 or 5 complete sets" I showed him some 55 bowmans and he said those were the ones. Of course he doesn't have them anymore, my grandma threw them all away when he was drafted into the army for Vietnam.

gemint

I know I've already posted on this, but another memory came to me. My friend used to work at Toys-R-Us. In the early 80s, they carried alot of cards from the big three. The packs that kids opened and left behind would be gathered up and discarded. Since he was store manager, he was responsible for throwing the cards away and writing them off. I wonder how many Ripken and Boggs rookies he threw away? Anyway, the most interesting aspect of Toys-R-Us is that they had a storage wherehouse in Northern California. The wherehouse opened in 1971 and held unsold merchandise. He had been to the wherehouse on a few occassions and remembers seeing old boxes of cards there. Unfortunately, he didn't start collecting cards until after he quite TRS. The only cards he kept were some reprint all-time greats. Can you imagine finding boxes of unsold 1971 Topps baseball packs? Unfortunately the wherehouse was closed several years ago and the whereabouts of the inventory is unknown. I always wondered what was in there. Maybe they were only 1981 Topps wax boxes but who knows???

uniship

My dad is a diehard baseball fan, and the neatest, most organized person I have ever known. He was born in 1938. He said he had tons and tons of cards from 1950-1954. Tons. They were probably well kept I would bet my house. Anyway, when he went to Vietnam in 1966, my grandmother tossed everything. EVERYTHING. To think what he would have had. Ugh.

golddog57

Here is a bona fide find.......for a casual aquaintance from work!! A friend of mine (who was to shortly retire) came in with the proverbial old box of baseball cards for me to look at. Of course, he wanted to know what they were worth. I know what you all are thinking now... but you're wrong. This fellows mother had died some time before (maybe 6-8 months) and had left him some of his boyhood stuff.

He opened the small box of cards (maybe 100-110) cards total....and I almost passed out!!!! A group of 1956 Topps Baseball and they were all *STAR* cards in drop dead MINT condition. I have been a gold PSA member for 6 years so I have at least an idea of condition. They contained multiples of Musial, Aaron, Killebrew, Clemente, Koufax, and Mays!!!! I started in on the virtues of PSA and the potential windfall he had...heading into retirement. He quickly decided that they could not be trusted to keep from switching his cards for others of lesser quality. I even offered to accompany him to the Chicago Sports show in August to a walk through grading of these cards (believe me they would be worth it). Anyhow, he retired and I went a couple years before I saw him and asked him what happened to them. They are sitting on a high shelf in his kitchen wainting on a whim to finish the set..................................

His kid is gonna be a happy camper one of these days...........................do you think he might adopt me??????????

mrc32

"I used to have hundreds of those cards that were televisions"

My Dad told me the exact same thing....he never could find them before he passed away (I think his brother took them from his mother's house when he found out how much they could be worth)....but he did give me all his 57s, 58s, 59s, 60s, 61s and 64s. They are probably PSA 3-4 condition, but they are definately some of my most prized cards....I even keep a lot of his 1960 VGs in my EXMT set I am making...he'd be proud to know that he is helping me complete a set....

thats my find....

schr1st

You sure on the Musials? They must have been pretty nice then...