Favorite memories of collecting as a kid...

mariner

What are your favorite memories of collecting cards as a kid?

I started collecting in 1959. My friends and I played baseball 24/7 (exaggeration, but you get the picture), so one spring day in 1959, we ventured down to Perry's five and dime store in Brady, Texas. We decided to buy some cards. They were 1959 Topps baseball. My first pack (I remember it vividly), I pulled out a cherry red Mickey Mantle. Unfortunately, that particular card never made it past my childhood in anything but VG-EX.

A side note.....when I was that young, we didn't even know about high numbers. That series seemed to never make it to my hometown.

How about you?

CW

My kid collecting years spanned from 1977 to 1985, and I remember my
Mom would give me a couple bucks every few days to buy packs. I'd
bike over to the corner store, buy the packs, hurry home, and then
sort out my cards on the living room floor into teams while the Tigers
game played out on the TV in front of me. If the game wasn't on TV,
my Dad had it on WJR. Those were the sounds of summer for me: Ernie
Harwell & Tigers baseball. I feel lucky to have grown up in a town
with such a legendary announcer. I sorted all the cards of the star
players from those days into binders, which I still have on a shelf in
my closet. Now that you bring up these childhood memories, I might just
have to go and brush off the old binders and take a look...

I also remember that two of my friends & I each picked a certain player,
and our goal was to collect that player's card from every year. My
buddy, Mike, picked Reggie. My other friend, Jordan, picked Thurman
Munson. I chose Dave Winfield, one of my favorite players at the
time. I remember watching with awe at a card show while Mike plopped
down close to fifty bucks for a Reggie rookie card. When you're 12
years old growing up in 1980's middle-class Detroit, fifty bucks is
a lot of money!

Probably my fondest memory of those days was in 1984. For a limited
time early in the season, Topps inserted a redemption card into every
pack. This card allowed you to request 20 cards from the '84 set, and
for a dollar Topps would send you the requested cards. I saved up my
money and sent 30 of them in to Topps, and included on the list were the
Strawberry & Mattingly rookies. At the time these cards booked for $7,
so I went to a card show and sold most of them for $3 each to dealers.
I immediately used my newfound wealth to buy a 1964 Pete Rose. I later
went on to sell that card, but I'll never forget it.

TheCARDKid

I can remember a certain level of innocence from 1987 through 1990. It's hard to believe. I was about 10 years old at the time. When Upperdeck came out with cards in 1989.....shock.....gasp.....the packs weren't 50 cents anymore!

I remember buying cards at the neighborhood grocery store for 50 cents a pack. Beckett was the bible. How much is that Mike Greenwell rookie worth? I remember sorting out '87 Topps cards by team. I'd trade them with friends.

Those were the days......

RTB

I started collecting in the fall of 1956 with football, and continued in earnest through 1961. I vividly remember how exciting it was to be following baseball and opening packs of those beautiful '57 Topps. I found a few kids away from my neighborhood that were avid set building collectors like myself and we did a lot of trading for a few years. A common that I needed was worth more to me than a duplicate star...(Bobby Del Greco for Roger Maris!). At that time the the cards were not considered valuable... although I realized putting together entire sets was not easy. I went on to collect entire sets of baseball, football and '61 basketball before entering 9th grade and loosing interest in '62. My favorites were '59 & '61 Topps baseball and '57 & '58 Topps football. I loved the smell of the gum which stayed on the cards for what seemed like years. Fleer gum tasted better than Topps IMO! I also remember how hard it was to get the high numbered 1961s. This was because that series didn't come out until very late in the season and wasn't as available or collected. My best conditioned of these cards today are the 1961 Fleer basketball because they were so ugly (also no stats on the backs) that I just put 'em in cigar boxes without really handling them or playing with them much.

Right now I am going through this entire collection which had been in storage for over 40 + years, and making PSA submissions. It is great fun to look at and handle these again, and to talk about them with other collectors!

Reggie

SUPERPUNK813

CW said, "I also remember that two of my friends & I each picked a certain player, and our goal was to collect that player's cards from every year

Two of my friends and i did the same thing! One picked Carl Yastrzemski, one picked Pete Rose and i picked Whitey Ford. This was in the early 1980's and i remember getting every regular issue and all-star card of Whitey except his 1951 Bowman card. Man i loved those cards.



Paul.

ydsotter

The first packs of cards I remember buying were 1974 topps Monster Initials... these are pretty scarce....

I was about 3.5 years old. I used to buy these at a small Italian Deli here in Wilmington (how's that for a memory?)

Next it was star wars cards in 1977... couldn't get enough!

Baseball cards started in 1979 when I moved to New York...
Reggie Jackson and Thurman Munson were the two best cards to get. Reggie was superman and Thurman looked like my dad.

But the best memory is from 1981 when a neighborhhod college student surprised me with two gigantic shoeboxes full of 1965 and 1967 Topps baseball and 1966 and 1967 Phili Football.
Everything was in there. I was suddenly the most popular kid to trade with in a billion mile radius.
Traded a lot for ATARI games!

It is the closest I ever came to card collecting nirvana...

sometime during 1987-88, someone mentioned that hockey and football cards might be worth something. I went through thousands of football and hockey cards I owned...
Pulled a few montana and gretzky rookies out...
sold them all for a few hundred dollars...
Had a field day at the Mall.

FB

Every summer, the family would pile in the Ford Country Squire Station Wagon to head down south for vacation. My brother and sister ot the middle seat and since I was the oldest, I got to spread out in the back. Like all good family trips, they would start out peacefully and then boredom would set in... Once my mother ran through the gamut of license plate games, "I spy with my little eye", and every other trick she could think of to keep us quiet - out would come the "vacation goody bags".

Those bags would hold puzzle books, crosswords, little games and mine usually had a rack pack box of baseball cards! By the time I was 10, it was a CUSTOM MADE rack pack box where every pack had a player that mom recognized or a Met or Yankee on the front or back. By the times that I was 11, I stopped getting the games and puzzles in the bag, since I always tried to trade them for my brothers baseball cards anyway. I'd spend the trip going through stats, doing the need em, got em rundown and organizing them 6 ways to Sunday. I bet that if that car is still in a junkyard somewhere, that there are still cards from the arly 70's in between the seats!

ydsotter

ohhh... whoops... forgot to mention the "best" memory...
which was surely discovering that I somehow knew which 1984 rack packs had a Strawberry rc in them.
I would have my mom drive me all over town to buy 1984 rack packs...
Pulled a zillion strawberry rc's... and was the envy of the block.
Nothing felt better than anticipating a strawberry pull.
To this day, I still have a great strawberry collection for this reason alone.

Stump

Frank

We must be close to the same age. We also had a Ford Country Squire with the wood grain sides. My first packs were 1968 fron there I was hooked. I can remember saving up money to go to the local IGA. It was down the alley two blocks. Those were great days we were living as 10 and 11 year olds.

Dave

Basilone

The first pack I opened was 1977 Topps Baseball....the first packs I bought on a regular basis was 1979 Topps football. I used to goto Kay-Bee and search through the huge bin for rack packs with Steelers on the top or bottom.

I also kept an up to date count of every card I owned by taping a piece of paper to the top of my bright orange Nike shoebox and adding to the number everytime I bought a pack or two.

Machodoc

This is an easy one. In the spring of 1974 I was in the 9th grade and was tearing through baseball packs looking for the Hank Aaron card. The day after he broke the HR record I was waiting for class to start just after lunch and was opening the last of the 3 packs I bought at the Valley Bell at noontime. I riffed through the pack past the commons, past a Pete Rose, and the last card in the pack was the #1 HR King Aaron card. Needless to say that made my week! I wish I could say the card lived happily ever after, but I had to sell my collection in 1979 to pay college expenses, but at least it was sold for a good cause!

Although the 1974 set is the Rodney Dangerfield of the the early to mid 1970's sets, it is my sentimental favorite, and I have made good progress on my registry set. Today I have three complete high-grade raw 1974 sets, plus another half dozen raw Aaron cards, and in addition to the PSA 9 Aaron in my registry set I have two more in PSA 8 just for grins....

Although this is not a card story per se, I always smile when I remember opening day, 1974. I was "drafted" by my friends to listen to the radio broadcast of the Reds & Braves game in case Aaron hit a HR. We were in geometry class, and I was wearing an earplug connected to a small transistor radio in my jacket pocket. I was on the far side of the classroom, so the teacher couldn't see the cord and earplug. Toward the end of the class, when Aaron hit #714 off Jack Billingham, I forgot where I was and shouted out "He did it!!" two or three times (echoes of Howard Dean, huh??). Of course the only ones who knew what I was talking about were the other 5 guys who were in on the joke, and the teacher and the rest of the class thought I was nuts. Fortunately, the story had a happy ending for me because our teacher was the wife of a former linebacker for Green Bay, and once I told the class what had happened, instead of punishment, she asked me what the count was, who was pitching, and what kind of a pitch Aaron had hit! I'll never forget her, bless her heart!!

SUPERPUNK813

Basilone said, "the first packs I bought on a regular basis was 1979 Topps football. I used to goto Kay-Bee and search through the huge bin for rack packs with Steelers on the top or bottom."


Thats cool! Ive been a Steeler fan since i was old enough to know what a football was and the first packs i ever bought were in 1979.
I bet i busted at least five cello/wax boxes that year, i was football card crazy!



Paul.

mrc32

My favorite memory?

1987 Topps, #71 Mike Aldrate. Bought it for .75 at a card shop not far from my Grandmother's house. Finished my set. Wow- what a feeling!

Fabfrank

My childhood collecting years were from 1972-1976. I got back into the hobby again in 1986. When I was a kid I had a friend named Andrew Tom. His parents owned the only Italian/Chinese Deli in the Bronx. I was an expert flipper but didn't have enough cash to buy many cards. Every morning before school Andrew would take about 5 rack packs from the store. He would stake me my initial batch of cards (about 100) and before school, during recess and after school I would flip. We than would split the winnings ( usually about 500-1000 cards). That lasted till Junior High when we discovered girls. Times were simpler when we just had to worry about the cards

helionaut

Buying a Nolan Ryan RC for $7 around 1982. Having complete runs of Nolan Ryan (except I never did get a '69) and Brooks Robinson (missing a couple in the 50's and 60's), my favorite superstars at the time (early 80's). Trading with my friend for his '65 Koufax. I no longer have any of those cards.

slvnumber2

I grew up in a family of 4 boys in Miami and all of us played baseball growing up, and three of us ended up playing college baseball as well for free. The baseball field was about a mile away and there was a 7-11 right down the road. My first cards that I had were from 1974 and I also had several from 75, but the first year our family really started collecting was in 1976.

We used to go to the 7-11 and all of us would get packs and then get home and open them. I would say that was one of the best years of my childhood because from February to May we played baseball every day of the week at home and then had games on Saturdays, opened cards, had a pool built in our backyard (which was the first in the neighborhood and also doubled as a wiffle ball stadium), and my favorite team (the Reds) won their second straight World Series.

I can remember watching games looking at cards and it seemed as if the Reds were on every saturday at 1:30 on the NBC game of the week against either the Pirates, Phillies, or Dodgers after This Week In Baseball. I am currently putting that 76 set together on the registry and I am about 40% complete in PSA 8 or better. They are not worth as much as the 75 set (which I have put together raw) but that will always be my first set.

After college I also got back into cards and owned a ton of 90 Leaf. At one time I had about 13 Frank Thomas cards and several unopened boxes when they were scarce. I got the Thomas' for about $10-15 before they went up to $80+, and I also have a neat video of playing against him in college on Fox Sports South. I remember one time my wife asking me why I looked so small in the video when I was standing behind Thomas and I said that he was about 6'5 260 and the stadium looked small next to him!

Great thread to those that started it.

pc

every week my dad and i went to a coin shop and bought silver dollars.
they ran a buck or two for uncirculated morgans.couldnt afford the 1898-o
and 1904-0's which ran 300 or 3000 i forget.well one day a vault is opened
with 2 million of them.next week they were 2 bucks!

onegaucho

Started collecting in 1980. Dad would buy me packs every so often.

Best memory was right around 1984. Pops spent $500 and bought about 5000 cards from a kid who needed money to buy a car. Man, we had a FIELD day with everything we got (including a Nolan Ryan RC in EXMT condition). I ended up selling a bunch of those cards after I graduated from grad school to pay for dates with my girlfriend at the time (now my wife!) Needless to say, we made back our $500 many times over.

A funny story was when my aunt bought my brother and I a factory set from 1986 Donruss. $26. I had no clue what a 'factory' set was at the time (I was 13). We opened the box and saw 660 or so cards wrapped in cellophane, and when we tored through them, we noticed that they were already sorted, my brother and I were sorely disappointed.. not the same as opening packs!

Golfcollector

My dad's cousin sold me a couple of shoeboxes of cards from the 50's and 60's when I was an early teenager in the early 1980's. Most cards were from 64 65 66 and 67 along with a bunch from 53 and 54 topps and a few bowman. Thesee were the pride of my collection for years (although they were not in the best condition)

9 years ago I sold them off to buy my wife's wedding ring. This is also when I was introduced to golf cards.

Dave

aro13

I used to go to the store for my sister to buy her smokes (she would give me a note to tell the guy behind the counter they were for her) and she would give me enough money to buy one pack of OPC hockey cards. I used to tear open those packs looking for Boston Bruins cards. Pulling a Carol Vadnais or Greg Sheppard card was better than pulling a Bobby Clarke, Guy Lafleur or any superstar card.
My friends on the street were also collecting and we would trade like crazy. I remember trading somebody a 1950's Johnny Bower card for a 74-75 Bobby Orr card. Both cards were about VG condition but at the time it was a huge trade.

scottsusor

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned the baseball card machines -- where you put a nickel in the slot, pushed it in, and pulled it out getting 6 cards (you could get 7 cards by pushing down on the handle, which I always did -- haha!). That was 1969, my first year of being interested in baseball. I was 10. Actually I got interested in August 1968 -- I was 9, in 4th grade, and the teachers all brought in TV sets so we could all watch the Tigers take on the Cardinals in the 1968 World Series (I grew up in Livonia Michigan on the west side of Detroit).

Anyway, my first baseball cards got into my hands via a machine in September 1968 -- 1968 cards, one lonely nickel, and 6 cards. I remember getting a Gary Roggenburk, Jose Tartabull, Bill McCool and 3 others and wondering who these guys were. No Tigers. And that was it. No more nickels and no more cards in 1968. Then came 1969 and I went crazy with nickels. It was interesting in that the drug store closest to me (Merriman Drugs) had the machine but no packs. The drug store at the opposite end of my neighborhood (Leslie's Drugs) had packs and no machine. I didn't discover packs until a friend of mine, and fellow baseball card collector, brough some packs to school. My parents didn't want me biking that far so they took me to Leslie's to get some packs. I was hooked!

My favorite memory though really relates to my parents. They were great about my card habit, always saying that my cards kept me out of trouble. I was an only child and loved spending time with my cards, so my parents never threw them out. They bought me cards for Christmas and birthdays and I always tried to take great care of my cards. I had cards that I kept nice for my own sets and dupes that I played with, traded, and flipped. My parents even started taking me to conventions in Detroit, Chicago, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis on weekends in the early 70's. They liked baseball but they loved baseball cards and other baseball memoriabilia and now my collection fills a room, thanks mostly to them. Dad died in 1984 and mom died in 1988 but every time I look at anything baseball related, I think of them.

Scott

minibeers

I started collecting in 1974 when my dad would reach up in the closet and pull out a pack or two for me when I did good things. I didn't care much about the cards until 1977 when my neighbor had a garage sale and sold me half to near complete sets of cards from 1959 through 1969 for fifty cents. I remember that transaction vividly. The guy's mom almost killed it when she said, "Hey, those cards are worth a lot of money." In response, her son said, "But look at the happiness these cards are creating for this kid!" Thankfully, the deal went though and I was hooked. I must have had the 1977 set 5 times over I bought so many packs. I was 11 at the time. I came home with those cards and my Dad couldn't believe the deal I made. He was proud.

Out of all those cards, I focused on my birth year (1966) and completed the set. I remember getting the Dave Roberts card (high card) from a dealer in Orange County during a show. Boy, those were the days. Right before the hobby exploded.

My latest best memory is from only a couple months ago. In 1989 I sold my collection so I could buy a car and move cross country. I made some serious cash off that collection. Anyway, I came out of retirement 7 months ago and decided to build the 66 set again (27 cards away) and just plain buy a 1977 set. The 77 set I bought had just been assembled from wax packs with the usual factory problems that I never noticed as a kid (Paid $210 for it). Anyway, I sent my 6 cards in that comes with the PSA membership and my Pete Rose came back Gem Mint 10 (1 of 2 pop and I know who has the other one)! I felt like I hit the lottery! I couldn't believe it. I thought PSA made an error in the database and I decided not to get too excited until I had the card in my hand. Well, it slabbed out at a 10! Now I'm hopelessly hooked. That Rose card is the centerpiece of my expanding Pete Rose Basic set. The hobby has changed so much and so have I but the act of pulling a great card still gives me that feeling that we all understand but can't explain to the average Joe (or wives in a lot of cases).

I look at this hobby like a gambling addiction except you have something to show for it rather than coming home broke.

cheers,
minibeers

VintageBallCards

I must say I get the chills sometimes when reading some of these posts bringing back memories of just pure collecting and trying to find the centered cards not worrying as much about super sharp corners. I am only 19 years old right now but cards are in my blood and I have been going to shows religously since I was 5 years old as my father was and still is a full time card dealer and shop owner at the time. By the time I was 7 I was going with him to at least 2 shows a week right when I got out of school. By the time I was 10 I would set up my own table at the local shows during summer vacation. Wow that was fun, today I don't go to as many shows anymore as eBay and internet has made everything so much easier but I still do attend the big shows and have gone to the last 6 or 7 Nationals and will continue to do so, hopefully for a long time.

Now my favorite memory, I think it would be in either 89' or 90. I went with my dad to a small show in southern California and when you paid the $1 admission you also got a raffle ticket. Well, later that night my ticket won a 89' Topps Traded set. For at least a year I thought I was the luckiest kid in the world and felt that I can do anything! Everytime there was a raffle anywhere I was like, "Oh I am good at these" Those were the days

mariner

Another favorite memory that I didn't mention earlier.....

In 1961, Post Cereal started putting cards on the backs of cereal boxes. They actually had some stars in 1960, but 1961 was the first really large set of cards. Well, when my mom went shopping at the local Safeway in my hometown, she would take me and I would spend a joyous time searching every box of Post cereal on the shelves for exactly which box I wanted her to buy for the cards I wanted that day. I started eating cereal for breakfast every day and any other time I could so I could buy more for the cards. The clerks at the store had to shudder when they saw me coming.....the cereal isle would be faced, sharp looking, full and ready for business....then, after I was finished, it looked like 'all hell broke loose'. You can only imagine how bad it looked after I completed my search through all the boxes looking for that back panel of cards that I wanted that day. Every time I think about that time, I laugh and remember how much fun it was to try to put together a complete set of 1961 Post Cereal. I do have a complete set in my collection now and I have even graded a few with PSA since they recently added them as cards they grade. They are just so tough to get an 8 in. Getting a PSA 7 is pretty darn good. I think that I will add my graded ones to the set registry since they also recently added that set to the registry.

Anyone else out there that love those 1961-1963 Post Cereal cards?

minibeers

The Post sets are literally before my time but I remember eating about 35 loaves of Wonder Bread to finish the 16 card Star Wars set in 1977. Now, you can pick up a factory set on ebay for about $25. Of course, I have one. he he

1977 was such a big year for me as a kid. It really wasn't until lately that I appreciate what a great childhood I had (well, at least up until my peeps divorced). I have 3 kids now and it is fun to live vicariously through them and be a kid again myself. I buy packs for them when they do good stuff, now, just like my dad did for me. My reward is to snatch the chase cards and inserts. he he

cheers,
minibeers

AlanAllen

My single favorite memory is sitting in the far back of the family van driving to my grandparents in Michigan. It was 1981, I was 7 and my brother was 5. My dad brought probably 3 wax boxes of 1981 Topps Football on the trip. We would sit in the back screaming "football cards! football cards! all we want is football cards!" And he would wing a pack back to us. We had a shared collection at the time, my brother and I. We didn't split it until the late 80's. When we got to Gramma and Grampa's, Grampa helped us sort the cards by team. Then he took an empty Velveeta box and some scrap cardboard, and made team dividers. My brother and I could barely sleep that night - we just laid in bad naming all of the players would could remember from busting those packs.

Anyway, my favorite team was the Raiders (pronounced by me at the time as Wayduhs), and by brother's was the Browns. We got more Raiders and Browns than any other teams from those packs, which never surprised me for some reason. My dad was also rediscovering cards at that time, and had his own collection going. It turns he had resealed a bunch of the packs with extra Browns and Raiders from his own doubles. He kept the secret until 2002! We had no idea. I also vividly remember the last Raiders card I needed, which was the team checklist. My dad came home from work one day with it and handed it to me. I was so excited. i remember jumping up from the kitchen table, grabbing a ball point pen, and making a huge thick line across all of the boxes. I still have that card .

Joe

CW

>> It turns he had resealed a bunch of the packs with extra Browns and
Raiders from his own doubles. He kept the secret until 2002! We had no
idea. <<

HAHA! Classic!!

highend

it had to be 1974 my father used to take my older sister and i to shea stadium to see the yankees play (yankee stadium was being renovated) we sat in the bleachers near left center. between innings while the players warmed up my father and sister yelled out "HEY BOBBY!!!" and bobby murcer turned around and waved at us. on the way home my father griped" that besides that kid munson, murcer's the only player we have" he went on about the yankee teams of yore, mantle, berra , ford, skowron, howard etc. my love affair with the game began, and the cards followed, for every pack i opened the yankees went on top. then came the questions that only a ten year old would ask "dad, did horace clarke ever hit a ball so high he ran the bases before anyone caught it?" , "who is better jim mason or gene michael " , "why did fritz peterson get traded?". i remember the local mall had a card show that same summer, i was sick and couldn't go. one morning i woke up and saw a pile of cards on my dresser, a 62 mantle (on top), a 56 skowron, 55 bauer, 62 kubek, 66 ford, 60 howard, 63 thresh, 60 martin (not a yankee card, but still a yankee), 66 maris, etc. so the questions came again "was mantle a better lefty hitter or righty hitter?" , "who was better skowron or bauer?", "what kind of name is yogi?" as young as i was i noticed my father was happier to answer those questions as opposed to the others, later on i figured out why.

GoSoxBoSox

I'd have to say five memories come to mind.

(1) The day I traded all my stars to the oldest kid in the 'hood for a "Babe Ruth" card. Then when I got home my old brother told me that the 1962 Topps Babe Ruth Specials were a dime a dozen. dugh!! My brother made damn sure that trade was reversed I was 8 years old.

(2) Trading for some guy who's name sounded familiar at the time. The card was wrinkles like it was in a wallet for 10 years. When I got home I asked my mom if Mickey Mantle (Topps 1965) was any good and she laughed in my face. I was 8 years old.

(3) At the age of 10 years old I completed my first Topps set on my own on the night Reggie hit 3 homers in the series. I cried myself to sleep that night 'cause I hated them so much.

(4) My father took me to the Ft. Washingtom show (then in Willow Grove) in 1980 and bought me a card for the first and only time. It was a 1962 Topps Stan Musial. When we got home my mother screamed at him for spending $7 on a baseball card and made me pay them out of my paper route money.

(5) In 1980 I saved all of my paper route money for a huge purchase. I bought a beautiful 1960 Topps Carl Yastrzemski rookie card (my hero). It cost me $27 at the local comic book store. I told mom about that one in the 1990's.

minibeers

(3) At the age of 10 years old I completed my first Topps set on my own on the night Reggie hit 3 homers in the series. I cried myself to sleep that night 'cause I hated them so much.

GoSoxBosox: You must be talking about the 1977 World Series or perhaps the AL championship series. I was 11 and remember watching that game with my family at the dinner table (in L.A., Go Dodgers) and feeling like the wind had been knocked out of me. Then, he did it again in 78 which really sucked. I know I can't compare my 77 and 78 let downs to the agony Red Sox fans have been through over the years, but I've hated the Yankees ever since, too. They are the best team money can buy. However, I can't deny the individual talents of many Yankees. I love Thurman Munson because he hated Reggie Jackson. It is a complex relationship. And without the Yankess, baseball wouldn't be as much fun. Every Obi Wan needs his Darth Vader.

Cheers,
minibeers

GoSoxBoSox

<< <i><EM>(3) At the age of 10 years old I completed my first Topps set on my own on the night Reggie hit 3 homers in the series. I cried myself to sleep that night 'cause I hated them so much.

<EM>GoSoxBosox: You must be talking about the 1977 World Series or perhaps the AL championship series. I was 11 and remember watching that game with my family at the dinner table (in L.A., Go Dodgers) and feeling like the wind had been knocked out of me. Then, he did it again in 78 which really sucked. I know I can't compare my 77 and 78 let downs to the agony Red Sox fans have been through over the years, but I've hated the Yankees ever since, too. They are the best team money can buy. However, I can't deny the individual talents of many Yankees. I love Thurman Munson because he hated Reggie Jackson. It is a complex relationship. And without the Yankess, baseball wouldn't be as much fun. Every Obi Wan needs his Darth Vader.

Cheers,
minibeers >>



Yep.

rob71rgd98

I bought my first pack of cards in 1966. My older sister and I walked to the Kresge store down the street. I saw a pack of baseball cards and decided I wanted it. My sister said my Mom would be mad at me for wasting a nickel on baseball cards, but I just had to buy it. I still remember the first card in the pack- Sonny Seibert. I still have that card, and it is one of my favorites, even though it is creased and worn. I threw the gum away- I never did like the gum, just the cards.
Rob

miami3

Great post Don!

My favorite memories were taking all of my hard earned savings from my paper route, snow shoveling, grass cutting jobs etc and going down to Bill and Freds (a local five and dime) and getting behind the counter to rifle through all of the new baseball card packs that they just got in.

If I close my eyes I can still remember the old man behind the counter smoking a big fat cigar and yelling at all of the neighborhood kids to stop stealing the penny candies from the glass jars.

I also remember in the early spring of 1973 I saved up a bunch of cash and bought 2 whole boxes of series I baseball cards on the way to school. My friends and I tore open the backs and chewed up the gum in the playground near the school. When I finaly got into school my teacher then confiscated all of the cards and the extra sticks of gum and put me in detention...........by the way she gave all the cards and gum away to the other "good" kids and I got yelled at by my parents.

I bet my parents wished I still had those 73 Topps beauties right now cause I could buy them some pretty nice stuff with all the psa 9 and 10s that I could sell on ebay, not to mention that I could re-imburse them for all of my dentist bills!

Jim