Collecting with Dad: Hobby memories for Father's Day

TCC

With Father's Day coming tomorrow, I thought it would be nice to share some short stories about the role Dad has played in your love for the hobby.

If you have any stories about Dad actually getting you started with collecting or special memories you have about going to a shop or show with Dad, please share them here.

Here's a couple of my memories/thoughts:

My respect for Roberto Clemente comes mainly from my Dad. Having never even seen Roberto play a game, I feel like I understand just how good of a player and person he was simply from the stories my Dad shared over the years. One of the most cherished items in my collection is a Roberto Clemente bust that my Dad "loaned" to me as a kid to have in my room. That statue is with me still today and sits on my computer desk shelves along with other Pittsburgh Pirates memorabilia from my Dad. I can't help but think of him and our talks about Roberto every time I sit down at the computer.

Later in my life, I found myself helping my Dad work on his Bengals team sets. Considering that there was always a family rivalry between me, the lone Pittsburgh Steelers fan, and the rest as Bengals fans, this may have seemed a little odd to some. However, I didn't care that it was the Bengals. I simply enjoyed helping my Dad with his collection. From looking up lists of every Bengals card produced by Topps to checking eBay auctions, we enjoyed working on this project together and just sharing time with each other.

In addition to these memories, I also learned to take care of my collection from my Dad. While he was not a big card collector during adulthood, he did collect coins. By watching how he handled them and stored them, I learned the value of protecting my collection. Plus, he was another one of the many sports fans who had his childhood collection "taken care of" by Mom. Needless to say, his stories about losing those items (including a Clemente autograph) helped me to always know where my cards were as I was growing up and then moving out.

I can honestly say that part of my love for this hobby comes from my Dad and I'm sure many of you have similar memories, so let's hear them.

Thanks,

-Bob

koby

If I were an offspring of Shawn Kemp or Larry Johnson, I would purchase all the trading cards of dad that I could get my hands on with my child support money.

AlanAllen

My dad was definitely the single biggest influence in my card collecting hobby. I'll try to find the thread where I give a detailed history of my collecting days... there's lots of stuff about him in there.

Joe

AlanAllen

Here's the thread. Here's my post, copied:

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I started collecting football in 1980 as a 6 year old. My dad was a shrewd coin and stamp collector, and discovered around that same time that cards were becoming a hot collectible, so he got back into it around the same time. Of course my grandma had thrown away his childhood collection, so he started buying old Tigers and lots of new wax to build sets. He collected all sports. By 1981 my younger brother was collecting too, and the three of us would always look forward to going to the only card shop we knew of, 4 hours away . Jim would collect the Browns, and I'd collect the Raiders. On the way back from the shop we would chant "football cards! football cards! all we want is football cards!" and my dad would toss us back a pack .

As luck would have it, our UPS driver was a part-time dealer, and had an incredible selection of wax and singles. I still remember going to his house in 1982 and my dad buying the last card he needed for his 1981 football set, #216, which he paid the huge sum of $0.75 for. For the next ten years until I left for college, UPS driver John was our best source for wax. I think he still does shows in Cleveland.

Starting in 1983 I started collecting baseball too, and by the time the 1984 Tigers won the series, baseball had surpassed football in my collection. We would basically just amass cards, halfheatedly trying to make sets. They were our primary reference for pictures and stats. In the mid-80's the Strongsville show came to town, and '84 Donruss started to take off. The local coin/stamp place started carrying cards, and a local sporting goods store opened a card booth in the back. Baseball cards were all we thought about in the summer . I still bought football throughout this, but mostly baseball.

In 1985 I started middle school, and all of the older kids had these cool new cards called Garbage Pail Kids. Those immediately became my obsession, and I stopped buying sports cards for a few months. GPK was hot at shows, and my dad started collecting them too. Sometime around 1986, I traded my entire baseball card collection for my dad's entire GPK collection. It was a fair trade at the time . My mom for years tried to get him to trade back, but he wouldn't budge . GPK didn't last long, so through 1988 we mostly bought baseball and some football.

In 1989, before the football cards for that year were released, I decided all of the money was in baseball, and football was a waste of time. I tried to no avail to trade or sell my football card collection. I couldn't get a pack of Upper Deck for the thing . Speaking of Upper Deck, our collecting reached a fever pitch at the time. Card shops were springing up everywhere, and 90% of the kids at school and in the neighborhood were collecting. We would ride our bikes or bum rides to every corner store looking for Upper Deck packs. The hottest things were the errors. I had a paper route and spent 80% of my money on cards. Our basement flooded that year and ruined about 10,000 of my cards, including much of my early football. I gladly accepted the $250 the insurance company offered me, and bought a Billy Ripken error ($20), A Dale Murphy error ($90), and various new wax. I was the only kid in town with a Murphy error .

Rumors started to circulate that there were two new companies that were going to produce football cards that year, and that old football was beginning to gain popularity. At the Strongsville show, dealers were buying football, but very few were selling. I bought a copy of Dellaferas' football card price guide (Beckett was baseball only back then), and realized I had some decent stuff. Basketball and Hockey were picking up steam, so I started buying those too. But by the time 1989 Pro Set football was released, I was full into football again. No one wanted mundane old Topps, and no one wanted Score, whose baseball set the year prior had tanked, so Pro Set was the hottest thing around. Again, the errors were what everyone wanted. That year, I bought about 15 boxes of Pro Set, 2 of Topps, and 1 of Score. Luckily John hooked us up with factory sets of Score for $12. We started doing shows later that year, and a dealer offered me a mint Walter Payton RC for my coveted Murphy error. My dad convinced me to take the deal . Unfortunately I didn't store it well and showed it off a lot, so the mint corners have since become NM.

Most people burned out in 1989. When 1990 Upper Deck baseball came out, everyone assumed it would be "the" set again, so no one bought newcomer Leaf. I continued to collect through the rest of high school as my friends lost interest. I discovered music, cars, and girls around 1990, so most of my money went to CD's and stuff. I still collected, but by 1992 the market was crashing and I almost completely lost interest when I left for college later that year. From 1992 to 1994 I was a poor college student, and bought very very little. I started buying one pack of each product and keeping it unopened instead of trying to build every set. As a freshman in college I got heavy into hockey, and even brought a SuperMonster box to my dorm, stored under my desk. Our radiator leaked and socked everything on the floor. Their insurance company asked me to get three estimates for the cards, and three dealer friends of mine hooked me up with pretty - ahem - generous estimates . I drank most of the check .

In 1995 I got a co-op engineering job, and started to have some spending money again. I bought tons and tons of modern product in 1995 and 96. I started buying up my friends' childhood collections. I got Internet access in 1994 and discovered UseNet with newsgroups such as alt.collecting.cards, and later alt.collecting.sport.football. I fell in love

In 1996 I decided my collection needed some focus. Single-player collecting appealed to me, so naturally I started focusing on anything and everything I could find featuring my favorite football player, Marcus Allen. I was still buying one pack of every product, but other than that it was solely Allen. I also got into Magic the Gathering cards late in college, and stopped buying packs of baseball, basketball, and hockey.

When I graduated college and got a real job, I continued collecting Allen and football packs. Beckett Buy/Sell/Trade and alt.collecting.sport.football were my main resources. I also started looking for older packs. In 1998 I was so excited about the rookie class that I started buying tons of new product again. A kid at the local shop turned me on to eBay . I started spending way too much money, went to my first National in Chicago. The local card shop owned hired me to run his website and sell for him on eBay. Later that year I got burned on a pre-sell for '98 Bowman Chrome to the tune of $1200 by a dealer who declared bankruptcy before the product was released. There were no mechanisms at the time to make it right. No one I talked to in law enforcement even knew what I was talking about. I hired a lawyer to attend the bankruptcy hearing, and he thought I had a rock solid case to recover my money, but he wanted $2000-$3000 to pursue it . The dealer was thousands of miles away or I would have done it myself. That soured me on cards for a good two years, although I did keep up on unopened packs and Marcus Allen cards.

In 2000 I was finally over my huge loss ($1200 was like 6 months card budget at the time, I was planning to break the cases to make money). I started seriously collecting vintage football packs and Japanese baseball packs, and my anti-grading stance came to an end. Until then, I was of the opinion that I had been collecting for 20 years and could darn well grade a card myself, darnit. When I started going back and collecting 10,000 yard rusher RC's, I soon realized PSA was the only way to go. I finished up buying all of my friends' collections, and started getting interested in other vintage PSA cards. My dad decided to concentrate on 19th century stuff and 1968 Tigers stuff, and gave me a significant portion of his collection.

Through 2002 I kept up with my Marcus Allen and modern football pack collections, but really started building my PSA and vintage football pack collections. In late 2002 I discovered the registry, and the wallet REALLY started to bleed . I finished the All-Time NFL Rushers set in a few months, and by early this year had seriously started building 1962 Fleer and the Marcus Allen player sets, and dabbling in many others. I started screening my collecting and submitted quite a few with the $5 special at the Super Bowl.

I dabbled in many other unmentioned things throughout the years, and have the monster boxes to prove it .

Today, my football pack collection stands at over 1200 different packs, and I have probably the most complete raw Marcus Allen collection around. My 10,000 rushers set is complete, awaiting upgrades. I still have 3000+ Garbage Pail Kids cards, 100,000+ non-football cards, and a few hundred non-football packs, none of which I've been interested in for years. Who knows how much football, but definitely many more than that I've never sold a significant portion of my collection.

I'll continue to keep up on Marcus Allen cards, modern football packs, Japanese baseball packs, and Magic packs. I'm only dabbling in vintage packs now; most of my money is going into PSA. I really want to finish 1962 Fleer, then I'll move on to (most likely) the HOF RC set in a serious way, then maybe another vintage set... 1958 Topps maybe, or 1970 Topps, or 1967 Philly, or 1957 Topps, who knows . Of course I'm dabbling in tons of other sets, most notably my PSA 10 1989 Score set. I look forward to another 50+ years of collecting, where I hope to build a world class football collection. I'm getting very interested in pre-war football, and that might well be my next area of focus. What I REALLY need now is a furnished basement so I don't have to cram cards in every corner of my house, and where I can display some of my nicer items and uncut sheets.

My wife completely supports my hobby, altough she stopped going to shows with me when she stopped collecting Beanie Babies. I've met some incredible people over the years through collecting, and my fair share of slimeballs. Most of the people I've met are just like me, passionate about The Hobby.

Holy cow, I wrote a novel If anyone actually read this far, I hope you enjoyed it and forgive me for not going back and proofreading.

Joe

magellan

Joe, That's a great read, very interesting to hear about all the highs & lows of your collecting experience. At some point I'll try to put down my collecting history since 1962, not sure how much I can remember. My Dad got me very interested in baseball the sport as he was a rabid Red Sox fan (he was 15 when they last won the Series) and played semi pro ball back when every town had a team but he didn't encourage the card collecting end of it. He tended to think it was a waste of money. When I have a quiet moment I'll try to put all my memories down.

Dave