Do you still have your childhood collection?

zef204

This may differ from the generations where the guys like me who started collecting in 1983 when I was 7 and still have it but the guys who grew up in the 50's and 60's don't have it.

I don't know but I wanted to see. I still have every card in its beaten up shape. I have boxes of the same years in NM-MT to MT but I cannot relinquish the actual cards I got from when I was 7-10. They are worth next to nothing but I am just so happy that I have them because every ding, crease, rubber banded border or pen mark(yes I wrote the new team, corrected stat on the back, or checked checklist.

I even have them in the same box!

I would be interested to see what other guys still have.

divecchia

I had hockey cards from the early 70's and baseball cards from the middle 70's. The key word is had. They got tossed in the early 80's.

Donato

thenarcissus01

I had start collecting in the 80's, but sold all those cards to a friend in the neighborhood. In the last few years I started collecting again.

Stone193

Mostly no.

My mom did find some of the stuff my brothers and I collected.

Unfortunately a large part of my personal stuff - records, models, stamps, cards were destroyed in a garage fire at my aunt's house. She was holding my stuff for me while we moved. That worked out well!!!!!!!

mike

wolfbear

My dad deposited them here for safe keeping :



One of these days I'll have to go dig around a little and see if I can locate them ...

Stone193

Wolfie

While we're at it - we can check out what Topps did with all those 52s!

stevek

I still have many of my childhood cards from 1962 thru the later 60's. Some I sold because I needed the money at the time but some I would never sell. I lived in Fairfield Connecticut at the time and a neighborhood friend's dad worked for Topps. At the time we didn't at all realize how special that was. Every neighborhood had people working for Topps, right? - LOL

Once in a while he would bring us an uncut 1962 Topps sheet, and we'd go to our friend's house and cut it up with hand scissors. Man that was fun - getting free cards! Not an easy task to cut those "large sheets" from our perspective as small kids with those little silver scissors but we'd try our best to cut them square. Posted below is one of my cutting efforts from 1962...needless to say I never became a professional paper cutter. - LOL

Southerncards

I sold off all my cards as a kid but kept all the autos. Got some great vintage autos to pass down to my kids.

Brian48

Virtually my entire collection was stolen when my house was broken into back in '96.

WC

I collected as a kid in the late '70s through '81. My dad had a big influence on my collecting habits - he was a huge collector in the '50s but his collection suffered the same dire fate as some of your old collections.

So we started buying '50s and '60s. We put an add in the Greensheet that said - We buy Baseball cards - in 1981 and we got a bunch of calls. We probably bought 5-6 collections - shoe boxes mainly - full of cards. Only one box had cards in any kind of decent shape - they were '57s - no stars - I think the '57 Kaline was there but it was in pretty bad shape and had writing on it. Any player that was remotely popular had significant back pocket/bicycle spoke love showing!!

The other collections we were able to buy were much the same. Except one - it was a Guns of Navarrone box - filled to the top with cards from 1960 - 1963 (Mainly Topps, but also Fleer and Post cereal). They were pretty worn. I remember going through them when I was in Jr High and being disappointed about the creases and fraid edges on the majority of them (no rose rookie but several worn Mantles). I started showing them to my friends - who only had cards from 1979-1981 - and they loved them!! I would take these beat up HOFers to school - cut about a third off the prevailing price guide (I still have the price guides from 1980 and 1981!) and sell them. I would come home from school and my mom would say - hey - you just dropped a clump of $20s out of your pocket!!

My mom - still a collector of everything - some of value - some not - talked me into putting the '57 set together with this new found wealth. While other kids and collectors were checking out the superstars and autograph booths at the baseball card conventions in the summer of 1981 - I was in the shadows thumbing through stacks of '57 commons and checking them off of my master list. I vividly remember one occasion when I pulled a stack of about 35-40 decent shape common cards from one dealer that were in the scarce series (I knew there was a scarce series - but didn't appreciate the added cost). I was expecting to pay around $.50 a piece and he said that he wanted $3 or $4 a piece....way out of my budget! My mom was the banker - so I only had about twenty bucks on me - so I pulled out a wad of ones and a five - and he said - OK! you can have them this time!!

This was an honest attempt to buy these cards - and it worked so well I tried it again. Another dealer had a '57 Mantle on sale for about $45 - $50. We waited to buy the high priced cards until last. It was gorgeous - nice corners and no creases - I was a little more condition sensitive than most 11 year olds at the time. I told him I wanted it but wasn't sure if I had enough. So I started pulling out wads of ones a few fives - I think I even had some quarters, nickels and dimes! - all said I was about $10 short - he saw the stack of '57s that I was carrying (with my grimy little hands - no cardholders!) and I told him this was one of the last cards I needed to complete the set - totally true statement - so he sold it to me. Last year - that Mantle came back a PSA 7!

I forgot about the cards for a couple of decades (...got married, had kids...) - then my parents retired a couple of years ago and brought them up to my house in Dallas from Houston. I remember it was raining when they showed up - and my dad drives a pick-up - so I just knew they were all going to be soggy and ruined - but lucky for me - the cards were in the cab and their luggage was wrapped in plastic bags in the bed of truck!....thanks Mom!

........I have since sold just about all of my collection - my '57 set sold for $6750 - no regrets.

.....at one of those conventions in '80 or '81 My dad bought a complete set of '55 Topps Baseball for $300. They guy had three of them - but two of them were spoken for......My dad still has these cards - all raw - probably pretty decent - Ex or Better - one day I just might get those cards....

Paladin41us

The only childhood collections I kept were comics, GI Joes all the BB cards we ever got went into the spokes on our bike with mom's cloth line pins. Only if we new

alnavman

I had stuff (mostly baseball but also some football and hockey) from the 50' and early to mid 60's that survived over the years. My brother tried selling them all when I was drafted back in 1972 but my dad stopped him...needless to say my dad wasn't too happy with him....then over the years my brother and I would sell the cards back and forth to each other when we needed extra cash.....unfortunately the last sale was to him and when he got divorced his ex-wife ended up with all the cards.......my only hope is that his sons still have the cards but we really don't know......there were complete sets from 55, 56, 61, 64-66 and all the years before and in between were partial sets, .....the only cards I have left from the collection are a complete set of 60 Fleer all time greats and a Golden Press set from 61...oh how I wish I still had those cards......

MuckyMutt

Hey WC - great story!

I had one box left from my early days. Mostly 64 Topps BB, but some 65 BB and 62-64 FB. I clearly recognized the box (stored at my parents) as the box of dupes, extras, etc. I knew there was a much larger box with 59-65 Topps BB sorted by team. I still haven't found that box. Quite a few of the ones I found have graded 6's and 7's, and there were two Mantles! I have sold most of these over the past year but I kept one of the Mantles - just can't part with it. I've also used some for trading. Tried to get some of my favorite players in the older cards that I liked as a kid - my favorite is a 57 Eddie Matthews that would probably grade an 8. Unless I find my "other" box of cards, I probably won't acquire much from the late 50's to early 60's. Since finding this board I have develpoed a liking for some of the more vintage cards - T205's and 206's, Bowmans from the 40's and early 50's, and some Goudy's. Not building any sets - just trying to pick up some cards of players I like and a sampling of different issues.

Stingray

I was off to college did not collect anymore, gave my collection of 71s (originally my older brothers cards) and my 70s cards (mainly 74, 75, 76, and 77s) to a neighborhood kid for a Dale Murphy 2nd year card. Boy do I wish I had those 71s back!



Stingray

tennesseebanker

When I was growing up I ripped the wax of the day as well but soon fell in love with 50's and 60's cards. There used to be a card shop in the next town over, it was really a revamped coin shop. But the guy who ran the place got overwhelmed in the early 80's with baseball cards. I knew him from the coin days and when I saw all these old cards I just fell in love with them. The guy really didnt know what he had at the time and being a saavy kid I asked how much he wanted for all his 50's cards. He went by some now defunct priceguide and tried his best to assign a condition to all of them. I think he finally gave me a price of $150 dollars. Well since I was a kid with no job $150 was like 1 million. But I said I wanted them all anyway. He put all those cards back and let me pay what little I had every week until I paid for them all. The collection was like a who's who of early baseball. Some of the cards I remember most vividly were a 55 Koufax, 53 satchell paige, 57 mantle, 54, 58, ted williams, 54 willie mays and ernie banks lots of 56 cards and some 52 cards. Well I held on to these cards along with the rest of my collection until I was about 18. That is when I wanted a Stereo so bad I just couldnt take it anymore. So I took all those cards plus lots of stars from the 70's and 80's to another local dealer who had popped up at the time. He of course asked me how much I wanted for all my cards I said $1000 dollars which just happened to be the price of the stereo, Well I got 500 or 600 out of him bought my stereo and have regretted it ever since. I still have my old Yamaha stereo and most components are still working. Now I just wish I could sell my Stereo to buy more cards !!

sagard

I still have many of the cards from then. Of course my 3000 1985 Topps cards have really been more a burden than a windfall. Selling the McGwires I guess justifies the 8000 total cards following me around for the last 15 years.

Darin

Yes, I still have them, but I counted them them to death when I was a kid. Mostly 71-76 topps baseball. Every time I got 5 packs or so I would recount my whole collection, even though I had the total already written down and knew how to add.

julen23

i collected mostl huster and oui, but yea i stil have them....

Julen

NewJerseyMeatHook

For the most part, yes. My father, an avid 50s collector, encouraged safe handling and plastic sheets. Don't remember top-loaders back in the day.

Mostly 70s stuff. Some 50s and 60s crap I bought with change at childhood card shows.

Anyone from MPLS? Used to have the monthly Apache Plaza card shows . . . Gosh, I looked forward to those mornings with my dad and brother.

alnavman

Meathook...yea I remember the days.....I don't remember top loads, heck I don't ever remember plastic sheets,...we just collected for the sake of collecting...just a shoe box or the box that the cards came in if you were lucky enough to get the $1.20 for the whole box......and the goal was to complete the set ....I remember one year when Ray Oyler was the only card no one had...if you got one to complete the series, it was like gold...you could trade him for the Mick, Willie Mays, throw in McCovey and even get offered some commons....don't remember the year but remember that Oyler card like it was yesterday....by the way I never did get the card!!!

Dhjacks

I started collecting in 1972 and still have virtually all the cards from my childhood. I have sold off some of the stars to purchase other items. But I have somewhere around 60k cards from the seventies still in my closets. Mostly psa 6 to 7 ish.

Lothar52

my first set i ever collected was 1986 topps football. My dad would stop by and top the gas off his car EVER DAY (he is OCD i think)....and he would get me 1.00 worth of cards to boot...and at the convenient store they kept them right at the front. SO....i still have all of them!!! HOWEVER...rubber bands, taking them to school...just messing with them in general relegates them to 5-6 condition basically...and with those green borders its kind of ugly. I have replaced quite a few if not all of those over the last few years buying groups of nm-mt commons and as of now my set is about a 8 raw. I do have a nice centered psa 9 rice which i OVERPAID for back in 2001 (remember back in 1999-2000 a psa 9 Rice was going for well over 1000 dollars so 300 seemed like a STEAL TO ME!!!! DOH!!!!).

One thing that was funny was that i must have gotten a folder to put cards in and put a 86 marino it in to take to school.. It prolly went out of pack to folder....well....its the only one of all my 86's that escaped MYSELF and I found it back in 2002 and sent it in to SGC during there 4 dollar set registry special. It came back a 96!! So anyway.....I guess my 86's were sweet before i destroyed them LOL

Loth

TripleCrown

Sadly all my baseball cards (1955-1974) were lost somehow when I moved out of my childhood home at 13.
Having been born in 1962 I grew up with "the greats" being very common cards (Mantle, Aaron, Williams, Mays, etc...). My brother who is 13 years older than me also gave me his collection when he found girls were more fun than cards So even though I started collecting very young all were lost unfortunately. This is one of the reasons I collect so randomly is because from memory I've slowly replaced cards that I just loved when I had them.

originalisbest

Personally not really anything remains that I bought with my own childhood money - I do remember the first baseball cards I ever bought packs of were '79 Topps. However, my oldest brother's cards were of more interest to me; now and again I was allowed to look through them carefully - he just had a nice assortment of maybe 2,000 cards from the years 1965-1969. While (unusual to me) he never tried to complete any of the sets, he did keep everything he ever accumulated, and in decent shape (not anally retentive NM, but nice EX-MT is how they ended up.) He still has them, OK '68 Bench rookie, the '69 Reggie Jackson, '67 and '69 Mantles, three '67 Clementes, etc. but no Seaver rookie - no Ryans at all - and so forth. And one heck of a lot of commons.

Overall, the Mantles are probably his best, though the '67 Mays and Aaron are also nice and sharp.

Stone193

Steve
Nice to have a Topps guy living near by! My uncle was a candy vendor and went to stores with candy and boxes of cards - he would bring me stuff - not like that!

WC
Great story.

Lothar
Still have the Marino?

Julen
You're my kind of guy! Hustler and Penthouse were my favorites - Playboy was just to squeaky clean.

mike

fur72

I still have all of my childhood collections. I didnt take very good care of them through the years, unless they were stars. I started in 82 and finished in 86. Some 1962 - 1967 cards were handed down to me from my uncle. I did not start treating them well until a few years ago when I got back in the "game". If there is one thing in this hobby to kids today is take care of the cards and some day the cards might take care of you!

zef204

Thanks for sharing guys. My parents still live in the house I grew up in, so I guess that is one reason my cards have made it. My dad's best friend gave me all his cards that survived from the 50's, mainly 54-56 Topps adn there were about 500 of them. I sold off a few years back because a half torn Williams and Mays weren't worth much to me but I was able to get I think $50+ for thoise.

My future father in law says that his and his older brothers cards are still in his mom's basement. She won't let him, let alone me, down there to look. I have seen his Lionel train set still set up from a wooden board that pulls away from the wall. I don't know if it still runs.

He is confident the cards are in a a box amongst all the stuff, so eventually I will get my hands on those.

I have 1000's of 83-86 Topps and Fleer in probably 4-6 shape, I recounted and sorted them a ton. Near the end in 89 I had 1000's of UD, that I recently went through and found some virtually untouched Randy Johnsons.

zef204

Oh yeah,

Julen-

I have every Playboy from 79-86(when dad's subscription ran out) in my old closet at my parents house. I actually bought the Millenium edition in 2000 and left it in the wrapper as a keepsake.

I never got Oui, but I remember Club International was a good one.

rbdjr1

When I moved to Haight-Ashbury in the '60's, I smoked my childhood collection!

rbd

wolfbear

<< <i>When I moved to Haight-Ashbury in the '60's, I smoked my childhood collection!

rbd >>



rbd today :

Stone193

<< <i>

<< <i>When I moved to Haight-Ashbury in the '60's, I smoked my childhood collection!

rbd >>



rbd today :

>>

rbdjr1

LOL!

zef204

Anyone else?

paulbattnj

I started buying packs of 1978 topps baseball and I'm sure I had the whole set. Same thing in 79 through 85 and also 79-80 & 80-81 basketball but I flipped them with friends and eventually sold them for about $300 which was good money for a 16 year old. I got back into it in 1992 and I bought up all different brands of basketball(Shaq fever) and had the 1992 topps baseball with the Jeter rookie. This time I got into a little gambling trouble and sold everything for about $400(at least $1000 BV). yes I was an idiot!! I just started collecting again in the last 3 months but I already have about 25000 cards. I'm in for keeps now.LOL

bbne1

When I was a kid in the early 60's you could buy cards from the ice cream guy. All summer long he'd come by in his ice cream truck every day and I'd buy a pack for a nickel. Maybe 2 or 3 packs if it was allowance day. I've still got hundreds of 62-66 Topps cards, mostly pretty rough shape. I have 6 64 Pete Roses, and I hated it back then getting so many doubles of a common like Rose. I got one of them graded recently just for kicks - it came back as a 5. I also graded a 61 Mays (5), 63 Mays (5), 64 Mays (5), 66 Clemente (5), and a 67 Kaline (7) just to get them in holders - it's cool to have cards you've owned for 40 years even if they're mostly 5's. You'd cry if you saw the condition of my Mantle and Maris cards. However, being a Dodger fan I HATED Juan Marichal, so my 61 Marichal rookie was pretty mint cuz I never touched it. Sold it for $50 years ago. Ah, the good old days!

BigDaddyBowman

Yes and no... A few years ago I sold the majority of the 1970's star football cards in a huge lot on ebay..I think I got about $300 for them all. They were pretty beat up so I was happy to have some money to buy better conditioned cards. The football cards that I kept (I couldn't part with) is my Dallas Cowboys collection which I started back in the mid to late 1970's. Throughout my childhood and into my late teen years I collected just about every regular issue and many oddball Dallas Cowboy cards from the 1960 topps to right around the 1990 (when new card issues became ridiculous) Ironically, I now only collect football cards, yet I have kept all of my baseball cards from when i was a kid..those are stored away for Junior to have when I think he is ready for them.

I still recall the daily summer and fall ritual of begging my mom for her spare change so I could go up to Fox drug with my buddy to buy cards...its amazing.. I would come home with a huge stack of cards with that spare change! My buddy was a steeler fan, so he always gave me his Cowboys and vice versa. I still have some of the 1978 and 1979 Cowboys Cards that I had taped to the headboard of my bed....rips and all!

GDM67

Pretty much, yeah.

I bought stuff sporadically over the years until I was ten (I very distinctly remember buying, or getting someone to buy for me, since I was five, a '72 rack pack. Considering that I had a Niekro and a Ken Brett in that, I'm fairly sure it was kind of late in the year) and I bought the odd '74 or '75 pack. (I remember the 75 Paul Casanova and Lindy McDaniel riding around in my Mom's glove compartment for a while, and someone recently opened a pack in the great mini wax break that looked very much like the assortment I got in a pack then, which I mentioned at the time.) I also picked up stuff the way most kids do when they're eight or nine: busroom and recess trades. I still have stuff I got then, that's probably around VG.

But the first year I got really serious was around '76. I bought a ton of the Football set that year, kept that up all through that Winter, when I also got into buying the oversized '76-'77 Basketball set, and then into the Spring of '77, when I got a lot of the Baseball set. Those were the first years when I purposefully marshalled my money and made a signifigant, concerted effort to buy a lot of cards.

That kept up, to a lesser degree each year until '81, when the big three company explosion happened. Anyone who was around then, especially if you were 13-14 or so, remembers how exciting that was. I kept up with that for a couple of years, then left off after '83, not to get back into the hobby for @ six years. I still have almost all of the stuff I just mentioned, and the condition gets better as you advance in years.

(I was just looking at my '76 Football star cards last night. I love them, but I need to pick up some quality replacements... )

storm888

"This may differ from the generations .........."

//////////////////////////////////

I am sure that is correct, and accounts, in part, for the
relative scarcity of 40s, 50s, early 60s.

I bought my first cards in 1955. Stopped buying in 1962.
Switched to music and chicks.

My entire family was DEEP into the collectibles and pawn
biz. They new about prices/values. BUT, in their universe,
cards were carp if they were "modern." So, in about 1963,
all of my "modern" cards went into the trash.

Every now and then, when I am fresh out of reasons to
be angry at my parents, I think about the tossed cards.

The cards were in a two-cubic-foot, tin, bread box. The
box was so full that the hinged top would barely close.
Most would probably be in the PSA 6 range, because they
had been "enjoyed."

Overrated

I would cut forks off another bike, bolt them on to my bikes forks, then my forks were about four feet long. After that my bike was a chopper! the year 1967. I collected lots of baseball cards, then I did the unthinkable! put my moms close pin on my forks, then my ballcards to the close pins DAMM!!!!! but the sound was music, like a real hells angles bike. I wish i had kept those cards, to give my son but! I was James Dean of my block.

Bunker

I started collecting in 1973 and I still have all my cards. A friend of mine who happened to live right across the street, named Mike got me started. I was 11 and Mike was 10. I collected a lot and was really in to my cards from about 73-78. In 1978 I got my drivers license and started dating but Mike was still collecting.

Mikes parents was still living across the street from my parents and I remember one time back in the mid 90's I saw Mike out and we started talking about our childhood and that turned to baseball cards. He was still collecting! He invited me over to his house (he still lived at home) and I was simply amazed at all the cards he had. I am not lying when I say there had to be several hundred thousand. I wasn't collecting anymore so I was more into the quanity than the quality. I do know that there were cards from the 60's and not sure about the 50's.

In 2000 or so Mike got a job in Chicago working for a newspaper. He left his cards at his parents house and moved away. Just a little over a year ago his parents house caught on fire. The fire was mainly in a couple of rooms on the first floor and almost every room on the second floor.

Fast forward to about 6 months ago. Mikes parents sold the house and contents to a rehabber (sp) for ex number of dollars. I don't know if Mike didn't care or think about it or maybe he thought they were lost in the fire, but my dad called me one night and told me about the workers carrying out box after box of baseball cards. My dad said that they looked to be ok with no damage seen on the boxes from water or anything.

As far as I know Mike doesn’t know anything about it. Maybe he is better off not knowing.

HoofHearted

<< <i>Anyone else? >>



zef, how do you remember these old threads anyway?! Amazing.

I still have most of my '62 thru '68 Topps and '63 Fleer cards I bought as a kid. I even sent away for some '62Ts to complete the Babe Ruth and World Series subsets. I just had the best BRuth card graded and it came back a 7!

One of my biggest regrets was trading away all the not-so-hot 1968 Topps football cards I had in the mid-80s. A wheeler-dealer got them up front in a trade where he said he'd fill in the last tough cards I needed to complete my '62 Topps set. I got garbage cards in return, plus he reneged on the $$ amount he said he'd give me for them. I never saw him again after that.

Here's a favorite '62Topps card my cousin and I included in every trade we made just because we thought it was one of the ugliest cards we'd ever seen:



And here are a couple of the cigar boxes I stored my BBCs in originally, too:

benderbroeth

well here is my story i didnt collect as a kid in fact i was into transformers not sports..lol (i still have most of them) anywho when i was a teenager i got into cards by a friend at high school he was way into cards and baseball well when i was at church i talked about my collection with some of the other guys and one of my frineds who was older than me showed me his cards they were all from the 70's i loved the old cards well he wasnt itno collecting so as a graduation gift he gave me the entire collection wich included an entire 72 topps football set (in great shape!!) near sets of 72 baseball and 3 entire 71 hockey sets. and an almost complete 71-72 basketball set (i need 33 cards) anyway i still have all of the cards and i wouldnt trade them for anything.

fiveniner

Much of my childhood collection was taken by the nun who was my grade school teacher in the spring of 1960 after she caught me looking at them during class one day.I used to trade them at school during recess with my other collecting friend.At the end of the school year when I asked the nun if I could have them back she told me she threw them out.$%^&*^%$%^*&%%%###%^&*.I was only able to salvage a few into my later years.Found a 61 Dave Hillman card in an attic rafter when I was moving my Mother out of our old house in the mid 80s however I could not find anymore up there.I think they must have slipped between the walls or something.

Stingray

No, sold it to a local flea market dealer before going off to college and gave some away to a neighborhood kid. My two best cards were a 56 Topps Aaron and Kaline. Though I can not say I remember the condition of them. I had a bunch of cards from 1954, though condition was fair to good on most of them. Most of my collection was 74 through 80 Topps BB.

Brian48

No. Collected heavily when I was a kid. Had some real vintage gems. All of which was stolen back in '95 when my house was broken into. Left the hobby completely after that until 2004.

stevek

<< <i>

<< <i>Anyone else? >>



zef, how do you remember these old threads anyway?! Amazing.

I still have most of my '62 thru '68 Topps and '63 Fleer cards I bought as a kid. I even sent away for some '62Ts to complete the Babe Ruth and World Series subsets. I just had the best BRuth card graded and it came back a 7!

One of my biggest regrets was trading away all the not-so-hot 1968 Topps football cards I had in the mid-80s. A wheeler-dealer got them up front in a trade where he said he'd fill in the last tough cards I needed to complete my '62 Topps set. I got garbage cards in return, plus he reneged on the $$ amount he said he'd give me for them. I never saw him again after that.

Here's a favorite '62Topps card my cousin and I included in every trade we made just because we thought it was one of the ugliest cards we'd ever seen:



And here are a couple of the cigar boxes I stored my BBCs in originally, too:

>>




That 62 Topps card looks "beautiful" to me. LOL

Still my favorite year for baseball cards for a multitude of reasons.

kcballboy

Collected as a kid (Mid 90's) and sold all of it off a couple of years ago when in college. Wasn't to pay any bills (hard to believe a collection from that era only went for about $150) but it did clear some clutter and allow me to focus my hobby a bit more (still not sure what I'm focused on though).

AlanAllen

I still have all of it. My dad was big into coins and imparted on us the importance of storing collectibles properly. Especially when he got back into cards and his mom told him she had thrown away his childhood collection (but she kept all the Mad magazines). Even though I started collecting in 1980 at the age of 6, I never had the "innocent years" of bike spokes, flipping, and cigar boxes. In 1981, my brother and I knew Joe Charbeneau was worth $2, and if we pulled one it went into a 9-pocket page. That didn't stop me from marking my checklists and sorting my cards so many times that they are now EX, but we were always cognizant of the monetary value of what we had.

Joe

1989FleerBillRipkencollector

Collected from 87-90ish. Sold cards to my Dad. He still has them and since he's a pack rack I'll get them back in 30 years or so.

TJMAC

I sold off most of my collection a few years ago to finance my new collecting interests. The only thing I kept were a few Dallas Cowboys cards, my Mark McGwire collection and Topps Baseball Sets from 1982-1991. My collecting basically took place in two phases, from about 1980-1982 when I was 5-7 years old. Those cards were pretty beat up and I don't know what happened to them. I got back into sports cards around 1987 and collected until my senior year of high school (1992). All of those cards were kept in beautiful shape. I did have several vintage cards especially football that I sold on Ebay. I sold a EX+ EX-MT Johnny Unitas rookie for about $200.00 on Ebay. I ended up getting a beautiful NRMT+ 1977 Topps Baseball Set and a couple of PSA cards with the money. I bought the Unitas card at a YMCA card show in 1987 for $25.00. It was when vintage football was way undervalued. For some reason, I liked Unitas even though I never saw him play and kept buying different cards of him.

I got about $2,000 for all my cards, football and basketball SLU's. I ended up reinvesting virtually all of it back into baseball cards. Even though I was attached to them, it allowed me to scale back my collecting. I have to be focused and organized and selling off my collection allowed me to do that.

rounding3rd

I sold most of my collection (early 80's Topps sets) off before I went to college. I did keep the first card I ever purchased at the first card show I ever attended when I was about 12 or so...it is a 1970 Topps Tom Seaver. I sent it in for grading a few years ago and it came back PSA 6. I think I will always hold on to this!

-Mike