How did you "handle" your cards as a kid?

Stone193

Talking with Crazylegs got me to thinking...

We have just about every "childhood decade" from 1950s - on - represented here - it should be interesting.

So, when you bought a pack/box of cards - what went on next?

I was a kid in the 50s, and I had a way different "experience" with them than kids of the 90s - and forward...penny sleeve, toploader, semi-rigid, graded holder, 800 ct. box...foreign to a boomer kid.

To the best of my recollection - I would open a pack - looking for Brooklyn cards first - my favorite was always the team card. Then I would look for what I may be able to trade. As I have told before, I had a cousin from the Boston area whom I traded with in the summertime on visits to his house. Basically, I sorted them by teams and kept them in my upper left - top drawer with all my other "junk."

Further,we flipped them, "spoked" them, carried them in rubber banded bundles in our ass pocket and traded them...

If one were a Brooklyn fan? It wouldn't be uncommon to take a Yankee card and poke the eyes out of a player with a pencil! I remember taking a Yankee card and poking a hole in the middle of the card with a pencil and twirling it like a pinwheel - I was in the 6th grade - bored out of my ass - in class - I found ways to vent my potential ADD...

With the first frost...it was time to throw them into a shoebox. I don't remember discussing centering, gloss, depth of color,print defects or registration. I remember jamming a Duke Snider card into the corner of the mirror in my bedroom!

So - what's your experience?

YogiBerraFan

I would keep my cards in stacks with rubber bands around them. When my parents would watch TV at night I would sit on the living room floor and build houses with them. I got pretty good at it after a while. Some did end up in the bike spokes but that eventually got boring.

mccardguy1

I opened packs in the early 70's and would do the need it..need it..got it routine.

Even back then I was a set completionist and would go home and mark the cards off the checklist that I didnt need. Then I had a little notebook where I would write the names down with the years behind that names that I had. Then into the team sets the cards would go surrounded by rubber bands. Of course between packs I would watch the newspaper every day and look for trades. If a player was traded I would mark out the team name on all his cards that I had and write in the new team name. 75's killed me with this!!

I even went as far as to send a dollar to one of those card places in the back of Baseball Digest to obtain the cards I needed for that years set. A number of years ago I sold my sets off but I am now putting them back together. I have to say this has been the most fun I have had in years. I did run across some of the cards I had marked up as a kid and those are now in top loaders and a special part of my collection!

Great Thread Stone!!!

Crazylegs

Mine went into shoeboxes.
Luckily my sister liked shoes.
Never used the rubber bands, Would always use a dreaded Yankees card sticking straight up in the box as a divider.
Played "flips" and " Match" with the cards at lunchtime.
Won my fair share of stacks.
Good memories !!!

Brian48

I never spoked them. At least I don't remember doing so, but I do remember flipping them. Used rubberbands and shoeboxes for storage. My first year collecting BB cards as a kid was back in '78. The '78 Topps set came with a feature on the back of the card where you could play a game with them. For example, Steve Garvey was an "out" and Reggie Jackson was a "single" if you drew this card from the deck.




I remember playing that baseball card game quite a lot with my brothers and friends so the cards got handled quite a lot.

Indy78

In the late 70's when I first collected baseball cards, we would ride our bikes about 2 miles to a local grocery store. We would buy 3 or 4 packs and rip them open right outside the store and promptly stuff all the gum in our mouths. After quickly scanning the cards, we would stuff them in our pants pockets and be on our way. When I got home, I would pull out all of the Cubs cards and cram the rest in my sock drawer. Back then, I only understood the word "crease" in the context of making paper airplanes.

jeffcbay

I was an 80's kid, so protecting cards was a little easier for me with the sheets and the screw-down cases. I bought a 1982 Topps Traded Ripken for $9 back in 1987 when I was 11 years old. I must have been a good boy, because it graded a PSA 9 in 2007!

I got my first baseball cards back in 1985 when my step-brother went off to the Army. The box included cards from 1977 through 1983, all bound with rubber bands and loose in shoe boxes. One of those boxes contained what ended up being my first Ripken card, a 1982 Fleer. It was already beat to hell, and he had scratched out the "THIRD BASE" and wrote SS on it. I still keep this card in my wallet to this day!

HeritageAddict

Never had a shoe box full of cards but instead used one of dads old briefcases, that thing went on every long car trip we ever made. The cards just slid around until there were no corners left on them. The great thing was ever time you opened it you got to sort them all over again.

Dboneesq

Back in the mid 60's I couldn't wait to get my weekly allowance ... a QUARTER!!!! I'd go to the candy store and buy one or two packs of cards. That left me with 15 cents for candy. We would then go looking for bottles that people left on the side of the street ... a large bottle had a nickle deposit and the small ones were 2 cents. Whatever we found went back to the store and was used to buy more cards.

Usually there would be kids hanging out in front of the candy store with their cards. We used to play "match" (using the team colors, I think)... you would start the game calling "Larrys" (the other guy had to go first) and "picks-no-owes". Usually we each used 5 cards, but sometimes 10 each. I tried to memorize all the colors based on the players name ... this way if you saw what player the other guy had on the bottom (especially if we used only 5 cards each), you made sure you had the same color on the bottom of your stack. Odds were that none of the first 4 cards matched and you would be the winner on the 5th card! LOL

ANYWAY, at the end of the season, I usually had the most cards in my class and neighborhood. But that didn't matter much, as they all wound up in shoe boxes in the closet. And when mom get pissed off over the winter when my room was a mess ... well ... you know what happened to the cards! HAHAHA

One great memory, as I have posted before, was on my birthday. When I woke up there was ALWAYS a full wax box of cards next to me on the bed. Man, they cost $1.20 for a FULL BOX back then. I bet you I ripped those 24 packs open in 5 minutes! If I only knew.

storm888

Large metal bread-box.

edit add: Cigar boxes

Thin rubber bands.

Clemaz

I grew up with cards in the 70's. My brother and I would rummage through the cello boxes at Murphy's Mart looking for Pirates. My parents would sometimes go away for weekends and my brother and i would stay with relatives, my mother would hide a pack maybe two if we were lucky in our suitcases. Here are some examples below of how we treated our cards.

PoppaJ

Back in the early '50s, my friends and I would buy a few nickel packs with the money we made from mowing lawns in our neighborhood. (I had to use one of those old wheel-driven rotary blade reel mowers, which actually threw the grass clippings up in your face as you mowed.)

We would open our packs very carefully, not to protect the cards, but rather to keep the gum from falling out. The smell and taste of the gum was what most of us were after; the cards were a bonus. One of the worst things that could happen would be to open a pack with NO gum inside (it didn't happen often, but when it did ... bummer!

My best friend Randy was a huge Brooklyn fan, especially Duke Snider. I loved the Yankees solely because of the Mick; and that's who I chose to collect.

My father, God rest his soul, must have had some kind of foresight back then. He told me to take special care of any Mickey Mantle cards I pulled. I wasn't allowed to flip or spoke my Mantles. Whenever I brought one home to show him, he'd make me put it in a special box that he made just for them. I was free to do whatever I wanted with the rest of my cards, which for the most part were rubberbanded together by teams, and stacked neatly in a cigar box.

Good times and fond memories!
PoppaJ

Edit to show what my old lawnmower looked like ....

kidzfund

shoeboxes. Only put the Yankees in spokes (grew up a Dodger fan) but not very many.

hammered

I kept my favorites in a stack and carried that stack with me almost everywhere in my back pocket. I'd put my favorite cards on top of the stack like Aaron, and Dodgers like Cey and Garvey. I'd then go outside for the day. Those cards got really, really beat up but I never remember caring about condition back then.


Edit:
I remember the first pack I bought on my own was a 76 rack pack w/ Luzinski on top one Saturday morning at Newberry Drug Store in SoCal. I also remember they had an entire row filled with 76 rack packs. If only I could go back in time......

and5zac

I was a kid in the 60's and like Stone said we didn't look at centering ,gloss,etc.

I would open packs looking for the gum first,then look for Pirates cards.The rest would be used for trading with my brother and our friends. We sorted them by teams and kept them in shoe boxes. We would use them in our spokes and for flipping.We always carried a bunch in your pants pockets in case you needed them for a quick trade.

Any non Pirate cards we would draw mustaches and devil horns on and poke out the eyes and spin on pencils,again like Stone said earlier.We would switch to football in late August or early Sept.,putting the baseball in the box under the bed! And PoppaJ I still have one of those reel type mowers and my kids and I still use it to trim the yard!



Lou

mcolney1

1973 would go to my friend Jimmy Yee's house with my $1.00 (this was part my allowance, part the lunch money I skimmed from my parents by going hungry or sneaking out a lunch from home when I told them I was buying lunch)

Would go to the near by 7-11. Buy 8 packs of cards, 1 candy bar and some Zots. Would go back to his house, rip, chew, eat and play with our cards.

We would put them in positions, particularly with football cards and run plays like two dimensional electronic football. Really beat the cards up on a good tackle.

Collecting cards are the fondest parts of my childhood memories. I remember once my grandmother bought me a full cello box of '78 baseball for my birthday...I thought I'd died on gone to heaven!

Tony

itzagoner

late 60s organized by team for games of dice baseball, the corners never had a chance.

fkw

The way everyone did on my block .... rubber banded, separated by team and league in 2 lunch boxes.

I had my 1973 set separate, it was worth alot then, I paid $19.99 for it.

Also had almost all Kelloggs set except the 1971, and most I got from the box top offer. I rubber banded them too.

bziddy

Pull out the ones to keep or trade, the rest went in gov't cheese boxes -- almost the right size, a little big.

elsnorto

No love for the Velveeta cheese boxes yet?



Snorto~

Edit: Thus proving, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this ID is an alt for bziddy?

Heh.

TJMAC

I lived the best of both worlds. When I first started in 1980 at the age of 5, my cards were in a shoe and rubberbanded by team. I used to go over with my brother to his friends house to trade. I was a Yankees fan, but loved the 1980 Pirates cards. My favorites were Dave Parker and Tim Foli. Something about the yellow uniforms.

My second life of collecting began in 1985. I went on vacation to Florida to visit my Grandparents and ended up at a card shop. I bought the 1984 and 1985 Topps Football sets. Both sets ended up going right into 9 card pages.

Good thread.

jay0791

I grew up in the 70's. I can't really remember buying them all that well.
I had them in shoe boxes. In the late 70's I sorted them by year and sport and rubber banded them. Put them in 2 big film reel cases.
When my parents moved everythung went into stirage for a few months.
In the late 80's I went looking for them...only found one case. The other was gone for good.

I can rememeber taking out a reggie rookie and my 1st beckett...saying WOW!!!! this card is worth $460.00
Little did I know about condition. Anyways most were actually in ex or better.

Sold off most. Still have a binder of about 250 1972 football. Some could get psa 8's.

leftofdial

I started buying cards in the mid-70's in around 4th 5th grade. I spent alot of time looking for aluminum cans and later Coors bottles to turn in for card money. I stored and carried my cards in my empty Dingo boots box, which fit ok but not great on the handlebars of my bike. I sorted them by team by year and I only had 5-6 years of options and most of mine were baseball were 78 79 and 80. I started with football in 75 and would sometimes line up my vikings by position on the carpet and make up plays that could never be stopped.
I sure wish I had not stick all my wacky packages, monster initials and my 74? topps hockey cloth stickers to my dresser!

Indy78

I spent alot of time looking for aluminum cans

I did the same thing. I used to ride my bike down all the neighborhood roads and beyond picking up aluminum cans along the side of the road. I would carry a plastic yard bag with me and fill it up until it was bursting at the seams. My dad was a machinist working in the steel mills of NW Indiana, and he would take my cans and crush them in the big presses at work and then turn them in at the nearby salvage yard for me. I would take the money and buy cards.