What was the card that started it for you?
 

If you are like me (getting older, but still young enough to not have collected 1960's cards or earlier out of packs; I'm 40...) - what was the first vintage card that "did it" for you in terms of collecting to set the hook?

I will start: For me it was a '66 Topps Koufax. I think my mother paid $15 for it in a shop in Charlotte, NC around 1988. Been hooked on older cards ever since!

Easy to Recall:
 

An odd coincidence was Topps coming out with a card that denoted the first Baseball game I ever saw on TV:

Of course, I may have thought, at the time, that they would create a card whenever I watched...LOL

In April of 1966, I attended my first ML game in person but never saw a card produced for it...magic is fleeting, huh?

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Topps 1959 Curt Raydon

What was the card that started it for you?
 

This one did it for me. As a kid in Georgia, I had no connection to the A's, but I thought this was a cool card. As a result, Reggie became my favorite player. He still is.

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Good topic. The very first card I remember getting was a 1971 Topps Dick Green, I lived in a small town in KY. Oddly enough, less than a year later we moved to California and I fell in love with the A's (so I love the Reggie card above) as they started their dynasty run. The 1972 season was the first time I was living and dying by a team, I was eight.

For me it was the 1983 Topps Wade Boggs rookie card. Back in the day it actually took me a few months to track one down. I still have that card.:)

https://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/NzAyWDUwN...ZAlP9/$_58.JPG

I thought, surely, there has to be better cards than this! And that's how an obsession was born.

Pete Rose

This one has always been my favorite. I finally got it about two years ago, but I wanted it for about 35 years.

I collected hockey cards as a kid but gave up collecting for years and years until my Father gave me these back in the early 90's.

Needless to say, I went from collecting hockey cards at a young age to collecting baseball at a much older age.

The Ryan/Koosman rookie card was what first got me interested in cards, but I recall it taking a while to grab one--maybe 20 years after I first saw one? The first card I got that made a meaningful difference in my collecting was a 51 Bowman Mantle. I'd purchased a few Mantles previously (the 1960 Mantle/Boyer being my favoreits), but this sent me chasing the Mantle master set. Now I'm one "card" away from completing my version of the set and cannot wait to post my final vintage card (for a while anyway).

When I became a card addict as a 7-year-old in 1972, the Vida Blue In Action card was the first object of my abject covetousness. I also discovered older cards that year through friends with older brothers. I distinctly remember acquiring a 1966 Mantle and other '66s from a fellow second grader with a brother in junior high school. I got the '69 Bench about the same time in a box of cards from a kid who got them from his brother, didn't care about them, and gave them to me when I let him ride my bike. After that, I was obsessed not only with ripping open new packs of cards but finding older stuff, mainly by targeting neighborhood kids who were entering their teen years and giving up the hobby. The Mantle card here is the same one I acquired 45 years ago; I'm pretty sure the Blue card is as well.

Although I started collecting In 1971 it was until 1973 I became obsessed with cards. I was in the 4th grade, a chubby kid with a craving for chocolate milk traded me his older brothers 1953 Topps Satchel Paige for three small cartons of milk. He approached me the next day in a state of panic. He begged me to return Satchel. He said his brother threatened to kick his a$$ if Satchel didn't return home safely. I told him that was an a$$ whipping he was going to have to take.

Twenty-eight years later my wife made me attend my 20th HS reunion. While there I was approached by a very large and intimidating looking body builder with tattoos and a shaved head. It was fairly obvious that he recognized me. After a few minutes he realized I had no idea who he was. He then asked if I still had his brothers Satchel Paige. I confirmed that I still was in possession of Satchel. I also explained that if necessary I was prepared to take an a$$ whipping in order to keep him. Thankfully he laughed and didn't take me up on my offer. I still own that card.

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My dad got me this card for my birthday when I was in grade school. Probably 4th grade or so. It started my crazy obsession for sure. I have a few of them now although the original one was stolen when I was in college. Later I purchased one online while deployed. I had a deep desire to replace the stolen card.




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This was the first old card I ever received. I think I was around 9 at the time. I've had it ever since.

I'm also 40. Loved the game and started buying packs hardcore in '86. Found a 56 Aparicio behind my Aunt's sink, and that got me looking into older cards in my CCP and Beckett Guides...and that's when I met the 1952 Topps Mantle.

https://www.collectorfocus.com/image...2-topps-mantle

Not too long after I was introduced to baseball cards and was discovering the crisp 1978 Topps set design for the first time, I took a great liking to a 1967 Topps Mickey Mantle that a collecting friend's older brother had. Something about that card appealed to me. Not sure now, because I see now that it was not a very flattering card for The Mick. I would also learn that the 67T Brooks Robinson was not an easy card to get, as all of the ads selling star cards always showed this one much more than most of it's counterparts.

I was able to get the Mantle eventually, although not from my friend's brother. It was probably after I was reintroduced to collecting as an adult after a short break and had some spare income to spend. Robinson took me considerably longer to obtain.

I still like the simple design of the 1967 Topps with the large colored block team names. Hard to believe those were only 11 years old at the time. That is like a 2006 card is to a new card today!

My two favorite players when I was a kid were Tom Seaver and Johnny Briggs (Briggs was from my hometown of Paterson, NJ) The first year I bought packs of cards was 1975 and I still remember getting both cards, been collecting ever since.

For me, it was the 1949 Bowman Bobby Doerr and Sam Mele. I bought them from my local card shop when I was in fifth grade? sixth grade? Anyways, I lost them both at some point; the Doerr was stolen and I sent the Mele out TTM and it never came back. But I replaced them both a couple of years ago, and got both of them signed TTM.

It was this one, although I didn't pick up a copy for myself until much later.

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This isn't mine (at work, had to pilfer a photo from ebay) but this is the card that took me out of the mainstream 80s collecting. I had been collecting topps, fleer and donruss through the 79 to 84 sets. In 84' a neighbor friend was given his uncle's collection and I worked out a likely massively lopsided (to my friends advantage) trade to score a VG copy of this card.

This started the card collecting down an even deeper cliff that I am still falling down ...
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1970 Topps Brooks Robinson
 

While the '70 Topps set doesn't get much love, for some reason, the Brooksie card was the one that got me hooked. I'm still not really sure I'm a card collector since I really currently only collect Brooks cards, but back in the day I wanted all of the Orioles cards and some of the stars (still do, but can't afford it all).

Not my Brooks card pictured, but didn't want to dig mine out and it looks uncannily similar. Check out the white on the back of the card; just awesome.

I started collecting in 1988 (around 9yrs old) and was obsessed with Kirby Puckett. I tried to collect all of his cards as well as other stars of the day. The 1989 Topps set was the first set I remember trying to put together. However, the 1933 Goudey Babe Ruth 144 was the card that got me into vintage. And vintage has been all I have collected ever since.

My dad was not a sports fan and he did not care for baseball, but he understood value. He was the first to teach me about scarcity and the art of negotiating price. He used to begrudgingly take me around to shows and to every coin shop in the area (buying packs and wax boxes with my saved money). One of these trips he asked if I had any interest in a Ruth card behind the counter sitting by itself. He asked if I would consider having that ONE old card as apposed to some packs of new cards. I deliberated this because to a 9 year old having more is always better. Once I actually held the Ruth I was hooked. It was the coolest thing I had ever seen. He and the dealer haggled over price for quite some time but they finally agreed and I left with a card that is still in my permanent collection.

Very nice..........
 

Nice father/son story......your dad was a wise man. A good decision made by you. Super '33 Goudey Babe Ruth.

Thanks Tim. Yup, the whole collecting experience after that profoundly influenced my life and and my relationship with my dad forever.

Thanks all for these great responses. Neat stories!

X2!

I particularly like the one above. :D

This was my first real vintage card. I picked it up when I was probably around 10 for $8 and stared at it for days afterwards. I think this was the vintage card hook that I bit and I've been loving vintage/prewar ever since.

AndyH


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What was the card that started it for you?
 

This was it for me, the '66 Topps Sandy Koufax #100... Around 1988, at a hobby shop in Charlotte, NC. This was virtually the first card I had ever even seen in person that was older than about 1985. Mom caved pretty easily and I think shelled out $15 or 20 for it. It was a NM card otherwise, but was way, wayyyy O/C left to right, and at the time that detail was not something I even noticed. I found a picture of the original card I had a few years ago and could not believe how O/C it was. Anyhow, I had it for about a year as a 12 year-old, then traded it to the kid down the street for a beat-up, absolutely destroyed, '65 Topps Mantle #350. That card had literally been left out in the rain, was waterlogged in it's top-loader, and probably would have disintegrated if you had attempted to take it out. My logic as a kid was that a nice Koufax was worth trading for a not-so-nice Mantle. And plus, the Mantle card was OLDER (by one year) so it inherently had to be more valuable. A choice I probably would not make today, obviously.

It's now nearly 30 years later, and I no longer have the original cards that made the memories, but I did pick up another '66 Koufax - this one is a PSA 6 and is centered much better. :-)

It's funny what you remember...

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This guy but a beat up one😊https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...5f91575cf4.jpg

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Great Story Kris - That Ruth is my favorite card! It was so cool when Leon had a Net54 T-Shirt with it!

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I started collecting baseball cards in 1978. My grandmother bought me my first pack as a 8 year old. Through out my childhood she kept supplying me with cards and supplies for my cards. She even got me a subscription to Baseball Digest to feed my baseball obsession. I would read those magazines for hours on end and then look over my cards. I had a notebook which I kept a log of which cards I had and which ones I needed. I still have one of those card lockers which held some of my collection. Cards inside are beat to heck, but I don't care.

Mike

Human Vacuum cleaner...
 

'67 Brooks Robinson...

Brooks for me too ! 1968 Topps All Star card.
About 20 years ago I decided to collect ever Brooks card... I got them all ( and I mean all of them from 1957 to 1978) except for the 61 dice game,68 disc ,and 67 3d.
It was a really fun chase. I learned so much about the oddball issues.
Scott

http://www.grayflannelsuit.net/blog/...stone-card.jpg :D

1984 Topps Mattingly RC.

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As a kid it was 67 Topps Bill Mazeroski. As an adult it was the 84 Topps Mattingly and Strawberry cards that brought me back as a serious collector with money to spend.

It was the 1967 Ken Berry card . . . I was 10 years old, just starting to follow baseball. The first series had just come out, so it was probably April. As all of us grade schoolers were milling around in front of the school, waiting for the doors to open, a friend of mine who'd been collecting for a couple of years and had a stack of '67s in his possession, showed me the Berry card. A posed swinging shot, big blue sky in the background, along with the stadium's outfield walls and other players out for batting practice . . . It had "WHITE SOX," my adopted team, written in big, deep purple letters across the bottom and a (gasp!) facsimile autograph. It was beautiful. I started collecting soon after, and have never looked back . . .

The 1984 Donruss Strawberry rookie got me started when I was a kid.

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Not necessarily "vintage"- but at the time...
 

Running across my backyard one day when I was six years old, I noticed a pile of paper scraps scattered around a path that led to my neighbor's house. I had no idea what it was, but since I had very recently become interested in baseball, I could make out that it was some kind of baseball related cardboard thingee. Up in my bedroom, I put the jigsaw puzzle scraps back in readable order and found they amounted to this card and then managed to glue them together to form my first collectible. Of course, I then had to have the rest of them - all the cards in the universe - but could not manage that until many years later.:rolleyes:

Great set to start with. Unfortunately for me, '67 was a decade before I arrived on this earth. So now I'm in my 40's and just now for the first time seriously starting to get into '67s...lol

As a kid, my favorite old-time baseball player was Ted Williams. When I was about 10, my mom's friend got me an early Beckett/Eckes price guide that had pictures of two Ted Williams cards--

• 1954 Bowman Ted Williams
• 1959 Fleer "How Ted Hit .400"

One was of course on a special page with pictures of the world's most expensive baseball cards, and I can't remember where I saw the other, but I was thrilled to see it was one even I would be able to afford if I ever came across it.

It took nearly ten years, but I finally picked up my first Ted at a card show in college. It was his absolutely glorious 1957 Topps card. I paid $20 for it, which back then was a small fortune to me, but I pretty much carried it around everywhere I went. If I recall correctly, I was also able to nab "How Ted Hit .400" at that same show for only $4.

Although I owned some HOFers from the 1950s and 60s even as a kid, it was these Teddy Ballgame cards that really captured my imagination and turned me into the hopeless addict I am today.

The 1973 Topps World Series recap cards are my earliest memories of cards and definitely got me interested in baseball. I was only 7 years old when they came out, but I vividly recall thinking the A’s colorful uniforms and white shoes were cool and different from every other team. As a result, I became an A’s fan and subsequently a Reggie Jackson fan as he became, arguably, the face of 1970’s baseball. Although I am a set collector, I do still have a graded Reggie collection and enjoy looking at his cards often. Growing up on North Georgia, I was the only A’s and Reggie fan around, but these were good times and they all started with those ‘73 World Series cards.


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Along those lines, I always think of Tony Perez stretching to reach first base in the Game 2 card...

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Yep. Good thing for the A’s there was no replay. I think he probably beat that throw.


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I’m guessing it was around 78 or 79. I was around 9-10 and a huge Brooks Robinson fan. The card shop I worked at had a 57 Robinson I fell in love with. The owner saved the card for me until I could come up with the cash. Took me all summer at the shop plus money saved keeping score at the bowling alley for tips during tournaments. Still have the card to this day. I need to get a pic of it.

1978 topps era leaders
 

10 years old. Pittsburgh Pirates fan. Dad came home with a pack of cards each for my brother and myself. My pack contained a 1978 Topps John Candelaria ERA leader card and I was hooked. You notice this thread is full of rather mundane cards from childhood, not Mantle rookies.

For me it was the 1973 Clemente. I remember hearing on the news that he had been killed in a plane crash, and I guess it just became a special card in my collection.

As an adult, I started collecting again and was buying all the new stuff (this was early 90s), then I saw a 65T Rose and 61F Russell on Pete Lalos' table at a local show and underwent a cosmic shift.