left a skid mark on a cobb as a teen. still feel it at 49
 

yup.....tried to put it in an album.....when i was a kid.....had mild adhesive....oops.

anyone else ever felt damaged as a well intentioned kid ?

I have a great kid screw up story.

My father and I had a huge and expensive stamp collection. As a bonding thing my brother and I would go with him to shows and auctions. We basically had all the US stamps MNH from 1915 to the late 80's. (prior were mostly postally used)

He bought us beautiful new leather binders and slipcases to replace everything we currently had and my brother and I went to work excitedly transferring everything to the new binders.

Instead of putting the mounts in first, letting them dry and putting in the stamps...you guessed it. We put the stamps in the mounts, licked the entire back and stuck them in the binders. The saliva went right into the mounts and stuck 60% of the stamps into the mounts ruining them.

We spent the next 2 years replacing all the damaged stamps.

I still can't believe how well my dad handled that.

Not exactly prewar and not exactly damaging a card, but I'm still kicking myself over this one. When I was in 4th or 5th grade in the late 80s, we would all bring our cards to school to trade and show off. At one point, some kid started stealing cards out of other kids' cubbies. I took it upon myself to figure out who it was and bust him. So I set out a couple cards in plain view at the front of my cubby, including an '84 and '85 Donruss Nolan Ryan. Now, mind you, those were hot cards back in that day, and gave a person major hobby status on the playground. Well, I set the trap and waited around the corner patiently for the thief to come. I waited for what seemed like all afternoon (it was likely 5-10 minutes), and then had to run to the bathroom. When I came back, of course the cards were gone, and my soul was crushed. Along with my aforementioned hobby status on the playground.

My mother died in 2002, and we were preparing her house for sale. There was attic access from my old bedroom, and sometimes I played with my cards there. So I took one last look for any stray cards from my childhood collection, and found some in a vent frame. A 1967 Topps Vic Roznovsky (which is in my set), and these, cut from a cereal box by yours truly back in 1962.
http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w...Scan%20163.jpg
Larry

I'll try make this long story short. Back in the early eighties I was in second or third grade. A friend of mine & I were taking our cards to another friends house to do some trading. We were walking & it was about a 1/2 mile walk. We went up the hill (where the older kids lived), and not surprisingly they were there. Our boxes of cards ended up flying through the air, flying everywhere. We picked up the cards & headed towards our buddy's house just happy that we didn't get our asses kicked. Through no fault of our own, the condition of the cards suffered, but we didn't care back then. The trading went down as usual. I miss those days.

I accidentally destroyed a common T205 ($50), cracking it out of an SGC slab.

I got a 1973 Hank Aaron when I was a 10 year-old collector in the late 80's. It was easily the star of my collection, and it was the talk of the neighborhood. It was pretty good shape, but it has a small wax spot on the front. My 10 year-old self thought it would be better with no wax, so I pulled out a steak knife and scraped the wax off. Ended up with smeared wax, and several knife cuts to the picture. Still have the card...:)

This summer, I decided to get a new safe and combine two safes into one. Apparently I forgot to double check one of the safes and tossed 9 signed cards in my 1957 set including a Frank Robinson and Don Drysdale.

I ALMOST did the same thing with a '73 Topps Clemente as a 11 year old...We were NOT allowed to touch knives, so I used a paper towel to rub the wax off...folded the card into thirds when my hand slipped off and I caught the edge of the card...I can still see me doing it!!

:(

Sadly I was a 45 year old kid last year when I bought a nice 61 Roger Maris blank back. The card was sheet cut with huge borders that where cut very badly. I figured I would take my old guillotine paper cutter and square it up nicely. Trimmed up both sides and the bottom. Then as I was making the top cut the cutter slipped and I made a horrible cut that went down into the card. I actually felt sick to my stomach because I was in a hurry and did not put a towel down so the cutter would not slip on my marble tile topped kitchen island.

I put the card and piece of card away and when going through some stacks found it again a few weeks ago and put it together and finished squaring it up.