There was a time when every ten to twelve year old boy in America collected baseball cards. I owned a shop at that time and was, in my own way, a celebrity. It was a smallish town (about 75,000) and I was often on television and in the news. My wife and I virtually never went into a restaurant without some kid saying, "look, it's the baseball card guy." We tried hard and tried to trade with the kids...never made much money...I think at the peak my partner and I were probably making $24K each a year, but we also split hours so we could pursue other interests...I did freelance writing, he did some acting and building. We also probably spent 30% or our paycheck back on stuff for our collected, granted at a decent discount. Weird things happened all the time. I remember being at a show when Mark McGuire was on a tear and his rookie cards literally tripled from the show open until the show close because he hit two homers that day. People actually kept up with baseball. Another odd thing that happened at shows and shops is that dealers actually tried to conduct business and had some semblance of customer service instead of standing off to the side grousing about how bad business was. It was a good time but we'll never see it again.
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