In late 1972 when I was 13 I decided to become a baseball card collector. I had my worn and well-loved cards from the late 1960s as a starting point, but there were no baseball card price guides, no internet, no card stores, not much to let me know what to collect. I bought a Baseball Card Checklist book from the Card Collectors Company in 1973 and that served as the blueprint for my collecting activities back then.
I made up a wantlist and sent it out to other collectors for trading.
In September 1974, The Trader Speaks magazine published a checklist of T206, so I could start collecting those if I wanted. I picked up a few, but not many.
I also had little notebooks filled with handwritten oddball checklists like the Fleer World Series sets and other Fleer oddballs sets, Milk Duds, Hostess, Kelloggs, etc.
It was fun collecting back then, you kind of had to make it up as you went, not much information, and not many ways to add to your collection.
I'd be curious to see other tools collectors used when they were collecting in the dark ages of the early 1970s or earlier.