Lucas,
I loved reading through this thread and as I began my card collecting with 1987 Topps as an 8-year-old, much of this resonated with me.
Those first packs of 87 Topps that my mother bought me hooked me for life. I started a thread here that touched on this. I pulled the McGwire in my very first pack. And I really had a thing for the Topps All Star Rookies, so that Corey Snyder was big for me too!
Baseball and baseball cards were my life from 1987 – 1991 (ages 8 to 12, when everything is still pure and innocent). From 87 to 90 I was all in on Topps. In 91 I was infatuated by the Bo Jackson Score cards and Fleer Pro Vision subset, and then by 1992 I was out.
During those years my collection was 99% made up of junk wax that I pulled from packs, acquired in trades with friends, or on the rare occasion, bought from a vendor at the mall when shows were hosted. I LOVED stumbling upon card shows at the mall. Even though I didn’t have money to buy anything good, I could actually see Mantle and Mays and Aaron with my own eyes.
Those 50s Topps cards seemed like works of art. Like they should have been in a museum, not on a table in the Schuylkill Mall in Frackville, PA. I dreamed of owning those cards, but had to settle for 85 Gooden’s and 89 Jefferies’. But they were prizes in their own right at the time.
During that timeframe however, near the end of my first period of card collecting I did manage to acquire my first vintage card – a 1961 Mickey Mantle that I got in a trade for a handful of Nintendo games. I owned a Mantle and couldn’t believe it. It quickly replaced my 1986 Topps Traded set as my most valuable asset.
The final card that I received as a childhood collector, is, to this day, my most meaningful. For Christmas 1991 or 1992, my mom surprised me with a 1983 Donruss Howard Johnson. I was a Mets fan and HoJo was my favorite player. At that time he was a star, and my mom probably paid $15 or so for that card. Much more than she could afford to spend on a single baseball card, but she did it anyway. Soon after receiving that card I was headed to high school and the cards were left in my binder under my bed for the next 8 years or so. At that time, I probably considered my collection complete.
Fast forward several years and I’m out of college with a fulltime job. At that point I was living in an apartment in Baltimore and for the first time ever I had some money to spend. It was also about that time that I discovered Ebay and realized that I didn’t have to wait to stumble onto a card show at the mall and hope the dealers had what I was looking for. I could find any card I wanted to at any time and I might even be able to afford it. I remember spending hours browsing the cards I could never afford when I was a kid and realizing that I could own a few of them if I wanted to.
The fist ebay purchase I made was a 68 Ryan / Koosman rookie. That card was special for a few reasons. As a Mets fan, it was a key rookie card of legendary players in Mets uniforms. Also, for a few years in my hometown, there was a tiny card shop on Main Street, and the best card they had in their inventory was a beat up Ryan rookie. I would look at that card every day I went into that shop but could never come close to affording it. I guess no one in town could because it stayed under the glass until the shop closed.
With the Ryan now in my collection, and a paycheck coming in every week, I was back in the game and made a significant run on 70s and 80s rookies over the next year or so until I had everything on my wish list from that time period checked off.
At that point, I was making a little more money and realized that some of those 1950s Topps cards that I believed belonged in a museum could maybe be attained.
The first 50s card I bought was a raw 55 Clemente on ebay for $300. I couldn’t believe I was spending that much on a single card but when it arrived and I held it and smelled the cardboard I was hooked on vintage.
At about that time, the next phase of life happened – marriage, kids, house, dogs, etc. My card collecting days would be put on hold once more.
For the next few years I would dabble here and there but didn’t really make any significant additions.
Once things settled down, and the kids weren’t babies anymore, and I had a promotion or two under my belt, I got back in and decided I wanted to make a run on 52 Topps. The first card I added to my collection this go round was the first slabbed card I ever bought – a 52 Topps Willie Mays PSA 1 for $450.
I decided that for what I considered high dollar cards, I wanted to purchase slabbed, however, I didn’t like the look of the holders for display purposes, so I would buy slabbed and immediately crack them. In addition to the Mays, I cracked several PSA or SGC 2s and 3s including a 52 Robinson, 53 Paige, 54 Banks, 54 Williams, 55 Koufax, and 58 Maris to name a few.
The most recent stage of my collecting has taken me to the land of prewar, specifically T206, 33 Goudey, and 41 Playball. My goal here was to start big and fill in with the Tier 2 cards afterwards. I’m glad I did this because I was able to get most of the Tier 1 stars (Johnson, Mathewson, Young, Lajoie, Gehrig, Foxx, Williams, DiMaggio) before prices went insane. I’m still mad I missed the boat on the Goudey Ruths, but the first T206 I added was the Red Cobb Portrait.
So that’s where I am today. The cards I really want are now out of my reach – 33 Goudey Ruth, the blue background American Caramel Wagner, the 52 Mantle (which has always been out of my reach). So, I’ll probably add some minor T206 and Goudey hall of famers here and there, or begin to save up for one of my whales. Either way, I’m glad to be fully back into this, with my 54 Aaron and 33 Gehrig right next to my 83 Hojo and 87 McGwire.
Chris
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