[Keith H. Thompson]

the new shows, both new and old. For example, I'm 92, my sons are 59 and 61 years old, and we have never had a single item graded. We grew up buying boxes at the local stationery store and local card shops and kept buying until we had completed two sets each. We bought them because we loved baseball. My wife and I had to monitor their sleep time because they would sort through their cards after they had presumably gone to bed and read the backs of the cards with flashlights.

fast forward to last week's All Star Game.

My oldest son has three children. Twin girls 4th grade. Boy aged 6. Last week the family bought a strip of two tickets for all the events at the All-Star game in Seattle. The Convention activities include many promotions by Card producers, and they give out plenty of shiny pack stuff. Poppy and Sami love this, apparently for all the right reasons, meaning that they are fascinated by the cards themselves and spent a lot of time trading and comparing with other kids doing the same thing. Thaddeus can tell you the names of every San Diego Padres player and his batting average (six years old) It remains to be seen how they will react when they learn you have to buy cards, but I have hopes.