Posted By:
David McDonaldGreetings All-
I am a serious Net54 lurker. I've gotten a great education about cards and baseball from you folks for which I am grateful. I crawl out of the woodwork now and then to post the odd reminiscence or smart-ass comment.
I spent my boyhood around NYC in the fifties. Took in plenty of games at Yankee Stadium and a few at the Polo Grounds (I was seven when the Giants moved west). Games at Yankee Stadium were glorious then. Fifty years later I can still close my eyes and see it all in living color. Like every kid I collected Topps cards which were flipped, traded, rubber-banded, clothespinned to a spoke and beaten into PSA1's. Who knew?
I stopped collecting cards around 1960 or so. We moved to Denver and they didn't have a ML team. (We did have the Game of the Week with Diz and Pee Wee which was the next best thing). Four states and three provinces of Canada later I ended up in Hawaii. Major League Baseball just ain't the same for me as it used to be. I've changed, baseball's changed, America's changed. I got into vintage card collecting about three or four years ago around when both my folks died. I seem to want to connect with their days of the 20's and 30's as well as my youth. I put together a '33 and '34 Goudey set off of eBay in the last couple of years. That was good fun. Also have assembled various Topps sets, my favorite being the 1953 set. (When I got married two years ago I gave my best man a mid-grade 1957 Topps set in a MJ Roop binder as a gift. Those were the first cards he knew as a kid; he was blown away. Wouldn't you be, too?).
As for earlier cards, I would love a pristine T205 set but it ain't gonna happen. I do have a beautiful Matty T205. Also am keen on the T3 Turkey Reds. Have a beautiful Matty T3, as well. As for the T206's, that set scares me. What I plan to do is try eventually to get hold of at least the cards in those sets that I really like in a reasonable eye-appeal condition.
Aside from baseball cards I collect Hawaiiana. Prices on this stuff took off big-time a few years ago. I was lucky to acquire a nice collection of postcards, books etc before it got too expensive. Those little hula dollies sold for 49 cents back in WW2. They now get three hundred dollars and more.
David McDonald
Honolulu
edited for indecent exposure