[Chris Counts]

"On the other hand there were guys like Goodie Goldfadden..."

"To be fair on Goodie Goldfaden, he disliked ALL kids."

No doubt one of the hobby legends, Goodwin Goldfadden was truly one-of-a-kind. Yes, he definitely didn't like kids, and his wife, Esther, was as sweet as they come. I'll never forget my first and only trip to his shop. This was in about 1972, and I was maybe 11.

The shop itself was like an oversized shoebox, and barely wide enough for more than a few people. There was publications and cards packed everywhere. Goodwin seemed annoyed to be dealing with me, my 10-year-old brother and my dad. I pepped Goodwin with questions about cards. He seemed distracted and merely grunted in response. Finally, seemingly exasperated by having to put up with an inquisitive kid, he pulled out a shoebox of sharp-corned 1957 Topps cards and told us we could have anything in it for 15 cents per card.

Next half hour or so must have driven him crazy. By this time, my brother and I had only ever seen a couple cards so old, and beat-up ones at that. But these cards looked like they came straight out of the packs. I reacted like we had just struck gold.

We carefully rifled through the cards in box. Between oohs and ahs, I pulled out cards of players I was familiar with from reading about baseball history, like Vic Wertz, who hit the ball Mays famously caught. I pulled some Reds because I liked their jerseys, and I pulled some Dodgers because I loved the background shots of Ebbets Field. My eyes got big when I saw Don Drysdale's first-ever card, and I excitedly pulled it from the stack.

Despite our young age, we treated our cards well, so we were horrified by what came next. Once we handed Goodwin the cards we wanted, he counted them up. Besides calculating our tab, he nervously tapped the stack against the counter, sometimes hitting an edge square against the surface, and other times at an angle. The result was a stack of cards that went from ex-mt to vg-ex before our eyes. Years later, when I got older and he became friendly to me, he would do the same thing to my cards — or his. I sold him some Scrapps cards one time, and I swear the first thing he did was put creases in them. He seemed to be unaware of what he was doing. He was truly prehistoric when it came to grading.

I saw an ad in some publication for his business, ADCO Sports Book Exchange, from the late 1930s in Cleveland. I have no idea if he sold baseball cards then, but if he did, that likely would make him the inventor of the baseball card shop.