[mcgwirecom]

I miss the perceived (or maybe real) scarcity of getting baseball cards.

When I was a kid in the early-mid 70's we only had a couple places that we knew of to buy cards. The 7-11 and the 5&10 store. The only product was Topps and they never got in more than a box or two at a time. I think they were about 35 cents a pack or so. My mom would let me have whatever change was in her purse to go to the store. We would head over there and all buy a pack or two, slowly open them and hope to get a Hank Aaron card! That was our Holy Grail! We didn't know rookies would be worth anything! At the start of the season it was easy to find them, but as the summer went on they would always be out! You'd be 3/4 of the way through a set and couldn't find packs! we would ask the cashier "can you look in the back please?" Sometimes you would get lucky and they had a box somewhere. Other times they would get mad at you for asking. The lady at the 5&10 told us, "you guys are a pain in my ass." That was the first time I ever had an adult say a bad word to me!

LOL By the end of summer it seemed impossible to find any packs. Sometimes another kid would tell you he saw some in the next town over so you would try to get your parents to stop at this store in the next town as you drove by. I remember one September actually seeing a new box at the 7-11 and freaking out. opened some packs and saw some new cards that said "TRADED" on them. What the hell is this? LOL And interestingly the gum was still soft! WOW! we would spend a lot of time trying to trade cards with friends to get what you needed to finish. I think I was like 12 cards short and figured I would never finish. but a friend gave me his old Baseball Digest and I saw an ad for this guy named Larry Fritsch who would sell you cards for pennies. I wrote him a letter and send cash in the mail! He sent me the cards I needed and stamped that I had a credit of a few cents LOL. Years later my friend still had my letter with the credit stamped on it. We were amazed how we had to try and finish a set. I thought it was cheating to do it that way but I needed to finish.

A few years later a friend of mine's parents got divorced. First time anyone I knew had this happen. His father would get him on the weekends and he would come home with a whole box of baseball cards! Where the hell do you get a whole box! The stores near us wouldn't sell you a box! Anyway after that the hobby started taking off and everyone bought in boxes or cases! Took all the excitement right out of it. I think things need to go back to the old days. One set, no inserts or parallels. make a lot less of them. Make it tough to finish. Bring back bad collation, I like getting 3 Hank Webbs in a pack! LOL I know its a pipe dream, too much money in making a lot of product.