What was the card that started it for you?

[jchcollins]

If you are like me (getting older, but still young enough to not have collected 1960's cards or earlier out of packs; I'm 40...) - what was the first vintage card that "did it" for you in terms of collecting to set the hook?

I will start: For me it was a '66 Topps Koufax. I think my mother paid $15 for it in a shop in Charlotte, NC around 1988. Been hooked on older cards ever since!

[clydepepper]

An odd coincidence was Topps coming out with a card that denoted the first Baseball game I ever saw on TV:

Of course, I may have thought, at the time, that they would create a card whenever I watched...LOL

In April of 1966, I attended my first ML game in person but never saw a card produced for it...magic is fleeting, huh?

1964 Topps- World Series Game 1- Koufax Strikes Out 15 - PSA-8.jpg

[ALR-bishop]

Topps 1959 Curt Raydon

[Vintagevault13]

This one did it for me. As a kid in Georgia, I had no connection to the A's, but I thought this was a cool card. As a result, Reggie became my favorite player. He still is.




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[Kurri17]

Good topic. The very first card I remember getting was a 1971 Topps Dick Green, I lived in a small town in KY. Oddly enough, less than a year later we moved to California and I fell in love with the A's (so I love the Reggie card above) as they started their dynasty run. The 1972 season was the first time I was living and dying by a team, I was eight.

[bnorth]

For me it was the 1983 Topps Wade Boggs rookie card. Back in the day it actually took me a few months to track one down. I still have that card.

[REGGIE206]

[TheNightmanCometh]

I thought, surely, there has to be better cards than this! And that's how an obsession was born.

[Jcfowler6]

My dad got me this card for my birthday when I was in grade school. Probably 4th grade or so. It started my crazy obsession for sure. I have a few of them now although the original one was stolen when I was in college. Later I purchased one online while deployed. I had a deep desire to replace the stolen card.




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[Exhibitman]

This was the first old card I ever received. I think I was around 9 at the time. I've had it ever since.

[MattyC]

I'm also 40. Loved the game and started buying packs hardcore in '86. Found a 56 Aparicio behind my Aunt's sink, and that got me looking into older cards in my CCP and Beckett Guides...and that's when I met the 1952 Topps Mantle.

[mrmopar]

Not too long after I was introduced to baseball cards and was discovering the crisp 1978 Topps set design for the first time, I took a great liking to a 1967 Topps Mickey Mantle that a collecting friend's older brother had. Something about that card appealed to me. Not sure now, because I see now that it was not a very flattering card for The Mick. I would also learn that the 67T Brooks Robinson was not an easy card to get, as all of the ads selling star cards always showed this one much more than most of it's counterparts.

I was able to get the Mantle eventually, although not from my friend's brother. It was probably after I was reintroduced to collecting as an adult after a short break and had some spare income to spend. Robinson took me considerably longer to obtain.

I still like the simple design of the 1967 Topps with the large colored block team names. Hard to believe those were only 11 years old at the time. That is like a 2006 card is to a new card today!

[Jim65]

My two favorite players when I was a kid were Tom Seaver and Johnny Briggs (Briggs was from my hometown of Paterson, NJ) The first year I bought packs of cards was 1975 and I still remember getting both cards, been collecting ever since.

[jchcollins]

This was it for me, the '66 Topps Sandy Koufax #100... Around 1988, at a hobby shop in Charlotte, NC. This was virtually the first card I had ever even seen in person that was older than about 1985. Mom caved pretty easily and I think shelled out $15 or 20 for it. It was a NM card otherwise, but was way, wayyyy O/C left to right, and at the time that detail was not something I even noticed. I found a picture of the original card I had a few years ago and could not believe how O/C it was. Anyhow, I had it for about a year as a 12 year-old, then traded it to the kid down the street for a beat-up, absolutely destroyed, '65 Topps Mantle #350. That card had literally been left out in the rain, was waterlogged in it's top-loader, and probably would have disintegrated if you had attempted to take it out. My logic as a kid was that a nice Koufax was worth trading for a not-so-nice Mantle. And plus, the Mantle card was OLDER (by one year) so it inherently had to be more valuable. A choice I probably would not make today, obviously.

It's now nearly 30 years later, and I no longer have the original cards that made the memories, but I did pick up another '66 Koufax - this one is a PSA 6 and is centered much better. :-)

It's funny what you remember...




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[Bcwcardz]

This guy but a beat up one😊

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[mcreel]

1984 Topps Mattingly RC.

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[rats60]

Originally Posted by mcreel

1984 Topps Mattingly RC.

As a kid it was 67 Topps Bill Mazeroski. As an adult it was the 84 Topps Mattingly and Strawberry cards that brought me back as a serious collector with money to spend.

[carney22]

It was the 1967 Ken Berry card . . . I was 10 years old, just starting to follow baseball. The first series had just come out, so it was probably April. As all of us grade schoolers were milling around in front of the school, waiting for the doors to open, a friend of mine who'd been collecting for a couple of years and had a stack of '67s in his possession, showed me the Berry card. A posed swinging shot, big blue sky in the background, along with the stadium's outfield walls and other players out for batting practice . . . It had "WHITE SOX," my adopted team, written in big, deep purple letters across the bottom and a (gasp!) facsimile autograph. It was beautiful. I started collecting soon after, and have never looked back . . .

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by carney22

It was the 1967 Ken Berry card . . . I was 10 years old, just starting to follow baseball. The first series had just come out, so it was probably April. As all of us grade schoolers were milling around in front of the school, waiting for the doors to open, a friend of mine who'd been collecting for a couple of years and had a stack of '67s in his possession, showed me the Berry card. A posed swinging shot, big blue sky in the background, along with the stadium's outfield walls and other players out for batting practice . . . It had "WHITE SOX," my adopted team, written in big, deep purple letters across the bottom and a (gasp!) facsimile autograph. It was beautiful. I started collecting soon after, and have never looked back . . .

Great set to start with. Unfortunately for me, '67 was a decade before I arrived on this earth. So now I'm in my 40's and just now for the first time seriously starting to get into '67s...lol

[jason.1969]

As a kid, my favorite old-time baseball player was Ted Williams. When I was about 10, my mom's friend got me an early Beckett/Eckes price guide that had pictures of two Ted Williams cards--

• 1954 Bowman Ted Williams
• 1959 Fleer "How Ted Hit .400"

One was of course on a special page with pictures of the world's most expensive baseball cards, and I can't remember where I saw the other, but I was thrilled to see it was one even I would be able to afford if I ever came across it.

It took nearly ten years, but I finally picked up my first Ted at a card show in college. It was his absolutely glorious 1957 Topps card. I paid $20 for it, which back then was a small fortune to me, but I pretty much carried it around everywhere I went. If I recall correctly, I was also able to nab "How Ted Hit .400" at that same show for only $4.

Although I owned some HOFers from the 1950s and 60s even as a kid, it was these Teddy Ballgame cards that really captured my imagination and turned me into the hopeless addict I am today.

[vintagebaseballcardguy]

The 1984 Donruss Strawberry rookie got me started when I was a kid.

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[Volod]

Originally Posted by jchcollins

...what was the first vintage card that "did it" for you in terms of collecting to set the hook?

Running across my backyard one day when I was six years old, I noticed a pile of paper scraps scattered around a path that led to my neighbor's house. I had no idea what it was, but since I had very recently become interested in baseball, I could make out that it was some kind of baseball related cardboard thingee. Up in my bedroom, I put the jigsaw puzzle scraps back in readable order and found they amounted to this card and then managed to glue them together to form my first collectible. Of course, I then had to have the rest of them - all the cards in the universe - but could not manage that until many years later.

[Vintagevault13]

The 1973 Topps World Series recap cards are my earliest memories of cards and definitely got me interested in baseball. I was only 7 years old when they came out, but I vividly recall thinking the A’s colorful uniforms and white shoes were cool and different from every other team. As a result, I became an A’s fan and subsequently a Reggie Jackson fan as he became, arguably, the face of 1970’s baseball. Although I am a set collector, I do still have a graded Reggie collection and enjoy looking at his cards often. Growing up on North Georgia, I was the only A’s and Reggie fan around, but these were good times and they all started with those ‘73 World Series cards.


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[JollyElm]

Along those lines, I always think of Tony Perez stretching to reach first base in the Game 2 card...

s-l1600.jpg

[Vintagevault13]

Originally Posted by JollyElm

Along those lines, I always think of Tony Perez stretching to reach first base in the Game 2 card...



Attachment 326392

Yep. Good thing for the A’s there was no replay. I think he probably beat that throw.


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[ksfarmboy]

I’m guessing it was around 78 or 79. I was around 9-10 and a huge Brooks Robinson fan. The card shop I worked at had a 57 Robinson I fell in love with. The owner saved the card for me until I could come up with the cash. Took me all summer at the shop plus money saved keeping score at the bowling alley for tips during tournaments. Still have the card to this day. I need to get a pic of it.

[robkas68]

10 years old. Pittsburgh Pirates fan. Dad came home with a pack of cards each for my brother and myself. My pack contained a 1978 Topps John Candelaria ERA leader card and I was hooked. You notice this thread is full of rather mundane cards from childhood, not Mantle rookies.

[GasHouseGang]

For me it was the 1973 Clemente. I remember hearing on the news that he had been killed in a plane crash, and I guess it just became a special card in my collection.

[Peter_Spaeth]

As an adult, I started collecting again and was buying all the new stuff (this was early 90s), then I saw a 65T Rose and 61F Russell on Pete Lalos' table at a local show and underwent a cosmic shift.

[robkas68]

Again being a Pirates fan, but growing up in Illinois, getting a Clemente was pretty special for me too. I finally traded a small fortune (by 11 year old standards in 1979) for a 1972 Clemente in action card. I think part of the trade was a 1961 Willie Mays that my uncle gave me. Terrible "objective" trade, but 40 years later, I would do it again.

[Big Six]

‘79 TOPPS Munson pulled from a pack on the way to Sunday morning mass...haven’t looked back since!


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