OT What got you started?

[jdl7860]

Probably the wrong forum for this, not pre-war and all but I started thinking about what got me started in this hobby and why I continue to enjoy it.I really enjoy customs, it's just fun to mix my card hobby with my desire to design and build or create. Anyway, they are just fun. I have 2 sons (12 and 5) and its fun to be able to put together something that they are thinking about and really cheap compared to other things in this hobby. For instance, my 12 year old loves Ole Miss Football and we think up and create different designs for that. One night this week we put together this triple book design using a National Treasures design and some game used pieces that he got last year. The next day I came in from work and my wife said my 5 year old had been working all day on his customs! He even quietly cut up a jersey of his just like he had seen us do. I got into card collecting because of my dad and we still enjoy it together 30 years later, hopefully I'll be able to enjoy the hobby with my sons 30 years from now. Anyway, why did you start to collect or what keeps you in the hobby?

[frankbmd]

I think we have found the winner of the first

PANINI KINDERGARTEN SCHOLARSHIP

[Leon]

Nice story from the OP. For me, I was bored and walking around a small mall with my wife about 17 yrs ago. There was an (approximately) 20 table card show in the mall. I saw 50s rookies, bicycle spoke cards, for about $10-$20...and that got me started.

[brob28]

Great story, love that you are sharing with your boys. I have a 3 and 8 year old and have started giving them cards - hopefully the seed takes! As for me it is pretty simple, as a 5 year old I loved baseball - cards were always at the checkout line at the grocery store when I was with Mom (who is a baseball fan), she started getting me packs and I never stopped.

[drmondobueno]

And at the end of the visit, the dentist opened a desk drawer. I was expecting a sucker, just like the Marquis de Sade doctor I had seen earlier that day. What I saw instead were clear cello packs of baseball cards. So I picked one and spent the entire trip home trying to get the pack open!!

To this day I have no idea what happened to those cards but I looked for baseball cards every time I went to the store, the doctor, the hardware store. I still do.

[packs]

My family has had a Sunday home game Yankees ticket plan for as long as I can remember. When I was little my dad used to take me and my brother to the games 4 or 5 hours before they started so we could watch the players come in and try to get some autographs.

Sometime in the early 90s he took me to a Gloria Rothstein show to get some autographs from a couple of Yankees who were doing appearances. That was the first time I ever saw pre-war cards and I bought a Miller Huggins T206 Hands at Mouth and a Matty White Cap. I think I spent $100 total that I had left over from my Communion. Hooked ever since.

[sando69]

it was late in the fall of 1959 & i had been recently indoctorinated to the world of sports by virtue of the hometown dodgers' world series victory over the chicago white sox. one afternoon, as i was walking out of wally's pharmacy on fair oaks ave in altadena, ca, i noticed a small picture card resting, scuffed & beaten near the curb... it was a "trading" card of paul hornung. and altho i had NO idea whatsoever who this guy or his team was (what is a green bay packer?), i captured the card, the card captured my heart, and a lifelong bond was immediately forged!
before long i had discovered the la rams & was purchasing cello packs of 1959 topps football as often as my 10 cent weekly allowance permitted... which was once a week!

but, it was the following spring that i discovered my lasting love & can remember buying one 1960 topps baseball wax pack for a nickel at wally's then walking up fair oaks to the corner store/soda fountain & spending the other nickel from my allowance on a wax pack of 1960 fleer all-time greats... 12 cards that entertained & educated me for the week while bridging the historical gap between babe ruth, ty cobb & cy young and willie mays, mickey mantle & sandy koufax! yes, those certainly WERE the days!

btw... i still have that '59 topps hornung & altho it would only grade a psa 1, it is safely stored in a card saver & treated like a treasure... as it's sentimental value to me belies it's collectible value (or lack thereof) to anyone else.
but, isn't that what collecting is really about?

[markf31]

Toy R Us around 1987, I would have been 7. I had always had a shoe box full of baseball cards. My Mom would buy packs for my brother and I occasionally as a reward for doing chores and more often for not fighting with each other. We'd tear open the packs looking for Pirates but inevitably they all just got tossed into the shoebox.

Toy R Us is where I discovered my first price guide and implored my parents to let me buy it. They did, and I spent the following 3 hours at home looking up the value of each and every card I had in that shoe box. The gem that I found that day in my shoebox, a 1985 Topps Don Mattingly worth around $12 I think. I had zero concept of the relationship between condition and value, I mean the guide told me it was worth $12!

[williamcohon]

I collected cards when I was young (in the late fifties/early sixties), and stopped when I discovered girls. In the late eighties, my son, then in first grade, asked to go to card shows. While he looked for current stars, I reacquired my long lost collection. Then I tripped over the good stuff - cards two or three generations older than I.

My son lost interest after a year or two. But mine has grown, along with my collection. I love the Obaks, because they include Northwest players. And I can't help buying any old cards picturing Jewish players.

Happy collecting!

[Al C.risafulli]

Summer of 1977 I was a budding Yankee fan, and my mother bought me a pack of baseball cards. There was a Rod Carew in the pack, and I thought Carew was the greatest player in the game. The card was gorgeous, and I couldn't believe how lucky I was to get the best player in my first pack. I was hooked pretty quickly.

My grandfather was a baseball fanatic who grew up during the Depression, and he would tell me stories about the players he watched (Hubbell and Gehrig were his favorites), and about the players his father had told him about (Waddell was his favorite). Eventually I started buying cards of prewar players and sitting with him, and he'd tell me stories about the players. He passed in 1987, but left me with an unbelievable amount of respect for the history of the game, the current game, and by extension, the hobby.

Best hobby ever. Best game ever.

-Al

[itjclarke]

Originally Posted by Al C.risafulli

Best hobby ever. Best game ever.

Couldn't agree more with that statement. For me it was the lunch truck at my dad's office. He'd buy me a single pack, maybe once a week, to help occupy me while spending the day at his office. I was 3 at the time and just never stopped. Though the stakes have been upped and the cards have gotten fancier, it's still driven fundamentally by my love of the game and its history, and memories like that.

[JasonL]

She came home from the grocery store and gave me a 1984 Fleer baseball cello pack that she bought for me on an impulse...she had no idea of the impending disaster

[HRBAKER]

I was spending the weekend with my Grandmother.
We went to the IGA for some milk and Moon Pies and I saw the packs of 1966 Topps. I asked for one and she bought me one.

The rest of the summer I scoured around picking up empty pop bottles which I returned to the store for the deposit (wonder how many board members have no idea what I am talking about) and bought more 1966 Topps packs.

From there it has been 47 years.