You know you've been collecting a long time when you.....
 

have a picture of a well-balanced team you've forgotten about.

When……
 

When everyone was buying 100 card lots of Joe Charbaneau rookies as a wise investment

When you browse your collection and go, "oh, I forgot I had that."

Hahahaa, I was going to post exactly that. Just yesterday I found a few things that I forgot I had.

It happens to me more and more !

Great photo, but for the love of all things wonderful, you've got to find a way to remove all that detritus...umm...particulate!

You know you've been at this a long time when you go through some stuff and find a quite valuable, quite rare piece or three and completely forgot you owned them...and they're duplicates, triplicates or an even larger number and you realize that you have likely owned more of X than anyone in the history of man.

When you kiss your Babe Ruth RC goodnight more often than your wife.

1933 Goudey Bottomley comes to mind. I owned nine at one time.

When you cant remember if you bought that card you needed to finish the set and buy it twice.

...when you see the cards people are calling "vintage" these days.

When you regard anything less than fifty years old as "new stuff".

;)

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When the signed 33 Goudey in your collection was acquired by you, as a kid, in person.
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...when you have cards in your collection of George Davis and Vic Willis, and they were purchased at common player pricing.

Brian

Vintage
 

….When new collectors think vintage includes the 1980s 😀

Indeed

https://www.collectorfocus.com/image.../stengel-casey

He was 65 and I was 9, in person

Nice autograph Frank.

In 2001, when Gus Suhr was 95, he was signing autographs at Piratefest at the science center on the north side of Pittsburgh. Where I have put the 8x10 with his autograph I do not know, but it was a pleasure meeting him and his son who looked exactly like him. Also, to the left was the original Frank Thomas who about a week later gave me a call. Fantastic experience and I took with me my 1923-25 ZeeNuts of Paul Waner and 1925-26 ZeeNuts of Lloyd Waner to discuss Suhr's memories of his minor league and Pirate teammates. Attached is my favorite picture of Suhr. Hot day.

For me a lot of times it is just the opposite! I know I have something and can't find it because I have so much stuff!!

^^^^^^
You know Fred's been collecting a long time when you buy something on eBay and it randomly comes with a 52 year old credit slip issued to him! :D I got a big kick out of receiving this purely by chance, seeing as the transaction in question had nothing to do with Fred!

You know you've been collecting a minute when the cards u collected as a child(for me 1977-81) are now older(48-44 yrs old) that 33' goudeys were when I collected as a child!!!

I just can't grapple with the fact that 77-81 topps cards are "old!"

HEY!! I never used that credit from Jack. Guess he did not have an autograph I wanted at the time. You owe me $2.52 :)

I should mail it back to you and you can try to use it now! Jack hasn't seemed to issue a catalog in a couple years, though. I think he may be done. The last catalog I received was a carbon copy of the previous one, with the date of issue being the only difference. Clearly a huge error. Perhaps that might have discouraged him.

Yup, except I acquired them as a young man :eek: .

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...e/Herman_1.jpg
https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...ehringer_1.jpg

And let me add my own twist:

when the signer was the show 'door buster', would actually speak with you, and would even shake hands with you:

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...ze/Appling.jpg
https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi.../9Boudreau.jpg

I would have had plenty of Goudeys and other great cards stretching back to T207 signed by players I knew, but living in Canada pre-internet, this sort of material simply didn't make itself available. How incredible it would have been to have personally obtained a signed T card. I could have made it happen if only the cards were available. Back then, they were all cheap, too, so even I could have afforded them as a perpetually broke kid and high school student.

You know you have been collecting a longtime when you know who that guy, Archive, is, and him being associated with one of the funniest threads ever on the forum.
.

Cool, thanks Frank

A letter from "their" attorney would be considered forum memorabilia.

See I'm having it in reverse. Sorting through totes for hours going "I know I have X item!"

I do like the 1980 Topps set a lot tho.........

If 1980 not currently vintage - it will be soon

... collecting a long time when ...

me and my buddies used to be disappointed when we pulled rookie cards (we all wanted the the big stars), because back then nobody cared about them being rookie cards.

...when you can remember when plastic sheets for cards first came along and were hailed as a huge step forward for collecting! That was circa 1974, and at fifteen cents each, they were pretty expensive!:eek:

and full of chemicals that turned out to be bad for your cards.

Dang even I'm not this old! I'm assuming they were petroleum based and just generally gross?

And you loaded the cards through the openings on the side.

Side loaders! I had completely forgotten!

That just triggered a memory of what I guess you could say was the precursor to the Card Saver. They were of the same semi rigidity, but loaded from the sides (with no flap/tab).

And the cards matriculated out of their pockets so the right borders stuck out of the pockets. It was a great basic idea, but poorly engineered.