Just got the collecting bug when I was a boy and never changed.
My first big year for baseball and football cards was 1971. In 1972 I started ripping packs of basketball cards. 1975 is the year I started buying hockey cards. I quickly moved on to the chase for older cards. My uncle gave me
The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book (Little Brown, 1973; Brendan C. Boyd & Fred C. Harris) and I read it until it fell apart. It was my first real exposure to the art of golden age Topps and Bowman and those cards were now on my radar. I found
The Complete Book of Baseball Cards: For the Collector, Flipper and Fan [1975; Steve Clark] and was hooked on T cards.
My first card show was Thanksgiving 1976 at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York, sponsored by the ASCCA. I’d become a Willie Mays fan when he returned to New York in 1973, so my first great project was to collect an example of every Mays card. I finished the Topps run at that show with the 1952 and 1953 cards. My mother nearly ripped my father’s head off when she found out that he loaned me $45 to buy them.
We moved to L.A. in 1977 and the only good thing about the move as far as I was concerned was that I fell ass-backwards into perhaps the richest collecting environment around. I quickly became involved with the West Coast Card Club, which held monthly meetings in a church basement and later a social hall in Northridge. I also lucked into several collections that were given to me by family and friends.
My collection at that point was pretty much about the four sports, Topps, Bowman and a smattering of T cards. It was during that time that I focused on a few Western regional issues that have ever since fascinated me: Zeenuts, Bell Brand, 1968 Atlantic Oil.
I put away the cards after the 1980 baseball season and really did not return to them for nearly a decade, when I decided to attend a massive show at the Moscone Center in San Francisco as a welcome diversion from law school. Unfortunately, in a moment of existential panic in 1987 I sold off a big chunk of my collection to raise some cash before law school. I really did not buy much at the Moscone show but I was re-energized to start collecting. I then attended shows throughout the Bay area if I could get to them on BART or other public transit.
When I returned to L.A. after graduating and got a job and started having disposable income, I really got back into collecting, aided by the abundance of shows. It was a rare weekend that I did not have at least a show a day to attend and set up at.
My collecting changed immeasurably around that time owing to two meetings at shows. At one, a fellow had 1948 Leaf cards of Barney Ross and Benny Leonard. I sort of knew that boxing cards existed but seeing these, I was instantly smitten. I bought the pair for a few bucks and took them home to show my father. He looked at the Ross card and said the words that changed my collection forever: “I think my cousin Ray fought him.”
You could have knocked me over with a puff of air. “Dad,” I said, “if you have a cousin who was a boxer that means I have cousin who was a boxer.” He then told me about Ray Miller for the first time and I realized that I was related to a world-class athlete.
The other collection-changer for me was meeting an old-time collector named John Spalding. Some of you might have known John. He was a collector from the Bay area with a strong background in PCL history and sports. But that isn’t what got me interested. It was his album of prewar Exhibit cards. I knew of and had collected the postwar cards from time to time, but I’d never seen anything like these. Over the course of several shows I purchased giant stacks of them from John (many of which I still have), while making a general pest of myself picking his brain about the issue and others as well.
As far as specifics, as I age I find myself most drawn to the cards issued when I was a kid and the older ones that I had when i was a kid. I have projects too. My collecting looks like this:
--A world boxing type card collection represented whenever possible by favorite fighters: Benny Leonard, Joe Louis, Jim Jeffries, Manny Pacquiao. I'm approaching 1,500 unique issues
--Some boxing memorabilia, mostly premiums.
--A boxing HOF collection represented by career-contemporary cards whenever possible, which I use as the backbone of the type card collection (e.g., I have a type card from the 1931 Bigott set from Venezuela that happens to be HOFer Pedro Montanez), premiums or other memorabilia when no cards exist.
--Prewar baseball cards and ephemera: i especially like oddball issues that cost a fraction of the mainstream cards.
--Exhibit cards and related arcade issues
--Postwar mainstream collections of baseball basketball, football and hockey focusing on the 1970s and raw: gimme a 5000 count box of 1972 Topps anything and I enthralled for hours
--Autographs and cards of musicians and comedians
RIP EVH