Thanks for the thread. Strange, isn't it that most of us seem to recall that first set from an emotional attachment that still anchors us to the hobby. I am still working on the first set that I tried to complete. In the fall of 1951, my father was in a weekend bowling league and grudgingly took my brother and me along with him to an ancient, dilapidated alley on the other side of town. He would hand each of us a crumpled bill and tell us to get lost and stay out of trouble for the next three hours or so. Luckily for us tykes, there happened to be a small mom & pop store next to the bowling emporium, so we did not have to spend the night sitting in a smoke-filled barroom with numerous adult imbibers. Instead, we usually spent the time sitting on the floor of the store reading comic books. The proprietor of the store had two large tables near the front window that he filled with items he was trying to unload. On one of the tables, my brother discovered hundreds of packs of 1951 Topps cards that were going for about a penny each. At the age of seven, the only thing I knew about baseball was that my old man had played the game semi-professionally in his youth. That was enough to motivate me to use most of my remaining dollar bill on as many waxpacks as I could stuff into my pockets that night. Opening the packs, I was intrigued by the disembodied head shots of the players and the odd extra functionality of the cards in a simple ballgame. Most of the players seemed pretty obscure, then and now, and, of course, the Redbacks and Bluebacks have long been viewed by collectors as the least attractive and most feckless product Topps ever issued. But, the sets really hit my infantile amygdala hard, as well the brittle, evil tasting caramel candy that came with them. The packs also contained a bonus card - an elongated team card, or a full-size image of a Hall of Famer, or a more well-known current player - which was protected from the dangerous candy by the two-card panel of Red or Bluebacks. Naturally, no matter how many waxpacks I glommed off the table, there was no chance of completing a full set at that time, but I never lost the desire to do so. In the 1980's, my second childhood, I suppose, I managed to complete four of the five 1951 Topps sets, but for some reason, could only acquire eight of the eleven subjects in the fifth set. Still working on that.
