Hi everyone. First post here on this forum although I've been reading a lot of threads over the last year since the covid shutdown resulted in a lot of free time and re-started my avid childhood hobby! (thanks to all who have posted great threads to help me with my collection) Anyway, I thought this would be a good thread to use for my first post.
My entire childhood centered around baseball and as a kid living in the middle of nowhere at 9,000 ft in the Colorado mountains there wasnt a lot of baseball to be played so I collected cards, especially loved 30s/40s era players. I can remember spending an entire summer getting paid $0.25 for each tent worm branch I removed from properties in preparation for a trip to the Denver lowlands to buy my prized 1940 Play Ball Mel Ott (terrible condition in retrospect!).
Skipping over a long story, in 1995 the Texas Rangers drafted me and by Spring 1996 there were photographers at Spring Training scheduling photo sessions of prospects. I thought well there's no way a 5th round pick is going to end up on a card but it was super cool that a group of industry reps from my childhood hobby were interested enough to take photos so I of course agreed.
Sitting at home that winter in 1995 and focused more on my workouts than my card collection, I opened up the mailbox and in it was a package from Bowman. I thought it strange since I hadnt ordered any cards or boxes recently. Inside was a letter from Bowman, a (small) check from Bowman, and a lot of 100 cards... with me on them! 1996 Bowman #150. Floored.
More to the specifics of this thread on memories of opening packs of cards as a kid... So after seeing that Bowman had made a card of me, I immediately got online (think AOL dialup) and ordered a box of 1996 Bowman. What are the chances, I thought, that I would actually get one of my own cards in a pack in that box? So I got back online and ordered another box just in case. They happened to arrive the same day and I sat down at my kitchen table to unsealed the first box. As I had done starting in 1985, I picked the top pack in the upper right corner of the box out of superstition. Unbelievably my card was in the very first pack I opened! Given that collecting cards was such a huge focus of my childhood, that moment of tearing open a pack and seeing my card was without question one of the top 10 memories of my life.
Here's the card (now completely worthless, haha!)
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