I collected my first card 58 years ago. They were 1953 Red Man Chewing Tobacco cards that the man next door gave me. I kept them in a King Edward
cigar box. Yes I still have them. Except for some 1954 Bowman football cards
with players using white footballs the 56 Topps baseball are the first cards I actually purchased. My favorite cards which I saved in my box were Ed Roebuck,Clem Labine, Elmer Valo,Hank Sauer (on the back it said he used the heaviest bat in the majors 40 ounces and a card #79 of a guy who struck out 14 batters in his 2nd major league start, (the cartoon showed the batters with holes in their bats). He had a funny name Koufax.
In 1957 my favorite card was #91 Mack Burk a Phillies catcher. He's the only guy I've ever seen that had a batting average of 1.000 for the previous year. I saw one on E-Bay this week graded 8.5 with an asking price of $400. Two other 57 favorites were collected because of their cool names, Rocco Colavito and Gino Cimoli.I can remember saying many times in my youth when something exciting happened "Holy Cimoli Gino" The not so cool thing I did in 1957 way cut the top right corner off of my 57 cards so my older brother would not claim them. I finally complete a nice EX-M to Nr Mint set a few years ago but I have those with the corners cut off in the back of the binder.
In 1958 I saved Von McDaniel cards because I thought he was going be be the greatest Cardinal pitcher ever and a cool looking card with a gold background of a Cleveland outfielder named named Roger Maris. I sent one of his cards I saved to Beckett for grading several years back and it got a 7.0 grade. Finally in 58 Topps had a card of Stan the Man and I saved every one I got.
I also collected a large number of another cool named player Rip Repulski.
The one "Because it's so cool" card that I have not added to my collection yet is the 1952 card #31 of Gus Zernial with 6 baseballs nailed to his bat.
My generation knew nothing or thought nothing about the value of cards. We just collected our favorite team, player or cards with cool fronts or backs.
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