[jefferyepayne]

Hi all,

I too have been posting a few messages during the past week before discovering this forum today. Sorry for not introducing myself earlier!

I'm a 48 year old sports nut from Virginia. I grew up collecting football and baseball cards in the mid to late 70's and got hook on it. A friend and I used to go to a few local flea markets and pick up older cards of stars a few times per year but mostly I just bought packs with my allowance and traded my doubles for cards I didn't have. I once picked up a 1950 Bowman Roy Campanella at a flea market for 5 cents in a box of old cards. That was my greatest find as a kid!

The smartest thing I ever did was take my cards to college with me, otherwise I'm sure my mom would have thrown them all out. I've carried them with me all of my life (all 20,000 of them). I got back into collecting about 5 years ago when my boys got old enough to start playing sports and I would drag my cards out to show them vintage players and educate them about the history of baseball and football. We started going to flea markets for fun and I would pick out "old" cards for them that were mostly early/mid 80's but that didn't last long as they wanted older cards so we started going to local shows and card shops. At this point all they collect is vintage cards and people get a kick out of them at shows as they know a lot about vintage cards for their age. My youngest used to approach dealers a few years ago when he was 8 and ask to see their t206 cards ... it was funny to see the dealers eyes light up as I'm sure they were thinking he was going to ask about Tom Brady or Albert Pujols and appreciated someone so young who was into vintage cards.

As football was my first love as a kid, I've been working to complete my vintage football card collection first. Of course the word "complete" will make everybody on this forum laugh as there is no such thing as completing a collection ... there always more to obtain. I created my own definition of complete so I had something to work toward and now am close enough to finishing that effort that I'm spending more and more time on my baseball collection. I'm still struggling with a definition of complete in the baseball world since it is so vast so am focused on expanding out from the 70's while concentrating a bit on the t206 and 1933 Goudey sets as I like them.

I happy I found Net54baseball and look forward to meeting you all at an upcoming card show. Me and my boys will definitely be at the national card show in Baltimore this year and hope that this group is planning to convene somewhere during the show so we can all put faces with names.

jeff