What Was The Hobby Like Back In The Day?

[jefferyepayne]

This is an awesome thread. When I opened it, I was expecting to see lots of stories about collecting in the 50s and 60s but after reading a few posts I realized I'm one of those old guys you are referring to!

I started collecting football cards in 1972. Got serious about opening packs in 1973 and had complete or near complete sets for Topps football from 1970 to 1983 before life got in the way (college, grad school, work, marriage, kids). Also collected baseball but started doing that a bit later than football ... started around 1976. I had most of the Topps baseball cards from the 70s as well by the time I went to college.

Mostly I put each year's sets together by opening packs and trading doubles with friends. I used my allowance pretty much year around to buy packs or boxes, sometimes getting lucky when a store would want to dump bunches of them after the season(s) was over. Always hit the local Ben Franklin after baseball and football season ended to clean them out of their inventory they didn't want any more and were willing to dump ;-) I also used to try and convince older kids to sell me their cards once they lost interest and was able to pick up some late 60s / early 70s collections this way.

A buddy and I discovered a card shop in the nearest city, three flea markets where dealers would sometimes set up, and two antique stores that would occasionally have cards. Through these avenues, we picked up older cards (mostly 50s and 60s) although I had a t206 and a '20s baseball strip card as well. But cards weren't expensive like they are today so picked up lots of stars for a song including a '55 Ted Williams, '58 Hank Aaron, '62 Mickey Mantle, '64 Rose to name a few. Always was looking for star players I could add and tried to get a type card for each older set I knew about.

When the Beckett books began being published my buddy and I were in heaven as we loved looking up our cards to see how much they were worth ... never mind some of them were complete beaters but we didn't care. Also loved to learn about all of the sets we didn't even know existed. Cracker Jacks, Goudey, National Chicle, etc. were all sets we had never seen a card for before. I really wish I had paid attention to the ads in the Beckett books as when I go back and look at them today (I still have the first baseball and first football price guides) I realize that we should have been thinking outside of our local area and reaching out to dealers, participating in mail-in auctions, maybe getting our parents to drive us to a show or card collecting group but none of that crossed our minds at the time. We were just too busy playing sports, chewing bubble gum, trading cards, and just being kids at that point.

Unfortunately I took a 25 year hiatus from the hobby but lugged my 15,000+ cards with me pretty much everywhere I went during that timeframe. Oh, the deals I could have had during that timeframe if I had been collecting as I had the cash to buy lots of stuff once I started working and prices were still very cheap through the '80s for vintage cards.

My kids got me back into collecting when they started playing sports and I've been doing it ever since ... more than a decade at this point and it is great to be back in the hobby. I focus pretty much exclusively on all things football at this point but always appreciate reading the Net54 threads on baseball too as, yes, I am still lugging around my childhood baseball sets. Such is the life of a collector.

jeff