Why the **** did you start collecting vintage memorabilia????

[Forever Young]

Originally Posted by Runscott

Great post, Ben.

I got fired up by a 1909 Pirates supplement that had hung in Honus Wagner's office at Forbes Field. It hung on my wall for a far shorter time and then I regrettably sold it. Wish I had not. The thrill was in having something that actually had a personal tie to the ballplayer, unlike cards which the players never actually touched. I finally picked up a piece to replace the supplement - this 12" x 16" 1917 photo of Wagner that hung in his house:

You know how much I love this piece.. it is fantastic and I think you make up for "yor loss" very very well. I am glad it didn't discourage you otherwise we wouldn'y have teh pleasure of you posting on here ruffling feathers.. HAHA!

[Runscott]

Ben, it's funny. I sold that piece for about what I paid for it, and the buyer was having a lot of second thoughts. I think when he re-sold it and doubled (or tripled) his money, he felt a little better.

[Runscott]

Here's the other piece I should have kept, and a check as well:

[BigJJ]

I added a horse pic above, representing about one tenth of the horses here.

[gnaz01]

Great thread!! Having dealt with just about everyone in this thread, I, too, feel privileged to have read this and to "know" all of you, sort of!

[drcy]

I collected a variety of sport and non-sport memorabilia as a kid, including Topps baseball cards. I consider trading cards a kind of memorabilia. As a 7 or year old I collected newspaper, political buttons, figures, TTM autographs-- and still have some of it in a closet box. I'm not a hoarder in the least, and family members sometimes comment only how little I have in my home.

As I kid I also was interested in art and music, played piano and clarinet, composed 'classical' music for piano, painted, had my own cartoon strip and was in planning stages of my own version of Disney land. In college I had a couple of political cartoons published in a newspaper and a poem published in an anthology-- neither areas held my interest, so that was the beginning and end those. So the who general art and collecting fits together.

[mr2686]

1972 6th grade (yeah I'm old Ben) my buddies and I used to get our Dodger programs signed at the games. Always great fun to gain status based on who we got. I was the talk of the lunch room for a couple of weeks when I got Cesar Cedeno (well, until he killed a prostitute, but that's another story), and also the butt of jokes when I got Alston and Gilliam (both currently matted and framed on my wall...so take that you know-it-all 6th graders).
After that, High School and girls happened and I didn't seriously start collecting until July 31,1988 when a buddy from work talked me in to going to the mall to see a card show with Duke Snider as the guest. I noticed my buddy had a HOF book which I really liked so I ran down to the book store and found a hardback copy and had Duke sign it along with a photo and ball. That started a long road of getting HOF sigs and going to shows.
Here's the picture I got that day, and the reason I remember that date so well.

[David Atkatz]

In the summer of 1961 I was a 10-year-old Bronx boy, and, like most everyone else in New York, I became totally caught up in the Mantle/Maris home run chase. An avid reader, I read everything I could find about Mantle--"The Mickey Mantle Story," for example--and that led me to start reading about that Ruth guy he was chasing, and that led to Gehrig and the 1920s teams. I was totally enthralled.
I'd always had the autograph bug--I began to write to Yankees at the Stadium, and at their homes in the off-season. When I became a bit older, I'd go to the Stadium with friends and hang out at the players' entrance and get my yearbooks signed. My Bronx neighborhood got a little bigger when I entered Junior High School, and met kids who came from neighboring Elementary schools. One of those kids was Harvey Meiselman, and he showed me his baseball autograph collection. He had check cuts of J. Franklin Baker (Man, did his handwriting look old!) and checks of Ty Cobb, and Mickey Cochrane, and Eppa Rixey, and... and Babe Ruth! Amazing! I learned from him about the "serious" collectors, who tracked down and wrote to old players, and players' families, and I began to do the same. Soon I had Cobb checks, and Cochrane checks, etc., but I was too late for a Ruth check. So I traded a collector in Tennessee ten Cobb checks for a Ruth check. (There were mimeographed newsletters that we all subscribed to, which, among other things, listed collectors' names and addresses. Everything was done through the mail.) I was in heaven when it came. (May seem like a bad deal now, but I got those Cobb checks for free, so, what the hell.)
I began tracking down people who knew the old Yankees, and sometimes I was spectacularly successful. I obtained a signed and inscribed Gehrig photo, for example, from the daughter of a Gehrig family friend. And all of this--except for postage, envelopes, and index cards--was free! (Perfect for a poor boy from the Bronx.)
When I went away to college in 1968 I put it all away. I had other things on my mind. Sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. And, oh yeah, becoming a physicist. But in 1990, having settled down (I was a physicist, and a husband, and a dad) I took it all up again.

[Forever Young]

Originally Posted by mr2686

1972 6th grade (yeah I'm old Ben) my buddies and I used to get our Dodger programs signed at the games. Always great fun to gain status based on who we got. I was the talk of the lunch room for a couple of weeks when I got Cesar Cedeno (well, until he killed a prostitute, but that's another story), and also the butt of jokes when I got Alston and Gilliam (both currently matted and framed on my wall...so take that you know-it-all 6th graders).
After that, High School and girls happened and I didn't seriously start collecting until July 31,1988 when a buddy from work talked me in to going to the mall to see a card show with Duke Snider as the guest. I noticed my buddy had a HOF book which I really liked so I ran down to the book store and found a hardback copy and had Duke sign it along with a photo and ball. That started a long road of getting HOF sigs and going to shows.
Here's the picture I got that day, and the reason I remember that date so well.

I was able to add to my childhood memories with a couple items. I love when I can add things that are "priceless" for 3 figures.

These are the original painting/ pencil art used for the numbered lithographs you see.