What Are Your Earliest Card Show Memories?

[DixieBaseball]

Late 70's/Early 80's at the Nashville Flea Market at the old Nashville Fairgrounds (Nashville Speedway). I looked forward to every 4th weekend of the month, to go hunt for cards, memorabilia, etc. - Dealers were set up and scattered about the fairgrounds in pavilions as well as outside. You had your regulars, but there was always some new dealers each month and material was fresh. I remember purchasing a crisp Ryan rookie for $40, Carlton rookie for $22, 60' Mantle in stellar condition for $20 and so on... The memories are vivid, and I wish I could go back in time to experience again. That's where collecting "vintage" started for me as a kid. Spent many years at the Ole Nashville Flea Market (It was a large scale event with thousands of various vendors...) - I would save my money each month and go buy 50's, 60's, and 70's cards for years. Just a lot of fun, and especially sharing those hunt's with many friends and family.

Good times...

[ullmandds]

i don't remember exactly where or when my 1st card show was but i'd guess early 80's. I remember Tom Seaver rookies at $7...aaron rookies at $25...babe ruth goudey $100 nmt...all way over my budget!

I purchased my 1st t206 a beat up matty white cap for $2...and a fake mayo lave cross!

[trdcrdkid]

My first card show was in early 1980, when I was 14 years old, even though I had been going to card shops since 1976, soon after I started collecting. This was in the Chicago area, and I'm not sure exactly where that first show I attended was, except that I'm pretty sure it was in the northern suburbs somewhere. I mainly remember how big and overwhelming (in a good way) it seemed. There was a rumor going around the show that somebody had ripped an unopened pack of 1952 Topps high numbers and gotten a Mantle, which was just starting to become the hot card it became. I didn't have much money to spend, and the only thing I specifically remember buying at that show was a Saran-wrapped lot of 1956 Topps with Koufax showing on the top -- and then it turned out there was another Koufax inside. I'm not sure what I paid for that lot, but it can't have been more than $20. Eleven years later, I traded that second 1956 Koufax to a dealer for some other 1950s cards.

On October 11, 1980, my family was out on a Saturday afternoon and we stopped at a little card show being held at a mall, where I remember seeing a bunch of 1938 Goudeys at one table and wishing I could afford them. I remember the date because it was the same day as game 4 of the 1980 National League Championship Series between the Phillies and the Astros, a crazy game that I missed part of because we were out at this show.

In 1981 and 1982 (and maybe in 1980 and/or 1983) I went to several card shows at the Hillside Holiday Inn (a suburb of Chicago about halfway between Glen Ellyn, where I grew up, and downtown Chicago). It was at one of those shows in 1981 that I paid $10 for my first Old Judge, which I still have. The Hillside Holiday Inn is just off the Kennedy Expressway, the easiest way to get between the western suburbs and downtown Chicago, and whenever I go past there I think of those card shows from the early 80s.