Thank You To All Vets !

[George]

Thank you. I was in the Army from 1961 through 1964. I went to basic training in Fort Dix, New Jersey, followed by a year of electronics school in Fort Monmouth, also in New Jersey. After that I spent two years in France, maintaining crypto equipment. This experience gave me my start in electronics. I used the G.I. Bill to go to college, and got my degrees and became an engineer, which has been my profession since that time.

When I was at Fort Dix, I once got a weekend pass and went to see the sights of nearby Philadelphia. I was walking around, and happened to pass a small antique store, and I went in, for no particular reason, since I was certainly not a collector of antiques. I found a small box containing probably 500 T206 cards, although I did not know what they were at that time. I was, however, a serious baseball fan, and I had read "My Greatest Day in Baseball," by John Carmichael, which contained stories about many of the players shown on the cards, and I was therefore familiar with many of them, particularly the very good ones. The owner of the store wanted one dollar apiece for the cards, which was a huge amount of money for me, since my salary at the time was $78 per month. I eventually talked him into giving me about 40 cards for my $30, which was all I could afford, leaving me with about $2 for my bus ticket back to Fort Dix. I had no idea that baseball cards had monetary value, or even that people collected them, but I liked these as color pictures of old-time players. Fortunately, I took the time to select many of the best cards, based on both the player and the condition. I got all of the cards of Mathewson, Cobb, Eddie Collins, Tinker, Evers and Chance, and a few others. Unfortunately, no Wagner or Plank, although I knew who they were, and probably would have taken them, if they had been in good condition.

I kept the cards, and eventually got married and left the Army. (My wife, Fran, and I will be celebrating our 54th anniversary this year.) I mounted the cards in a frame, and hung them on the wall. Around 1980 I discovered the first Beckett catalog, and was amazed to learn that the small pictures were called "T206 cards," and that they were actually collected by people, and were worth significant money......much more that the $1 apiece that I had paid for them. At the same time, I also learned that the bubble gum cards that I had collected from 1951 through 1964 were also collectibles, and I still had all of them.

I guess you might say that I became a "collector" in 1980, when I discovered that this hobby even existed. And, thanks to the U.S Army, I had a very nice start.