What Was The Hobby Like Back In The Day?

[skil55voy]

I grew up in Detroit. I started collecting in 1962. I went into the Army in 1978 and was stationed in Maryland. I met Denny Eckes. He had a shop in Laurel, Maryland. He helped Beckett make his first price guide and he also published the first T206 checklist book. (For the author, he didn't write) There were a few shows around the area the, Nick Schoff and Bill Scott had a "store" near DC that was great. When I got out in 1981 and returned to Detroit it was booming with shows. Lloyd and Carol Toerpe put on a "National" in Plymouth with dealers from all over. John Stomen did shows and was producer of Sports Collectors Digest. He was a great guy and would trade cards. Jim Hawkins produced some great shows with autograph guests. A few of the dealers got together and managed to get most of the 1968 Tigers to come around for a whole year to sign. I used to trade cards with Kevin Savage of Ohio. The atmosphere back then was great. Most of the dealers knew what I was collecting and would look for things I needed. They were always willing to cut the price. There were lotsa shops to go to. Ebay changed it all. In some ways it's good and in some ways bad. The Nationals back then were great. There were NO corporate booths. It was great meeting people for the first time from other parts of the country. (Dr. Mcavoy, Joe Colabella, etc.) It's too money driven now and I detest the "grading" of cards. No standards, just someone's opinion.

[toppcat]

I've been reading through several hundred old hobby pubs, mostly from the 60's and 70's, during quarantine and can say that the 70's were really a time of convention growth, which went from semi-informal gatherings in homes at the beginning of the decade to taverns, motels then hotels by the middle of the decade and of course the first National in 1980. Mainstream media coverage started kicking in around 1974 as well.

I came onto the scene in 1981 and there were card shops springing up everywhere and almost countless shows by 1983-84 at the latest. In terms of being able to buy awesome stuff at great prices though, by about 1971-72 it was getting harder and harder to do so. Really tough times were still available and sold but they were already drying up. And superstar pricing began around 1970 as well, although it took a couple years to catch on. But there was still a lot to buy at fairly good prices as early Willow Grove attendees will no doubt attest. And no one knew what full checklists were for many sets still in the 70's, which was a constant theme in the hobby pubs and info was sent around to fill things in. Richard Egan in particular was a catalyst for this.

[bnorth]

Back in the day for me was mid/late 80s. I didn't get into cards till my late teens. As a player collector(Wade Boggs) it was hard to find the oddball cards. Actually all cards in general were rare at the time. I lived in a small town with one card shop. We did have card shows about every other weekend with around 5/6 dealers.

I was lucky and my mom worked at a place that gave 20% off to employees. Her boss would let her sell my little brother and me cards(wax packs, boxes, cases) at cost. Then we got the extra 20% off so we got cards at 20% under dealer cost. Man did we rip a ton of wax in the late 80s/early 90s.

Then ebay hit the scene. The cards that sometimes took months to find could now be found in days. A lot of the error, variation, regional issues, and test issues were still rare. It wasn't till early 2000s that pretty much everything was super easy to find. I would find anybody selling rare(at the time) stuff and buy out their entire inventory to resell myself with out any competition.

[DHogan]

I was in 3rd grade in 1967, in catholic school. I wasn't really a collector. More of hoarder. We used to play card flipping games in the play ground at recess. If the nuns saw us with cards, they would take them. One kid use to rat me out even when I didn't have my cards out. He would tell the nuns Dave has baseball cards in his pockets. The nuns would go thru my pockets, take the cards. And give me detention. The nuns must have retired rich on all the cards they took from us.

[lumberjack]

Someone mentioned Dr. Beckett's first price guide. He would set up at shows in Michigan after the guide came out. I once heard him tell a collector that he was afraid that the guide would become not so much a guide, but a bottom line for what a card would sell for and this is what happened. Nobody, nobody would sell a card for less than what his guide listed as its price.
lumberjack

[toppcat]

First Beckett Price Survey Results (1977):

[Rhotchkiss]

Price guides were great. I used to study them for hours and I memorized the prices of all the cards in all the conditions.

Remember checklists? Do they even make those anymore?

[Exhibitman]

Originally Posted by Rhotchkiss

Price guides were great. I used to study them for hours and I memorized the prices of all the cards in all the conditions.

Remember checklists? Do they even make those anymore?

Sure. I checklist the sets I cover in my books. If you want modern checklists try baseballcardpedia.com. There are also quite a few checklists available readily online.

[Mark17]

Originally Posted by toppcat

First Beckett Price Survey Results (1977):

I love the article by Barry Halper, pumping his T206 Collins proof card as perhaps being worth more than a Wagner. Best line is where he stakes his reputation on it.

I wonder whether Barry knew the copious amount of fraudulent stuff in his collection would one day be exposed, and if so, what he thought of that.

[FrankWakefield]

I grew up too far south to call them pop bottles... But I'd bicycle around to pick them up outa ditches on the road I lived on. Coke bottles brought 4 cents, Pepsi and RC only 3 cents. This was in 1965 - 1968 mainly. I bought a few 1964 cards from allowance money. Back then people would get soft drinks in bottles and pitch them outa their cars as they drove away from town. There weren't aluminum cans, nor paper cups, for the most part. Seems odd now to think about throwing out glass bottles. Anyway, I'd bicycle along eyeing the ditch, picking them up, usually starting about 7:30am. Morning dew was sometime on the bottles. I'd pile them into the bike basket, peddle home and hose the mud off the bottles, then bicycle to a small grocery store maybe 3 blocks away. And I'd turn in the bottles, I'd get credit for them, then I'd buy nickel packs of Topps cards. I'd bicycle home with one hand on the handlebars, chewing nasty bubblegum like it was nectar as I looked at the cards. In the day near the end of the season, kids would switch to football cards as their team faded from contention / Topps diminished card printing for the later series and would switch production to football cards. Good memories thinking about those cards... At that time I had no knowledge of any cards older than 1959; only had seen 1959 through 1963 cards from seeing them among other kids' cards if they had older brothers. Usually the newest year attracted interest, and cards from earlier sets had little 'swap' value. And I confess to having bicycled around with Mantle and Maris clothespinned to the frame so that the spokes hit the cards creating a pleasing motorcycle like sound. We were idiots...

[whitehse]

Originally Posted by lumberjack

Someone mentioned Dr. Beckett's first price guide. He would set up at shows in Michigan after the guide came out. I once heard him tell a collector that he was afraid that the guide would become not so much a guide, but a bottom line for what a card would sell for and this is what happened. Nobody, nobody would sell a card for less than what his guide listed as its price.
lumberjack

I remember being at a mall show in suburban Chicago around the mid-90s and being set up to a husband and wife team who had been hobby dealers for decades. She had a man sitting at her table going through the quarter cards who looked vaguely familiar but I could not place him. He moved on to my table and bought a few cheap cards and kept moving but it wasn't until later when I asked the wife of the dealer team next to me who that man was and she casually mentioned it was Dr. Beckett. She had known him from the beginning and were good friends and to say I was shocked was an understatement. In a world where his name was synonymous with baseball cards and likely helped to push ahead the card boom, he was just a quite and totally unassuming man who was still collecting like the rest of us. Of course, this was after he sold the business so there was no conflict of interest at that point.

[hysell]

Yes, i got started collecting in 1974 , at that time ALL cards come out at the same time , NO series runs , then ? I got $ 5.00 ever 2 weeks for my chores around the house , did meow yards & scooped snow in the winter time & in 1976 I got a paper route , also . 10 cents per pack in 1974 , then . 15 cents a year or two , later , so, around $ 6.00 could get you a whole box of cards back then , now it's a pack at that price ?....LOL I would sell & trade cards at school and with other friends also .The 1st card show I went to was in 1981 & that was SO COOL , back then . Card trading seems to be a lost form , but I still do a lot around here & other places to this 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