What Was The Hobby Like Back In The Day?

[IndyDave]

I was probably 12 or 13 when I discovered the hobby in the early 70's.

I know I requested a catalog from some of the early sellers with ads in the Sporting News and somehow got a book that had Topps and Bowman checklists. I remember having my mom write a check so I could get some cards from some of the neat old sets I saw.

I'm not sure what got me "subscribed" to some of the early newsletters of the day - most likely a response to an advertisement in the Sporting News, Baseball Digest or Street and Smith's.

I grew up in a suburb of Youngstown Ohio. Somewhere along the line I placed a classified in one of those newsletters and shortly thereafter received a letter from Bill MacTaggart, inviting me to a baseball card show he was having at his house in Grove City, Pennsylvania, about an hour away. My dad agreed to drive my brother and I over and we had a wonderful time.

Bill eventually moved the show to a hall in Grove City then to a larger place in town. My brother and I started setting up at the shows to sell some of our duplicates and my parents would drive us over. Bill and Jean and their kids were great hosts. I still correspond with Bill all these years later and received a letter from him earlier this week. Made good friends with dealers Ray and Joyce Lingard, their son Dale from Ontario, George Sebo from Youngstown and collector Glenn Vasbinder from the Pittsburgh area. I've lost touch with all of them, although my brother ran in to George last year at a show. Pretty sure Ray and Joyce have passed away.

We would set up and those shows and be thrilled to sell $40 or $50 of stuff. I guess at the time my brother and I were "modern" dealers - we had nothing older than 4 or 5 years. We spent more time walking around buying things than at our tables. And spending time talking to our friends. I lost track of how many different card issues that I couldn't get in Youngstown, that Dale or Bill would buy for me and ship to us. I know Dale sent us all kinds of OPC hockey issues and pretty sure Bill got us some of the 1973 Topps candy lids and some Topps hockey that we didn't get.

One of my favorite things to buy at that time at shows were "bricks" of older cards. 25 or 50 or 100 different cards from an older set, wrapped in Saran wrap or some other cling wrap. The cards would usually be different conditions but as whole would be very cheap.

Sometime in the mid 70's we talked my parents in to driving us to one of the shows at the Troy Hilton. I had never seen so many baseball cards in my life. I distinctly recall being talked in to buying a brick of 1958 Topps by a dealer. I think it was 50 different cards for I'm sure either $10 or $20. Hank Aaron was on top. Yeah I had to be talked in to that. I often wonder which of the hobby legends sold me that brick.

Other shows started to pop up in our area. Jim Borgen started a show at the McKinley Memorial in Niles Ohio. We set up at Jim's show for several years as well. Bill's show in Grove City was in June each year and Jim's show in Niles was in July. Jim added autograph guests with the first one being - who else in NE Ohio? - Bob Feller.

Bill's show eventually died off as we had more and more shows in Cleveland and Pittsburgh to go to and occasionally set up. Jim's show couldn't compete either after awhile.

The hobby as whole was never as condition conscious as it has become. The grading scale was poor - fair - good - very good - excellent and mint. I think we were all generally happy with very good or better. Centering? As long as the card didn't look cut off we never worried about. Much more concerned about corners and creases.

The first "big" card I remember. No, not Mickey Mantle. I remember when the prices of the 1967 Brooks Robinson high number went to $20 and I thought that was absolutely absurd.

Eventually I had subscriptions to Sports Collectors Digest and Traders Speaks. Used to devour those when they arrived to get my orders out quickly and hopefully get what I wanted. I ran in to John Stommen of SCD fame at a show after I moved to Indiana. I introduced myself as Dave Carson of Poland Ohio and he told me my street address. Guess I was a long time subscriber.

Somewhere along the line Frank Nagy sent me his auction catalog and I was hooked. Oh how I could not wait for that package to arrive in the mail, wrapped in white butcher paper and tied together with a string. With my "winnings" on approval. The first time they arrived with me having to send a check I was amazed. I always made to sure to pay Frank as soon as I could.

As I've read since then about the vast quantity of cards Frank had, I've often wonder how many "winners" there were for certain cards. I seemingly won a lot of bids. I do have a 1963-64 Parkhurst hockey set, completely assembled through Frank's auctions.

Sorry for rambling on - I know I've posted much of this in other threads on the board. I was more or less on a hobby hiatus from I got married until my son went off to college. I've gotten back in over the past five years with vintage stuff and have made several good friends in the hobby in the Indy area.

My son is an absolute sports freak but never got in to collecting. We look at my cards occasionally but the time is coming to get my stuff in order and start paring down the collection. I'm hopefully 2 - 2.5 years out from retiring from work on my terms (if I can be so lucky) and then its time to start selling stuff off, starting with all the duplicates including some of those card bricks sitting in the basement that I put together for the last shows I did as a dealer nearly 30 years ago.

[jefferyepayne]

Originally Posted by IndyDave

Somewhere along the line I placed a classified in one of those newsletters and shortly thereafter received a letter from Bill MacTaggart, inviting me to a baseball card show he was having at his house in Grove City, Pennsylvania, about an hour away.

Case in point. I grew up 1 hour from Grove City as well but on the PA side. :-(

jeff

[judgebuck]

I first started collecting baseball cards in 1958 by buying packs at the local small town grocery store in west Kentucky. I was heavy into buying cards from 1958-63. Packs of five cards were five cents each, and there were also one-card packs for one cent. A box of 36 five-card packs was $1.80.

Football cards were popular as well, with Fleer joining Topps in 1960. Hartland statutes were special about this time, too. I remember ordering a few cards from Card Collector Company in NY. The 1961-62 Fleer basketball cards were popular with us young collectors, but it seemed they were a little hard to find.

We all liked the 1961-63 Post Cereal baseball cards and the 1962 Post Cereal football cards. We would accompany our mothers to the grocery store and inspect the back of the cereal boxes before deciding which cereal we wanted to eat that week.

I returned to collecting around 1979. I believe that was when the first Beckett softcover price guide came out. I was then in the workforce, and I sometimes bought collections from others who needed or wanted the money for something else. I guess it was early-mid 1980s that I began to go to shows in St. Louis. Often, when someone brought cards into the show to sell, an auction would be held on the spot. I remember turning down an offer from a dealer in St. Louis to sell me two Aaron rookies for $125. I thought that was too high. I would frequently buy lower grade 1933 Goudey Babe Ruth cards at the St. Louis shows for $150 and bring them back home and sell them to other local collectors for $300 each. Local card shops began to pop up in the 80s as well.

Looking back, here is the biggest regret I have: I don't regret having bought any card or collection; but, I regret having sold many cards. The values just seem to go up and up. That's why now, at age 68, I'm having a hard time downsizing my collection. I know I'm not going to be here forever, and I can't take them with me!

[lumberjack]

Tom Tuschak, a dealer who was associated with Charles Brooks always had a table at the Detroit shows. He had been around for a while.

On one occasion, someone knocked a Detroit Tigers gas station giveaway tumbler off of Tuschak's table to the floor. Tuschak never missed a beat, "Rare Aurelio Rodriguez puzzle glass, Aurelio Rodriguez puzzle glass right here."
lumberjack

[Tony Gordon]

Another 70's kid here. I first started collecting in 1975. Topps Wax packs were 15 cents at the pharmacy down the street. I also bought the Fleer Pioneers of Baseball. The Fleer had better tasting gum. Next to the pharmacy was a place called Convenient Food Mart, they sold cellos for a quarter and rack packs for 50 cents. The old couple that ran Convenient always kicked me out of the store when I tried to search the cellos and rack packs for George Brett rookies. I also collected Hostess cards but was terrible at cutting them out of the box.

The ultimate place for cards for me in the 1970's was the flea market at the Twin Drive In Movie Theater on Milwaukee Avenue in Wheeling, IL, long gone now. There were dozens of guys selling cards at the Twin. I picked up copious amounts of post-war cards there every Sunday from 10 cents to 50 cents each. In the winter, they moved the flea market to the Axle Roller Rink in Glenview (now a Salvation Army thrift store), just a few miles south of the Twin on Milwaukee Avenue, where I was able to find T205s and T206s for five bucks each. I also set up with my dad at both flea markets.

In 1978 I started subscribing to SCD. I used the ads in SCD to price my cards for the flea market. I bought tons of stuff from the SCD classifieds which were amazing. I also joined the Chicagoland Sports Collectors Association which put on three shows a year at the Hillside Holiday Inn. Those shows were amazing. You got a free auto with admission from a guy like Minnie Minoso or Orlando Cepeda. All the dealers sold their cards out of binders. It was fun leafing through pages and pages of Clemente and Koufax. You could get a mint '56 Clemente for 20 bucks.

There was just one card shop in the entire Chicago region -- the Sports Collectors Store on South Archer Avenue in Chicago. My dad was not too keen on driving me there from the north suburbs but he relented here and there. I think in 1980 or 1981 AU opened in Skokie, much closer to home. AU is still open in Skokie but with different owners and at a new location.

Every kid I knew collected cards in the 1970's. A lot of trading went on in the neighborhood and at school. I always tried to complete the sets. For the life of me I could not get a 1975 Topps Jim Willoughby of the Boston Red Sox.

In 1979, I got my first job as a janitor at a day camp with the sole purpose to earn money to buy cards. More and more shows and card shops started to open but the best place to buy cards remained the Twin flea market. Man, I miss that place!

[Leon]

This goes with the subject...

[Seven]

Originally Posted by Leon

This goes with the subject...

Leon, thanks for sharing this! What year is this from, if you don't mind me asking?

- James

[rats60]

Originally Posted by Seven

Leon, thanks for sharing this! What year is this from, if you don't mind me asking?

- James

The stamp is from 1945 and the postage rate increased in 1952, so that would put is sometime in that frame.

[Seven]

Hearing all of these stories is fascinating. I really appreciate everyone that's responded. I've only lived in a post Beckett Price Guide collecting world, which has definitely affected how the hobby has functioned. The early shows that went on, had to have been a sight. I'm sure it was hard to gauge for both buyers and sellers what exactly a card might have been worth.

For as crazy as some of the prices are nowadays, I'm glad to see the hobby is still thriving. People still want to go to shows. I'm very sour on the whole "investment culture" but it is what it is.