Your first card-collecting memory

[Archive]

Posted By: Paul Carek

For me, it was opening packs of 1973 Topps, purchased from the concession stand at Pee Wee Park, the little league field in Bowling Green, Ohio. I remember how the wax paper felt, how the gum smelled, and how much of a bummer it was to realize, the following spring, how "old-fashioned" my stack of about 200 cards had suddenly become.

[Archive]

Posted By: Phil Garry

For me it was opening up 1977 Topps packs and putting together my first hand collated set. I especially liked Dave Parker and the Pittsburgh Pirates back then.....

[Archive]

Posted By: Steve F

Flipping cards on the sidewalk for 1967 and '68 Topps Red Sox and Bruins cards. I generally lost as most of the kids were older, thus more crafty. These are the same slugs that years earlier would trade me their nickels for my dimes, "Nickels are better, 'cuz they're bigger, like quarters!"

[Archive]

Posted By: Michael Steele

Opening 1966 Topps packs and then cutting the "rookie stars" cards in two to have more cards .

Then in 1967, growing up in Watertown, MA, I went crazy buying the Topps Red Sox stickers test issue. I had those stickers all over everything. Drove my Mom crazy. Had to have a couple hundered of them. My best Friend had even more. It was like an arms race. He had them stuck all over his room.

[Archive]

Posted By: JohnnyH

It was december of 1978 in Little Falls MN, we had just finished a Squirt Hockey game against them and won which was huge because we always lost to them. I scored my first goal ever that day and was on cloud 9 !! We were on our way home and stopped at a gas station and in the store I was looking at all the candy and my dad handed me a pack of hockey cards, I didn't know what they were but after getting in the car and opening them up, well, I've been addicted ever since.

[Archive]

Posted By: Doug

I always enjoyed going to the local drug store as a kid and buying 1985 Topps wax packs.

[Archive]

Posted By: RayB

1868 Topps. I bought tons of packs. When 69's came out I passed along a huge shoebox of 68's to a cousin. Boy I wish I had those now.
RayB

edited to note: Still have a bunch of my childhood 69's.

[Archive]

Posted By: Paul Carek

1868 Topps? How old are you, anyway, Ray?

[Archive]

Posted By: David McDonald

It was 1956 and I was six years old. I had eight or nine cards from somebody who thought "give 'em to the kid". I had never seen a baseball card before then. I was playing with them on the floor in my room. Amongst them I distinctly remember a '54 Topps Ernie Banks and a '56 Topps Del Ennis. Loved that little Cubbie on the Banks and loved the way Ennis leapt in to the air. Started collecting Topps in '57, nickle a pack. Always carried my rubberbanded stack to school. My Uncle Harry owned a cigar store in Brooklyn. One time he surprised me with a whole box; Gluttony became my first Deadly Sin. Thanks, Uncle Harry. He had the most awesome candy counter in his store. How I yearn to time-travel back to those days. Think I better go BIN some cardboard, maybe a nice '54 Banks. Maybe the feeling would pass.

[Archive]

Posted By: JDRUM

I remember buying a pack of 1966 Topps @ IGA and pulling a Sonny Seibert.

[Archive]

Posted By: Paul Carek

Love the "whole box" story, David. I received a whole box of '74 Topps as a First Communion present and felt like I was (ahem) in heaven.

[Archive]

Posted By: mark s.

we've been together for almost 50 years!

it was late in the fall of 1959 & i had been recently indoctorinated to the world of sports by virtue of the hometown dodgers' world series victory over the chicago white sox. one afternoon, as i was walking out of wally's pharmacy on fair oaks ave in altadena, ca, i noticed a small picture card resting, scuffed & beaten near the curb... it was a "trading" card of paul hornung. and altho i had NO idea whatsoever who this guy or his team was (the green bay packers?), i captured the card, the card captured my heart, and a lifelong bond was immediately forged!
before long i had discovered the la rams & was purchasing cello packs of 1959 topps football as often as my 10 cent weekly allowance permitted... which was once a week!

it was the following spring however, that i discovered my lasting passion and can remember buying one 1960 topps baseball wax pack for a nickel at wally's then walking up fair oaks to the corner store/soda fountain & spending the other nickel from my allowance on a wax pack of 1960 fleer all-time greats... 12 cards that entertained & educated me for an entire week while bridging the historical gap between babe ruth, ty cobb & cy young and willie mays, mickey mantle & sandy koufax! ahhh... those certainly WERE the days!

still have that '59 topps hornung & altho it would only grade poor to fair, it is safely stored in a card saver & treated like a treasure... as it's sentimental value to me belies it's collectible value (or lack thereof) to anyone else.
but, isn't that what collecting is really about?

[Archive]

Posted By: Ted Zanidakis

I opened up the Red-White-Blue LEAF packs in 1949 to find Babe Ruth's, Joe DiMaggio's, Ted Williams', Stan Musial's,
Jackie Robinson's....and, many more clorful BB cards of my favorite players.


.......................1949 Bowman............................................ ........1949 Leaf




TED Z

[Archive]

Posted By: Chris Counts

In the spring of 1970, when I was nine, my mom sent me to the grocery store to buy some broccoli. For reasons I have never been able to explain, I spent the money on baseball cards. As I was walking home, my dad drove by and picked me up. I explained to him what happened and he took it in stride, driving back to the grocery store, where he bought some broccoli and some more baseball cards. These were 1970 Topps cards, and I recall the posters that came with them. Ollie Brown was in the first pack and Willie Davis was in the second. I was hooked then and I still am ...

[Archive]

Posted By: Jim VB

I've told this story before, but here goes. As a little kid we lived in NYC. (I'm talking late 1950's to mid 1960's.) My Dad worked for the A&P Grocery chain, in their Brooklyn plant in the old Bush Terminal. He was the Superintendent of Shipping and Receiving. One of his duties was to co-ordinate the trash pick up at the plant. This put him in contact with the trash hauler who also handled the Topps plant nearby. Knowing that my Dad had 2 sons, he would often drop off uncut sheets that Topps was throwing out for some reason.

My older brother and I would spend many nights at the kitchen table cutting all these sheets into cards, with scissors. I'm not talking about a sheet or two. I'm talking hundreds of sheets per year.

Of course, at the time, sheets had no value, but cards were still cards.

[Archive]

Posted By: Bob Manning

First card memory:

Seeing several neighborhood kids trading '49 Leafs, including Babe Ruth. Since I was only seven, and had no ATM card, all I could do was watch (and wonder why anybody would want a card of a guy who hadn't played ball in years!)

Best card memory:

In those years, boys and girls, cards came out in series. What would prove to be the last series of '53 Topps never got to my little town. But a friend had found a pack in a larger burg nearby. For my birthday, my dad drove me there, and we bought a BOX of them. WOW!!! I was in heaven on the way home, mainly because there were so many Pirates, and, oh yeah, Willie Mays. And yes, I still have every one. In sheets.

[Archive]

Posted By: Daryle

It was around March 1982. A cousin of mine had started collecting cards in 1981. He came down and mentioned to me and another cousin of ours that we should start collecting cards so we could trade around. Sooooooo.....I went home and asked my older brother if he had ever collected. he said that he had some in his room in a drawer, to go look. I went in there and......1975 and 1976 Topps cards including a 1975 Munson and Frank Robinson. I then started stopping every day after school to get my 30 cent pack of Topps, Donruss or Fleer. The rest is history........(I remember getting Football cards and Hockey cards back in those years---1981s and 1982s.....we used to "flip" the football cards....we had probably 20-25 Montana Rookies between us.....all with dinged up corners....I remember having a 5000 ct box of football at one one time from years 1981-1986......there was like 10-15 each of Montana, Elway, Marino and Rice RCs.....sold the whole box for like $50 bucks........not to mention the Gretzky cards)

[Archive]

Posted By: David M

So Jim, do you remember the earliest sheet you ever got to cut up? Was it only baseball, or did you get to cut up other sports and non-sports? Wow, that had to be quite a treat as a kid! I'm jealous. My earliest baseball card memory is getting the game cards out of the 1968 Topps. It's funny, I don't remember the cards themselves, but there was just something about those game cards... And my earliest card memory is the 1966 Batman. We all loved Batman as kid. Sorry, even before we liked baseball!

[Archive]

Posted By: Jim VB

I was born in 1955, so I don't remember much of the early years of cutting. My brother was born in 1946, so he was the chief culprit in the 1956-1961 range. I do remember cutting the 1962's with that wood grain edging. Then, suddenly, around 1965, our supply dried up and I never knew why. At that same time, the A&P was consolidating 3 plants into a new facility upstate NY and we moved. Until recently I always assumed that was the reason for no more free cards. Years later, I found that was when Topps had moved their printing to Duryea, PA.

I don't remember cutting anything other than baseball, but I could be wrong.

[Archive]

Posted By: Dan Bretta

My first baseball card memories are cutting out the cards off of boxes of HoHo's and Twinkies....I also recall getting the 3D cards out of Frosted Flakes. I'm not sure which of those events took place first, but I can distinctly recall both of them. I'm pretty sure my first pack of cards I bought was 1975. I remember a kid coming to school with a small stack of the colorful 75's and thinking they were about the coolest things I'd ever seen.

[Archive]

Posted By: MATT

my dad brought home a pack of 1966 topps. I remember like it was yesterday looking for mets and loving the design. I think I threw them in a drawer. I remember a similar experience with the 68's. and then in 70 is when I really started collecting. Buying packs with money I scrounged with my friends at the local Rexall's drug store. My friend used to steal them but I was too afraid. Funny is that I dont remember the 67's or 69's when I was a kid. Probably because of the uninteresting design.

[Archive]

Posted By: Clint

In 1977 a friend on my dad's bowling team opened a shop in the bowling alley. I worked there on the weekends and got to open the new cards and sort them. My first cards were 1961 dinosaur NU Cards. Baseball season was over but I remember opening packs of Star Wars and football.

Clint

[Archive]

Posted By: Eric Brehm

1966 Topps was the first set I collected. The colors they used for the team banners in the upper left hand corner will be forever etched in my mind. I will always associate the color red with the Yankees and Dodgers, yellow with the Tigers and Cardinals (even though the Cardinals should obviously be a red team), blue with the Twins and Reds, and so on.

[Archive]

Posted By: Dave Williams

1971 my mom gave me a pack of Topps from the Dairy store. I only remember one card, Steve Carlton. I was a Cardinal fan, and immediately took a pair of scissors to it, so it would fit in the picture section of my wallet.

We lived WAY out in the country in Central Illinois, on a dead end road in a "Hollow" - Bristol Hollow Rd.

I would ride my bike 10 miles to Chillicothe, Ill to a subdivision, and ride through it looking for pop and milk bottles for the deposit, often they were
in the ditch. I could usually get 4 or 5, enough for a couple packs of cards.

Then the Ben Franklin dime store had packs, or the grocery store. I pulled a 72 Johnny Unitas, and was the envy of all my buddies. Of course we also put our names on the backs of those cards so no one could rip them off at school or wherever, I've got dozens of cards with DW or David W on the back.

Those were the days.

[Archive]

Posted By: Richard Cline - RC

It had to be 1966 since I have some of those from my original collection but what I really remember is the 1967 Topps, loved going to the local store to pick them up for a nickel and quickly opening to see who was inside.

That was also the year I picked up the entire Reds set from '67 through the mail, thought that was pretty cool.

I collected regularly through '74 or '75 and then cooled off until everyone started collecting in the early '80s. That died off until a couple years ago when the vintage (pre-war) bug bit.

It's been a fun ride.

RC

[Archive]

Posted By: Rob

My first memory was being given a 1986 Topps factory set - probably as my 8yr birthday present. I loved them so much that I started taping them to my bedroom door.

[Archive]

Posted By: J.McMurry

1973-74-75 topps.

Back in the early 70's my grandfather bought some land on lake Greenwood and built a cabin pretty much by himself. I used to spend most of my summers there walking those old dirt roads looking for returnable coke bottles so as to buy baseball cards at this old country store(picture the Beverly Hillbillies shack in the hills).

I remember in '74 always looking to pull that Hank Aaron card(I never did). Those are some of the best memories of my life. I was stunned to learn years later what Aaron was actually going through during this time.
Innocence lost.

[Archive]

Posted By: Mike

1957. The first series had dried up and the second series was out. I still needed several cards to complete the first series. One of which was Frank Robinson. Then came the news. This local mom and pop grocery store on the other side of town still had first series. Three of us on bikes were on our way. The store had about 3/4 of a box. We bought them all. First pack I opened there was Frank Robinson. Remains one of my favorite cards of all time.

[Archive]

Posted By: Chris

My first memory was the 1997 homerun race. I was seven years old and my dad bought so many sammy sosa and mark mcgwire cards for me. It seemed like everyday he brought home a box of cards.

[Archive]

Posted By: Chris

did i say '97, I meant '98, which means I was 8 years old.

[Archive]

Posted By: Jerry

Not my first memory but a memorable one.
Bought a pack at the local Utotem on the way to school and stuck it unopened in my shirt pocket to save and open later as I liked to sweat them like a poker hand. During my daily constitutional I remembered the pack and opened it, while locked in the stall. I had been trying to pull a Bill Henry card as he lived in my Neighborhood and his son played on my little league team. Well, there it was a 59 Topps Bill Henry in a Cubs uniform , the gum was good too.

[Archive]

Posted By: Jamie Boneparth

83 Topps. I was seven years old, turning eight. In my first pack I saw a Tony Gwynn. I knew very little about him, but was impressed by his highest batting average.

Later traded that card for an 89 Topps set, because I thought it was a better investment. My friend was like, "you sure?" Probably one of my dumber decisions...

[Archive]

Posted By: boxingcardman

My parents took me out for ice cream after dinner at the Chinese restaurant at the mall in Mahopac, NY and my father bought me a pack of 1971 Topps.

Sic Gorgiamus Allos Subjectatos Nunc

[Archive]

Posted By: Todd Schultz

I'm surprised to see so many here claim 1966 as the year they first discovered cards--same for me. I know I've told this story before and more than once, probably even on this forum. 1966 Mankato MN, Ben Franklin at the Tempo shopping center. Rode my bike the 2 1/2 blocks, pulled a Sandy Valdespino. Also collected the Philly football cards that year, and a few Topps FB as well (and mustn't forget Batman cards). Like Eric, I associated the teams with their banner/nameplate colors, which is why I did not like the '67s. Came back strong in 1968, buying my first box at age 9, and by '69 I was a four sport collector.

[Archive]

Posted By: Eric Brehm

Todd -- I was disappointed in the '67's also. Though many now hail them as one of the best sets of the 1960's. As you said, at least in '68 and '69 they brought back the familiar color-coding for teams as they had used in '66. I built sets in '70 and '71 also, and that was about it for me, until the revival of the 1980's, when all of us now grown-ups revisited our childhoods. I also got interested in vintage cards like T206 and Goudey at that time.

Here are the team colors they used in '66, '68, and '69, which as I said earlier, always come to mind even today when I think of those teams:

Red - Yankees and Dodgers, and American League Leaders
Blue - Twins and Reds, and National League Leaders
Yellow - Tigers and Cardinals
Dark Green - Senators and Giants
Light Green - Orioles and Astros
Orange - White Sox and Cubs
Grey - Indians and Phillies
Bluish Purple - Athletics and Mets
Greyish Purple - Angels and Braves
Pink - Red Sox and Pirates

Edited to add: actually it is only the Kansas City Athletics that seem purple to me; once they moved to Oakland I saw them properly as green with yellow trim. And the Philadelphia Athletics are a grey team, I guess by association with the Phillies.

Topps themselves had some difficulty with the A's move to Oakland, and had to show the players in '68 with no hat or a blanked out hat, presumably to hide the "KC" from the year before:

[Archive]

Posted By: John Moran

summer of 1970, seven years old I'm sure I nagged my Grandma until she bought me one of these:



Can remember the first 5 cards like it was yesterday:

Tommie Agee, Blue Moon Odom, Tito Fuentes, Tim Cullen and Davey Johnson

[Archive]

Posted By: Rob

1966 was my first year also, and my first card, which I still own, was Sonny Seibert. My older sister and I were at the Kresge's in Arlingtin Heights, IL- My sister told me I was stupid to waste 5 cents on a pack of baseball cards!

[Archive]

Posted By: Jim VB

Rob,

Their theory was that 1966 Topps (Siebert) was a "gateway" card and it would just lead you into the "hard stuff" later in life.

Use marijuana to heroin for a similar analogy.

From their point of view, you've been pumping that s**t into your veins for 43 years!

[Archive]

Posted By: Ricky Y

My favorite memories go back to 1972-74 period...

I remember collecting the 72 Topps set..togehter with my best pal Robert, trading for our needs..but during the summer he moved away to another town. Meanwhile I finished the set. Later that fall, I visited him and asked him if he finished the set and he said "yeah finally!" and showed me the Bobby Bonds and Juan Marichal cards..and my jaws dropped to the floor..I then found out about the semi-hi and high numbers which didn't make its way to my local 7-11 or the corner drug store...so I didn't know they even existed.. Took me another 10 years or so to get those completed!

Also remember sitting on a nice summer day in my friends mobile home park porch..swapping 73 and 74 Topps cards...I still remember I had to give the guy a 74 Reggie Jackson to get 74 Dave Sells common card that I needed... :-P

Ricky Y

[Archive]

Posted By: Paul S

Me and my friends on the block, we got so many Topps '62 Berras we were putting them in our bike spokes. No lie.