Oldtimers on this board?

[Balticfox]

I bought my first packs of bubble gum cards midway through 1959. How many of you other fellows here on this board have a card buying history that pre-dates my own?

My introduction to cards actually occurred in 1957 or early 1958 before I started first grade when my older sister bought a pack of Hit Stars and brought the cards home:



She was looking for Yul Brynner, a search doomed to frustration since there was no Yul Brynner card in the set.

I started first grade in September 1958 and remember admiring Topps Flags of the World, TV Westerns, Zorro and Funny Valentines cards in the schoolyard before I had deep enough pockets to actually buy any cards:





The first cards I ever owned though were four Topps 1958-59 Hockey cards which I gathered off the street one late February or early March day in 1959. The first three were Detroit Red Wings, but the last was a Chicago Blackhawk. When I saw that big Indian head on the red uniform, I knew that was my favourite team - even though I might have had trouble reading the team name at the time!



I then admired the 1959 Baseball cards in the schoolyard:



But the first cards I ever bought and collected were the Topps 1959 CFL cards:





And that was it for me, game, set and match! I've been addicted to card collecting ever since (though I was able for the most part to put aside my addiction for a few years between 1965 and 1979).

How about you other fellows? What were the first cards you ever bought or collected?

[ALR-bishop]

The first packs I bought myself were 1959 Topps Baseball. My folks had bought some packs for me in 1957 and 1958.

Never ventured much beyond sports cards. Even in collecting the Topps 48 Magic Photos and 55 and 56 Hocus Focus cards I stuck to the baseball subsets, except I did do the William Bendix as Babe Ruth card.

I have been sent unsolicited sets of Scream Queen and Dinosaur Attack cards as a "bonus" to other purchases

[raulus]

Used to ride my bike down to Safeway after school. Rip some wax and watch the kids with serious cash play pac man. 1987 Topps was pretty fly!

[ValKehl]

I began buying Topps baseball cards in 1955.

[62corvette]

1954 for me. Green background Berra in my first pack.

[Peter_Spaeth]

You fellas are ancient. 1965 Topps for me, as a youngster. Rode my bike down a path through the woods to the 7-11. Which, I see from a map, is still there.

[Volod]

Walking down a hallway in my elementary school age seven, saw a pasteboard lying on the shiny waxed floor, picked up this guy, whom I had never heard of - imagine that - and wondered why some kid had so little regard for what seemed like a treasure of some sort. I was hooked immediately. That fall, my brother and I hung out on Friday nights in a corner store next to my old man's bowling alley and spent a couple of his quarters each on stale waxpacks in a big box near the front door - 1951 Topps Redbacks and CM All-Stars at two packs for a nickel. The following spring began buying 1952 Bowman waxpacks every lunch break at a Mom&Pop store a block from school.

[ALR-bishop]

Those 51 packs could have red or blue back panels and a mix of Team and All Star Cards....and candy versus gum I think. Both Topps and Bowman tried for contracts exclusive to packaging with gum or confections

[ALR-bishop]

I can see All Star cards in this pack between the panels

[mikemb]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

You fellas are ancient. 1965 Topps for me, as a youngster. Rode my bike down a path through the woods to the 7-11. Which, I see from a map, is still there.

Peter - I am very similar to you. First packs I bought were in 1965. (Though I had 1959-1964 cards in my collection already.). Would ride my bicycle to the corner deli on North Ave. Always went into the phone booth there to pull down the coin return lever and check the coin return slot to try and get some extra spending money.

Mike

[Balticfox]

Originally Posted by mikemb

Peter - I am very similar to you. First packs I bought were in 1965. (Though I had 1959-1964 cards in my collection already.). Would ride my bicycle to the corner deli on North Ave. Always went into the phone booth there to pull down the coin return lever and check the coin return slot to try and get some extra spending money.

Was this in the same town/city?

[mikemb]

Originally Posted by Balticfox

Was this in the same town/city?

No

[Gorditadogg]

Originally Posted by mikemb

Peter - I am very similar to you. First packs I bought were in 1965. (Though I had 1959-1964 cards in my collection already.). Would ride my bicycle to the corner deli on North Ave. Always went into the phone booth there to pull down the coin return lever and check the coin return slot to try and get some extra spending money.



Mike

I did not realize there were 7Eleven's back in 1965. We would go to the local IGA. They also sold Crane's potato chips there, which had baseball team pinbacks inside.

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[Harliduck]

Local gas station store for me...1979 Topps and I was 9, pulled my hero at the time, Reggie Jackson, out of my first pack. I was hooked. Still have the card. Same store had some "old" 1978 packs, my mom bought them all and brought them home to my brother and I, so technically I also opened 78s. Those seemed ANCIENT to me at the time...great memories.


I do remember a buddy brought a beat up 1959 Topps card to school, first I had ever seen something so old. I was the lucky kid that was able to get the right trade and ended up owning it...may as well been a hundred years old.

[Balticfox]

Originally Posted by Gorditadogg

They also sold Crane's potato chips there, which had baseball team pinbacks inside.

i see that Crane Potato Chips were produced in Decatur, Illinois. Were the pinbacks you remember like these from 1961?



Or like these from 1968?







Do you still have the ones you got at the time? Do you still collect them now?

[Gorditadogg]

Originally Posted by Balticfox

i see that Crane Potato Chips were produced in Decatur, Illinois. Were the pinbacks you remember like these from 1961?



Or like these from 1968?







Do you still have the ones you got at the time? Do you still collect them now?

Wow, those pictures bring back memories. We would fill up those cards with all the pins and mail them in to get a baseball. The pins from 1965 and 66 had metallic paint, they were shinier than the 68's. Crane changed the colors up a bit every year too. I wish I still had some of them but I don't.

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[steve B]

Most of you have me beat by a decade or more.

First collecting baseball thing- 67 or 68 Coke caps. Went to a party with my parents and the bottlecaps had pictures inside! Rounded up a few pockets full, but just before we went home mom made me toss them all. No way I was bringing home a bunch of dirty bottelcaps. (I was 4 or 5)

Next a pack of 69 Topps, opened it with dad in the car and he remarked how one of the guys was pretty good. Reggie Jackson. Still have that card.
Next pack was 71. Got a Danny Cater coin which was really cool to me. Still have that one too.

Didn't really start collecting cards until late 73.

[deweyinthehall]

Got my first cards in the spring edition of Dynamite Magazine through Scholastic - 1978 Topps Cecil Cooper, Tony Perez, Al Oliver and Darrell Porter. I was hooked from then on. A friend of mine said something like "you know you can packs of them in the store?" and it was all over.

Can still remember a few cards from my first pack - Rick Manning, Sparky Lyle RB, Luis Tiant, Jose Baez (had to ask my mom how pronounce that one) and George Hendrick.

[Balticfox]

Originally Posted by Gorditadogg

The pins from 1965 and 66 had metallic paint, they were shinier than the 68's.

Like these then?



Here are some pinbacks issued by a competing brand, Guy's Potato Chips of Kansas, in 1964:



And in 1965:



In any event, those pinbacks all look very cool. I'm sure I would have been buying Crane's or Guy's Potato Chips to get them as a kid had those brands been available in my neck of the woods. And had I done so then, I'd still be collecting them these days!

[Balticfox]

Originally Posted by steve B

First collecting baseball thing- 67 or 68 Coke caps. Went to a party with my parents and the bottlecaps had pictures inside! Rounded up a few pockets full, but just before we went home mom made me toss them all. No way I was bringing home a bunch of dirty bottelcaps. (I was 4 or 5)

You should then show your mother your present day collection of the Baseball Coke caps and tell her what they're "worth" now!

[Leon]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

You fellas are ancient. 1965 Topps for me, as a youngster. Rode my bike down a path through the woods to the 7-11. Which, I see from a map, is still there.

'66 and '67 topps were about my first collecting as a kid. Got them in packs at our little league park.
.

[bxb]

Originally Posted by Leon

'66 and '67 topps were about my first collecting as a kid. Got them in packs at our little league park.
.

Same.

First pack was 1967 Topps at our little league concession stand, along with orange soda (in a bottle!). I even remember my first card in my first pack - NL home run leaders with Mays and Aaron.

Hooked ever since.

[GasHouseGang]

I'm like Leon and Larry. I think my first cards were around 1966. I remember buying the first Batman cards too. This was one of my favorites.

[Volod]

Originally Posted by ALR-bishop

I can see All Star cards in this pack between the panels

Al - I think Dave Hornish did some impressive research a few years ago to pretty well establish that the Red Backs and CM All-Stars were packed together in the caramel candy packs, as well with the Team cards (probably the undated), while the Blue Backs and ML All-Stars were likely together in packs with the dated Team cards later on the 1951 season. But, those cello packs of yours - who knows? Can you see the All-Star cards well enough to tell if they are CM or ML?

[bmattioli]

1971 Topps Baseball. The kid across the street I used to hang with received a full box as a gift one time and I swore someday I would buy one myself when I grew up..

[MBH65]

71 Topps baseball wax packs at a little old mom and pop shop were my first when I was 5 years old. Got $1 allowance every week and bought 10 wax packs every Friday. I also remember getting some of those 71 baseball cello pack cardboard boxes for a quarter at the Kresge store about 20 miles away when my mom would take me with her.

[mortimer brewster]

1971 Topps football. Bought them, pitched them, traded them, defaced them then in November of 1971 took them to the playground and threw them up in the air and watched the little kids run after them.

[judgebuck]

My mother bought me my first pack of baseball cards in the summer of 1957. I began collecting in 1958 and hit it hard from 1958-1963.

I remember getting the TV Westerns, Zorro, Topps Civil War, Wacky Plaks, etc.

[Leon]

Fun reading so this was moved from the postwar side. A large portion of our members fall into the 60s-70s-80s Topps eras....

[Touch'EmAll]

At the bus stop in 1972 the big kids had new cards we all were checking out - so cool. Next year, 1973 I started getting packs, begged my mom every time we went to the store. I rode my bike to the local Toy City that had the 3 pack clear cellos I would go thru looking for the best players. Ahh, simple times.

[riggs336]

My mother bought me my first cards in 1953, but I didn't really start collecting until 1955.
I spent a lot of allowances chasing those last four '55 Topps numbers.

[Keith H. Thompson]

in Rochester, MI, and although I was fanatic about the Detroit Tigers, the local convenience stores did not carry baseball, but did carry wartime sets of airplanes, naval ships. I had to do this on a nickle a week allowance or an occasional gratuity from a visiting relative. I hope I still have those cards.

My Detroit Tiger collecting activity was confined to cutting out pictures and box scores from the newspapers and scrapbooking. Things picked up in 1941 when I had an early morning Detroit Free Press paper route. And I mean early, I was through by 6:15 AM, rain, sleet or snow.

[Balticfox]

I too had a morning paper route delivering the Free Press, but it was the London Free Press just a few years later in 1964! The Detroit Free Press was the fascinating U.S. big city newspaper through which I looked on family visits to my uncle in Detroit.

[perezfan]

We had a fantastic store called Rich's Five and Dime on Ludlow Ave. in Cincinnati. Not only did we buy full boxes of 67, 68 and 69 Topps.... they had Topps' Player Posters of 1968 and Topps Team Posters of 1969. I've heard these referred to as "test issues" but perhaps they were more widespread.

Anyway, my brother and I were able to collect the complete sets of both, and we defaced our bedroom walls much to our mom's chagrin.

Better Days!

[rats60]

Originally Posted by Gorditadogg

I did not realize there were 7Eleven's back in 1965. We would go to the local IGA. They also sold Crane's potato chips there, which had baseball team pinbacks inside.

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We had 7-Eleven and Stop-N-Go. I also bought my first packs in 1965. In 1967 I started collecting seriously trying to complete each set plus any odd ball sets that the stores carried, 1968 Player Posters, 1969 Stamps & Team Posters, Fleer World Series Cards, etc.

[Balticfox]

Originally Posted by perezfan

We had a fantastic store called Rich's Five and Dime on Ludlow Ave. in Cincinnati. Not only did we buy full boxes of 67, 68 and 69 Topps....

You bought full boxes! How old were you?

[JollyElm]

My collecting journey started in the smoke-filled tobacco shops of lower Manhattan in 1910.

Still remember finding my first Hughie Jennings picture with his wide open mouth and hands flying all over the place shouting, "Eee-Yaaahhhh!" and I was done hooked.
Did a 23 skidoo to get home to my younger sister in time before she left for her 19-hour shift at the mill. At this point, she was only smoking six packs a day, not ten like me, but I figured six was better than nothing.

(Side note: You may not be aware of this, but in those days it was tough for the fairer sex to get their hands on smokes.)

So, we hatched a plan wherein if I went and got the ciggy packs for her each day, I would get to keep the pictures of the base ball men they held.

As he was downing a dirty bottle of bathtub gin, I was ready for my Pops to tell me to scram, but instead he slurred a hearty, "Attaboy!!!!!" as he belly laughed. I guess I should’ve known he’d be happy. If nothing else, that boozehound was a visionary.
Mother, of course, was less than enthusiastic about pasteboards becoming the cat’s pajamas, and she told us we were all wet!! I done proved her wrong, though, as our compact worked out great and my collection has been growing and increasing in value ever since!!!!

[talkinbaseball]

I remember vividly buying 1967 Topps Baseball Cards in the summer at a store in Old Lyme, CT at Sound View beach, I was 10 years old, I was so excited to get all the major stars.
John

[insidethewrapper]

A little local party store had me as a regular customer on my bike with my baseball glove on the handlebars starting in 1958. It was only one street over from my house.

[akleinb611]

It was 1961 for me. I was six and I came across my friend's older brother sorting through a bunch of cards he had. I was very much taken with them - I remember the 1961 Johnny Podres had a huge close up of his face, and the colors were really bright. My parents were immigrants and didn't know anything about baseball cards, but my father was a huge baseball fan, so he supported my desire to get these strange and wonderful things. He figured that a penny for a photo and stats of a ballplayer was a pretty good deal. The local candy store and newsstand in Queens, where I lived, was my regular haunt for the next few months (it was around this time that I also started buying comic books at ten cents a pop). Another friend's older brother also gave me a stack of about fifty 1960 cards, which introduced me to the idea that these things were different every year, and which probably changed my DN A to that of a collector.

My mother recalled getting movie star cards back in 1930's Germany, when she'd be sent to the store to buy cigarettes for her father.

At the end of the season, most of my friends were throwing their cards out, but my father told me that he hadn't paid for all the cards just to have them thrown out. He bought me a scrapbook and a bag of photo corners (remember those?), and I mounted all my cards. Which is why I still have them.

Alan

[Balticfox]

Originally Posted by akleinb611

He bought me a scrapbook and a bag of photo corners (remember those?), and I mounted all my cards. Which is why I still have them.

Your father was a wise man. He also knew the value of a penny!

[Collectorsince62]

As my screen name implies, it was 1962 for me. I saw that bright green wrapper on a trip to the Glaser drug store (next to the A&P where the following year I searched through Jello boxes looking for Cardinals while my Mom did the weekly grocery shopping) and a lifelong passion was born. Just a few 5-cent packs of 6th series that year before they suddenly disappeared. 1963 saw a few more purchases but in 1964 all my friends collected cards and we had lots of front porch trading sessions. Cardinals were highly coveted. Mantle for Javier - sure. We continued buying packs for the next few years using cash from soda bottle returns pulled in a wagon to the A&P. The Glaser store charged five cents a pack but the nearby Ben Franklin Five and Dime gave you six packs for a quarter. In 1967 the sixth series was nowhere to be found so we just kept buying seventh series packs hoping the sixth would show up. Another Brooks Robinson? Oh well, into the Orioles stack. By 1968 many of us started umpiring, which paid really well. Now we could afford boxes of packs. A box of 24 packs cost $1.00 plus three cents tax. My friend John got an entire series out of one of those '68 boxes and I was so jealous. The fact that the Cardinals were successful during those early collecting years really added to the fun. I'll never forget the feeling of seeing that 1965 Cards Celebrate World Series card. As Tom Stanton wrote in The Road to Cooperstown, baseball's appeal is about holding on to a piece of your childhood. That's why I still collect today . . . with my grandkids.

[BuzzD]

My father had a pharmacy in Olean NY and tried to sell baseball cards. I would take entire boxes down in the basement of the store and open all the packs. Got a 1955 Mantle TV Bowman that was a treasure. I was 8. Somehow he never got mad..

[steve B]

Originally Posted by Balticfox

You should then show your mother your present day collection of the Baseball Coke caps and tell her what they're "worth" now!

I did at one point.
Western Ct probably had yankees or mets, I have a pretty good collection of Red Sox plus a few others.
Slowly working on having the set from all Boston area bottling plants.

Shes in a home now, and it's hard to tell just how much of anything she gets.

[KJA]

I remember turning 8 and getting into cards thanks to 86 Topps football, Jim McMahon card in particular, my favorite player at the time. Didn't really start collecting baseball until 88 Topps. Those set designs really bring back lots of fond memories.

[nolemmings]

1966 Mankato MN, Ben Franklin at the Tempo shopping center. Rode my bike the 2 1/2 blocks, pulled a Sandy Valdespino in the first pack, although it may not have been the first card.
I was thrilled to nab a Twin, coming off their World Series appearance, even if he wasn't exactly the straw that stirred the drink. This is my card, but obviously not the one pulled that day:


On the other hand, this one was pulled around that same time, and I still have it:

[mark evans]

I collected only two sets as a kid -- 1958 Topps football and 1961 Topps baseball. I threw out the football cards after completing the set but still have the baseball cards, which I bought with my allowance at a Peoples drug store in the Wards Corner neighborhood of my hometown of Norfolk, Va.

[lumberjack]

An older boy (he was eight) gave me Topps cards of Sam Jones and Jackie Robinson as they were "doubles." Hey, why would you want TWO.

He said you could buy them at Kresge's in downtown Pontiac (Michigan).

My father took me there and sure enough there was a box of Topps cards right next to the weird-ass orange drink machine that kept the juice swirling from the top down.

We bought two packs and as I remember it, most of the cards were either Cleveland or the Browns and for the life of me, I have no idea what the wrappers looked like.

I was so thrilled by the idea of the cards that I had no idea those were drawings.

[Balticfox]

Originally Posted by mark evans

...which I bought with my allowance at a Peoples drug store in the Wards Corner neighborhood of my hometown of Norfolk, Va.

Did that People's drug store have an old fashioned soda fountain or luncheonette counter?

[Yoda]

This post reminds me of the loss we suffered this year with the passing of Teddy Z.