The Card That Got You Hooked

[Cmvorce]

A few weeks ago I started a thread here about your favorite card in your collection. I loved reading all the stories that were posted – so much history and nostalgia and sentimental value.

That got me thinking about another topic – the card(s) that hooked you on the hobby and whether or not you still own them.

In 1987 I was 8 years old and visiting my uncle in Bloomsburg, PA. During that visit we stopped at a gas station and my mom bought me a pack of 87 Topps. At the time I had only a passing interest in baseball, and had never even seen a baseball card before. In that very first pack my mom bought for me was an 87 McGwire. I remember getting back to my uncle’s house and him telling me that that card could be worth serious money someday – but that I couldn’t get ketchup stains on it or fold it up in my pocket. He told me about how his father, my grandfather, had owned a grocery store in the 50s and 60s and would give him and his friends packs and packs of Topps to play with and trade. How he treated so many Mantle and Mays cards like they were worthless, trading them away for Robin Roberts’ and Johnny Callison’s because he was a Phillies fan, and how I couldn’t do that and had to keep the McGwire safe – it felt like a treasure I had stumbled upon. I was hooked on the cards before I was hooked on the sport, and throughout the year my mom would buy me a pack or, if I was lucky, two, every time she went to the grocery store.

By Christmas, I probably had 75% of the 87 Topps set complete, but was still missing one of the key pieces – the Jose Canseco Topps All Star Rookie. I loved those cards with the Rookie Cups. Such a simple concept but the guy who came up with that at Topps should have won employee of the year. My friends and I held Bruce Ruffin, Robby Thompson, Pete Incaviglia, etc in such higher regard than we should have because of that cup, but the prize was the Canseco.

On Christmas morning 1987 I found the complete set of Topps under the tree and I finally had my Canseco. Buying 50 cent packs for me every so often wasn’t a big deal for my mom, but spending for the complete set was huge. At the time, I thought Santa brought it, so that was lost on me, but looking back I know it was something we probably couldn’t afford. But paired with the McGwire that’s what did it for me. I had my treasure.

However, because boys are idiots, a few years later I was enticed into a trade. I sent the Canseco to a friend for a package headlined by an 83 Bench. I had never seen a 1983 card before – it might as well have been a 1953. I pulled the trigger and my 87 set was no longer complete.
I immediately regretted it. By this time I knew that my mom had bought me that set, and I knew that it was a sacrifice. I think it was at that moment that cards became more than cardboard for me. There was something more there, about baseball, and family, and sacrifice, and history, and fun.

Anyway, luckily for me the story has a happy ending. By 1991, the kid I traded the 87 Canseco to still had it. I had spent a few weeks piecing together a complete set of 1991 Fleer Pro Visions by identifying the black borders hidden in the yellow base cards in the wax packs. I traded the set to him for the Canseco and a few other cards. Here is a pic of that exact Canseco, and the McGwire from the very first pack of cards I ever opened. They’re kept alongside my Mantle and Mays and Robinson.

Do you still have the card(s) that got you hooked?

[Jcfowler6]

1959 Topps Roberto Clemente was a gift from my dad. He paid $10.25 for it in 1982. Never forget it.


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[Huysmans]

My first card is loooooong forgotten and to be honest, completely irrelevant and inconsequential....

my first piece of MEMORABILIA though is well remembered.

[Jason]

The 1989 Upper Deck Griffey Jr got me hooked on modern. A T206 Killian Portrait got me hooked on Vintage!

[clydepepper]

For a split-second, I thought they made a card for EVERY game I watched.


1964 Topps- World Series Game 1- Koufax Strikes Out 15 - PSA-8.jpg

[mikemcgrail]

1971 Topps Clemente was the card that started it all for me.

[Jcosta19]

1984 Topps Mattingly
He was /is my favorite player of my lifetime.
I had to ride my bike at age 13 about 6 miles each way every week to pay a few bucks at the local card shop until I paid it off (it was like $15-25) in the mid 90s.

Yes I still have it. Picked up a 84 Donruss for nostalgia purposes a year or 2 ago at a card show to go with it.

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[Exhibitman]

The first cards I really remember were 1971 Topps baseball and specifically Brooks Robinson. Still a favorite card.

[tulsaboy]

Sure! I still have the first cards from the first pack I opened, which was 1986 Topps. There was a Wade Boggs and an Eckersley in there. But the card that hooked me was the George Brett base card. When I got that one, I was in love. It's still safely in an 800 count box along with the rest of the 1986 set that I pieced together from packs with my dad. That will be the last box of cards that goes if I ever have to sell everything.
kevin

[ullmandds]

From my early collecting days...I recall desiring the 1975 topps mvp cards...the 1976 cards depicting all time greats...but I think the 1977 Burger King Pinella stands out as being a card I always coveted due to it's limited print run. I didn't acquire one until my 30's!

[skil55voy]

For me it's the 1962 Post Cereal Willie Mays. My favorite player on the back of a cereal box while pushing the shopping cart for my mom in the Food Fair. I saw the box, got excited and she bought the cereal. Still have my original card.

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by tulsaboy

Sure! I still have the first cards from the first pack I opened, which was 1986 Topps. There was a Wade Boggs and an Eckersley in there. But the card that hooked me was the George Brett base card. When I got that one, I was in love. It's still safely in an 800 count box along with the rest of the 1986 set that I pieced together from packs with my dad. That will be the last box of cards that goes if I ever have to sell everything.
kevin

I also started with '86 Topps, age 9. The cards I still have that I know are originals I pulled from packs in '86, I can tell because some of them have thumbtack holes through them.

[dio]

First Card I owned got me hooked
1987 topps jose canseco, grew up in bay area when i was a kid, he and Will Clark are my favorite player

First Card i don't owned as a kid but got me hooked
1986 Donruss Jose Canseco, my dream card when i was a kid

First vintage card i bought when i get back into this hobby
1954 topps hank aaron SGC 7 for $1200

[robw1959]

My first vintage card was a 1958 Topps regular issue card of Brooks Robinson. The $3 price tag for the rookie version seemed a bit steep to me, a 15-year-old at the time (1975), so I opted for his second year card, and it was pretty sharp, probably in solid excellent condition. The price was 75 cents. No, I don't still have it.

[Bigdaddy]

For me, it was a 1971 Willie Mays. The neighbor next door had recently moved in and we went back to the barn in his backyard where there was a stash of baseball cards left by the previous owner. We divided them up three ways and I got the Willie Mays, creases and worn corners and all. It was a true 'barn find' and started me down an on-again, off-again relationship with little pieces of cardboard.

And yes, I still have it. Recently put it in as part of a '71 set I was working on. It's by far the worst condition card in the set.

[nickedson]

The one card that triggered my passion for collecting was a 1959 Topps Red Wilson. He was in the first pack of baseball cards I bought that summer when I was 6-years-old. My mom made such a big deal out of me getting a Detroit Tiger in my first pack of cards that my dad came in from the next room. They were both teachers and my dad was a coach. So sports ran in our blood. But from that summer day in 1959 right through today, I’ve been a collector. And yes, I still have that 1959 Topps Red Wilson.

[25801wv]

The 1985 Topps McGwire got me hooked. It was the first single card I ever purchased. It was $20 in late 1987. Over the last 10 or 15 years it seems like I have always had a PSA 10 or even once I had a BGS 10. However, now I have no Gem Mint copies. Wish I would have kept the BGS as it is now out of my price range.

The most exciting card I ever opened from a pack was the 1986 Donruss Canseco in 1988. Once again it always seems like I had a PSA 10 or even once I had a BGS 10 and now only a PSA 8

In 1990 I opened a pack of Leaf that had TWO Frank Thomas rookies. It was nice but didn’t match that original Canseco feeling. That is one of my only PSA 10s that I do have.

[Cmvorce]

Great stories, guys. Thanks for sharing

[abothebear]

I can't remember what it was as a kid. I do remember opening 1985 packs and looking for the USA cards. I remember the McDonalds football cards from 1986 being all the rage at my school. I loved those cards. And I remember when the first 87 cards came out and being very interested in what the new design would be.

For prewar, I was searching ebay for some of the old Cardinals greats to see what was out there. I saw the Gold Medal Foods Ducky Medwick listed for around ten dollars and I couldn't believe it. It never occurred to me that the old cards that seemed the stuff of legend when I collected cards as a kid could be so easily acquired. And the R313A set was ideal to draw me in, being a small set relatively inexpensive, packed with HOFers, and made of players of my two favorite teams. Serendipitous. Turns out the Medwick was mis-listed so there was a chance that it wasn't widely seen when I found it. That also got me hooked - that bargain hunting aspect. Soon after, I got a pretty good deal on the National Game Runner Sliding that likely pictures Cobb. I never thought I'd own a 100-year-old Ty Cobb card.

[unionman66]

Originally Posted by nickedson

The one card that triggered my passion for collecting was a 1959 Topps Red Wilson. He was in the first pack of baseball cards I bought that summer when I was 6-years-old. My mom made such a big deal out of me getting a Detroit Tiger in my first pack of cards that my dad came in from the next room. They were both teachers and my dad was a coach. So sports ran in our blood. But from that summer day in 1959 right through today, I’ve been a collector. And yes, I still have that 1959 Topps Red Wilson.

That's great. My story is similar 14 years later. My first Detroit Tiger was a 1973 Jim Northrup. Don't remember if that was in the first pack of cards I ever got, but he's the first I remember. He became my favorite Tiger. Then he got traded during the '74 season.

[Lila2222]

Really interesting reading all the stories! I first started collecting soccer cards around 12-13 and would buy them from the UK and wait months for a pack to come. I found a Paul Gascoigne one day and was hooked but then realized baseball cards were much easier to come by. I was rather naive though to the older cards until recently. My first 'real' card was/is a Beals Becker T206 gifted to me by a special friend that definitely has been around but it got me into the older cards and the histories of the players! I find it remarkable these cards and others are still around despite being over a hundred years old.

[GasHouseGang]

I only had a small stack of cards left from when I was a kid. But this is one I saved and it got me started collecting again.

[Kidnapped18]

1987 Topps Bo Jackson - I received this card from my parents for my 11th birthday! This will always be one of my favorites.

[ASF123]

But when my Dad began telling me stories of his favorite athlete and baseball player as I was frowing up around 2011, this was one of the cards that I found in his sports shoe box. A 1997 Upper Deck SP Inside Info #1 of Ken Griffey Jr.

Wait...there are collectors now who got into cards by finding 1997 Ken Griffey Jr. cards in their dad's shoebox??

My God, I'm old.

[GasHouseGang]

Andrew, trust me I know how you feel!

[maj78]

First card(s) I owned that got me hooked:
1986 Topps Joe Montana & Jerry Rice

First vintage card I purchased when I got back into the hobby:
1909 E95 Phil Caramel Ty Cobb PSA 4


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[campyfan39]

1982 at the North Carolina state fairgrounds in Raleigh's weekly "flea market" with my mom getting supplies for her macrame side job when Dad and I saw a booth called "Paper Heroes." We went in and it was like a time machine for my Dad who was born in '49. All of his cards were tossed but that day he bought 4 cards (pictured below). He eventually bought an album and 9 pocket pages so he trimmed the Ford and Collins so they would fit (despite Mom's advice not to do so!)

The card that got me hooked was this '58 Mick. It was on the back wall where the "good cards" were for weeks. It was labeled at $25. I was only 10 but after about 2 months of regular visits I got up the nerve to ask the man if he would take $20. He said yes! On the way home I was reading the back and Dad, from the front seat, asked "Does it have a cartoon of Mickey swinging a bat with a crown on his head?" I said "Yes, how could you possibly know that?" He replied, "I had a stack of them."

This spurred us on a quest to "Buy Back Dad's Cards" which I even wrote a book about. Dad passed almost 20 years ago at the tender age of 53 but his memory lives on through these cards.
God Bless

[egri]

The 1949 Bowman Bobby Doerr was the one that did it for me. It was in 2006, so I was around 11 or so and saw it at my LCS. The shopkeeper agreed to put it on layaway until after about six weeks I had enough saved up to buy it. It cost $60, if memory serves me right. I had recently gotten Doerr's address from another collector, and while paying for the card mentioned sending it TTM, and even before I had finished the sentence he was shaking his head no. A few months later, it disappeared when we had company over. Several years later, when I was in college and starting to get back in to cards, I came across a lot of three 1949 Bowmans on eBay: Doerr, Al Dark, and Eddie Stanky, for less than I had paid for just Doerr in the first place. Buying vintage in those days for me was buying champagne on a beer budget, but I dug deep enough for the trio, and the day they arrived, I packed up Doerr and Dark and sent them TTM. They both came back signed, and for Dark, it was one of the last autographs he signed; he died a couple of weeks after it came back.