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Karine's Thoughts

How it all started...and re-started

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I spend a fair amount of time looking around the blogs here on SCF to find good articles for the magazine and this morning, I came across an inspiring entry. In this entry one of our members was telling us how she got into collecting and as I really enjoyed her story, I thought I would share mine too...

The year was 1986, I was a very respectable 6 year old and we'd (me and my dad) had just finished watching the Cup final. A devoted Nordiques fan, he was far from being happy about the Habs winning the big prize but he seemed quite pleased about the fact that I had watched every single match with him, spending most of my time mimicking the moves of a certain goalie. The next day, dad got me my first hockey stick, much to mum's annoyance...We spent the whole summer in the yard playing and shooting in the net he made me.

For the next few years, we played and watched hockey religiously and then one day, he came home with a pack of Pro Set. That was it I was hooked! There and then, I started reading the back of the cards, drawing the players, memorizing the names, numbers and everything else about every single card. Soon enough, dad was coming back with a couple of packs every night. Although he would slip them to me at random points in the evening when mum wasn't looking...

Progressively, I built up quite a collection with many complete sets and of course boxes and boxes of dupes which were used either for "real hockey" games, 5 players and a goalie on each side and I would slide them all on the floor pretending they were playing a match...Hello scratches! By then, I had also become my dad's party trick. He would hide the name and number of a player on a card and ask me to identify him and I would do it in a flash, whether it was Mats Sundin or Bill Barber, it wasn't an issue I knew them all. Then he would move on to stats questions about any players and I'd ace that test too...good old days, I like to think this really helped developing my memory.

The years went on and I carried on collecting...until mum got so annoying with the "it's for boys" and "you're too old for this" lines that I just gave it up...I think I was about 14.

We now go forward in time to June 2006, things have changed, I am 26 living in England and stuck at home following a rupture of my left knee's anterior cruciate ligament. Having just finished watching a Canes-Oilers match of the cup final I think; Hey! I know what would cheer me up and make the time go faster: hockey cards! So, here I go on eBay and i start buying away...Having been out of the hobby for so long, I am completely extatic when my first box yields a Scott Niedermayer jersey (believing these to be extremely rare). However, this did not last long as a quick search for game-used on eBay revealed that they were pretty common.

Nevertheless, I carried on buying boxes and busting packs and to be honest it kept me alive during some very dark months. 8 months and 2 operations later, I remembered how nice it was to trade cards with my friends as a kid and I started wondering how I could do that...and yup soon enough i reverted to the internet and searched sports cards trade...and where did google take me? That's it on SCF...this was early March 2007, I stayed on as a guest for a while wondering if I should try to trade and finally on the 20th March, I signed up. Since then, I haven't looked back and I do not regret a single moment.

I took up collecting again because I was bored at home but today, I cannot even imagine how I would stop...I'm too old for mum to tell me what to do and I am out of her voice's reach...I think I'm hooked for good!
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Comments

  1. Inferno's Avatar
    Nice story Karine!

    By the way, you can use my most recent blog entry for the site if you want :)
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