Recalling the good old days of card collecting

[john1170]

Every so often I find myself shuffling through my cards from the late 70's just as a reminder for what it was like when I was a kid growing up. I am nostalgic like that. I can drive my wife crazy going through all my stuff from when i was a kid. Cards do it the most for me. Looking at the cards I can remember where I was when the first packs hit the shelves and I got a few. Dad would spring for the .49 for the rack packs or .25 for the wax.(LOL) I can remember sitting in the car for the first day of practice for little league opening a 79 rack pack that i hand picked because it showed a Yankee on top. Nobody cared what they were worth. The special card in the set was your favorite teams guys or that all star or those little Trophy's that topps would put on the card if they were on the Topps Rookie team. Didn't matter who the player was, it was like I got one of the trophy cards. If it was a Yankee or a card that showed the all star logo then i wanted it. Those cards also seemed to have a distinct smell to it that to this day still stays on the card. I used to get 1978 Kiss cards that were issued by Donruss back then(didn't make baseball yet) and their gum had a lot of sugar on them and the smell seemed to stick with it forever. Thumbing through my set the other day i pulled one out of the binder and low and behold that same smell is still on the card. Sometimes my wife will ask "why the hell are you smelling that card?" and I just tell her that she won't understand. That smell brought back memories of being a kid. I don't think any cards from today will ever bring back a memory like that. Sitting on the driveway with my friends flipping cards, carrying them around in my back pocket and not in a top loader. Seeing who could build the 726 card set the fastest. Cards sure do bring back a lot of memories for me. Anyone else have these feelings about the good old days?

Thanks for listening.

[BlackDiam0nd66]

You bet John!!

Unfortunatly, I only have like 15 cards left from when I was a kid...one is a Franco Harris RC and another is a Staubach of the same year(73)..I have them in my wallet! They are so thrashed, but there is no way i would ever let them go! Back then I had probably 100 cards of players, and I would string up thread across my bedroom, and tape the cards to it, kind of like a streamer of cards going from one end of my bedroom to the other :D

I always smelled my cards too...LOL....I can STILL remember the smell of the gum that came in the packs :) Do you remember the Sugar Daddy cards?? Man, those were so cool to me! I remember having a Kareem, Staubach, and I believe I had a Dr J as well. Too bad they are all gone now :( I used to trade for them with my friends, i would give them candy, i would get the cards! I was a wheeler & dealer from day one :D

I always collected the Dodgers....I took all my Dodger cards and glued them into a scrapbook I made, I had tickets from games, newspaper clipping, all sorts of stuff in that scrapbook! Even the scrapbook was homemade :) What I wouldn't give to have it back again. My favorite card of all time was my Steve Garvey Dodger membership card I had. I think I pasted it in the scrapbook as well......Garvey was my IDOL!! I used to pretend I was him when we would play ball in the backyard or in the street, I even made my own shirt (a white T shirt, I wrote Garvey and 6 on it...lol) I wore that sucker out!! I also had a fitted cap I used to wear all the time. My best memory was going to a game for my 13th birthday, it was against the Pirates (77 season) and Garvey hit a home run and the Dodgers won 6-2. I have never forgotten that!!

Wow John....thanks for taking me back for a time!! I do think about it at times, but it's nice to know I am not the only one who can enjoy the good old days!!

Peace,
Rima

[j.e.lew]

I think I'm gonna cry.... God, I miss thoes days. I remember getting 50 cents for doing some chores and riding my bike as fast as I could to the corner store and getting 2 packs of cards. Unfortunatly... My parents and I were about to leave to go somewhere and I did'nt have permission to go to the store, and got yelled at like you would'nt beleive for doing this. My dad asked for the cards and was Pissed! He looked through them, saw I got the Cubs team card and said at least you got a good one. And gave them back to me.

Ahh, Those were the days!

[john1170]

Thanks for sharing with me. My wife sometimes says to me "how many times do you have to talk about your childhood?" LOL I like hearing stories and telling my own like this.

[BlackDiam0nd66]

lol John...hey...the way i see it, childhood was the carefree days!!! no worries about bills, heartbreak, death, etc etc....I wish i could think the way I did during childhood....maybe I wouldnt be as warped as I am now!! LOL :p

Peace,
Rima

[BGray]

Great thread! I still love finding the gems I didn't know I had after someone that has been sitting in my commons had a break out year! That's an awesome feeling.

Doesn't happen with the older cards really but I also thumb through them as well. I'm with ya John. I know I'm not going to find anything in the old stuff but it's like going back in time for me.

It's really wierd, I can associate a lot of events in my life with years because of sports cards and remembering what I was collecting when something happened.


75 CC to John and Rima.

BGray

[Justnuts]

I used to take my weekly allowance and buy a box of 65 Topps. It cost $1.25 for a box back then! I'd buy one box a week and the guy at the corner grocery store always made sure he had at least one full box in stock for me lol. I also remember buying the 63 Fleer cards. Gawd that cookie was awful that came with it LOL. I can still taste it as a matter of fact. And I'm a card sniffer too :D.
There's something about that smell of cards that will instantly take me back to the good old days when I'd trade with the kids on the block.

Cards didn't have a monetary value back then. If you wanted a certain card of a player you liked you just traded whatever the other kid wanted and you were both happy. Oh yeah and don't forget putting that card in the spokes of your bike because it made it sound cool lol. And...I probably shouldn't reveal this, but my mom never threw out my cards from back then. I still have them all :)

I really miss those days too. Today it's just price guides and "untouched" cards and even graded newspaper clippings! And how did we ever survive back then without Beckett and Ebay? Seriously though, I'm afraid once us old timers are gone, those days will be gone forever too. I wish I knew of a way to instill the real joys of collecting to today's kids as we had it back then. The memories we have are far more valuable then anything we could ever buy.

Ok I'm done rambling. Time to get the 65's out again and start sniffing.

[Heartattaq]

Originally posted by Justnuts
I used to take my weekly allowance and buy a box of 65 Topps. It cost $1.25 for a box back then! I'd buy one box a week and the guy at the corner grocery store always made sure he had at least one full box in stock for me lol. I also remember buying the 63 Fleer cards. Gawd that cookie was awful that came with it LOL. I can still taste it as a matter of fact. And I'm a card sniffer too :D.
There's something about that smell of cards that will instantly take me back to the good old days when I'd trade with the kids on the block.

Cards didn't have a monetary value back then. If you wanted a certain card of a player you liked you just traded whatever the other kid wanted and you were both happy. Oh yeah and don't forget putting that card in the spokes of your bike because it made it sound cool lol. And...I probably shouldn't reveal this, but my mom never threw out my cards from back then. I still have them all :)

I really miss those days too. Today it's just price guides and "untouched" cards and even graded newspaper clippings! And how did we ever survive back then without Beckett and Ebay? Seriously though, I'm afraid once us old timers are gone, those days will be gone forever too. I wish I knew of a way to instill the real joys of collecting to today's kids as we had it back then. The memories we have are far more valuable then anything we could ever buy.

Ok I'm done rambling. Time to get the 65's out again and start sniffing.

Not even old timers I am only 27 and I feel the same way. Now of course we never stuck them in our spokes in those days we had a little gadget that slid over our handlebar that you could turn like a real motorcycle to make that sound :D. But I also come from a time when you traded what you wanted for what you didn't want. I remember trading hundreds of cards for that last card to finish a particular set.
With the advent of the internet it has broadened trading horizons which is great. But with the introduction of price guides and ebay it unfortunately has turned hocjey card trading into a Business of sorts, even for the "true hobby collector".
By that I mean I have come across substantially more traders online need to get the "BV's" the same down to the last penny than traders who say I will give you this card for that card no matter what the cost. I myself usuall let the other trader dictate the trade sa long as I get something that interests me I am happy, but it is a shame that the dollar was introduced because to some if not the majority of the younger kids that is all it is about anymore, chasing that SP"ed rookie or dual auto or signed patch, just to see how much they can get for it on the bay or wherever, they have no sense of what the hobby is really about, like when I was a kid throwing cards against the wall or into a hat to see who got closest and won th ebatch, or for you guys sticking the Gretzky rookie in your spokes for the cool sound, or the thrill of finishing a set, which is next to impossible with half the cards being so short printed that it puts the ste out of reach.

[Justnuts]

Now of course we never stuck them in our spokes in those days we had a little gadget that slid over our handlebar that you could turn like a real motorcycle to make that sound .

Sighhhhhhh technology LOL

[slugger21]

From the time that I was about 6 years old until about 10 yrs old we had a card shop about 3 blocks away. Every day that my parents would allow me to do something with my friends we would always got to the store on our bikes with about .50 cents and would buy one pack of cards or we would spend .25 cents to put a quater in a machine and get a "special" card....I have so many of those quarter machine cards in a special book that I can hardly count them....When we would buy the packs I was opening them for the cards but my friends just opened them for the crappy rock-hard gum that they put in them....I used to hate the gum sometimes because it would make marks on my cards and would ruin some of them. Now some of my favorite cards are the 03 Bazookas since they still put the gum in the packs for a reasonable price of .99 cents. I think that you guys (and gals) have had enough of me sharing my childhood memories so I'll stop now. LOL