Tell some old collecting stories!

[tradebark]

What you consider old is up to you ;)

For me, it was about 10 years ago back when I was young(er) and collecting Grant Hills..

Funny thing back then is that I never really pulled anything big (despite spending quite a bit of money). Looking back, it's very likely that the stores I bought from searched packs for the big hits.. But then, in those days I didn't really care..

My best box break being (i believe) Topps or Topps Stadium Club.. Whichever one had the Rock Stars inserts. I got a Jordan Rock Stars and a Hill Rock Stars Refractor !

I still have both to this day, the Jordan I am about to trade, and the Hill I actually got autographed by Grant when he went on a promotional tour to the Philippines for Fila!

My other funny/spoiled story is when I was terrified of going to the Dentist (I think I had to have a root canal or something like that).. My mom ended up bribing me by saying she would buy me the Hill autographics that the store had in their window (at the time, it was for the full BV of $200)

Needless to say, I took that root canal like a man..

And of course I still have both cards :)
Picture of them here: http://nohunters.com/users/ravage/dispcase1.jpg

[WilyWestbrook0]

I remember getting very upset as a kid when my cat vomited into my box of basketball cards ..

[Buschmaster]

When I was younger my friend and I would get better and we'd get a Beckett and then we'd get loose change together and buy each other's cards. We always had a lot of KG cards, I wonder how many he has today. We should count them sometime over the summer. It's a ton. I remember when we'd buy packs we'd be upset if they didn't have KG, they probably could've had a Jordan auto and we'd be fine but other than that, we had to have the KG cards.

[dpeezy415]

A junior high buddy of mine helped co-invent a game with cards using one six-sided die. We would each select six cards from our own collection worth $100 total. The other person would assign a number to each of the six cards, and whatever number you roll you get that card. We each rolled twice and both of us always won!!!

Great memories, thanks...

[Daddy_G83]

I was at the local card shop and 95-96 Hoops Series 2 had just come out... I was 12 years old and broke... I managed to talk the store owner into trading a couple random packs for a few of my cards... I gave about $15-20 BV for 3-4 packs of Hoops... In the last pack I pulled a Michael Jordan Skyview insert(1 in 480 packs!)... I couldn't believe it... Wnet straight into a screw down holder... At the time it carried a $300 BV and I sold it the next week for $125... It's kinda nice to look in a beckett now and see that the Jordan only books for $60...

[swill300]

When I was a kid (mid 80's), my neighborhood was full of kids around my age. We would get together and bet stacks of cards (usually around 100) on who could flip cards into a bucket across the room in my basement. All day Saturday and Sunday we would do this all summer and kids would buy boxes and bet the commons. Needless to say, I practiced all day during the week so I could win most of the cards. About 3 years later between all the cards I won plus the ones I had bought myself I had approx. 12 million cards!!! Most of them were from 83-88, and I don't remember what happened to them.

Second story was a little later in life, about 1994-1996, I was a decent pool player and used to bet my cards playing 9 ball. I won quite a bit of good stuff playing, best I can remember was a bet where I put up 5 Tony Gwynn topps rc's and 3 Cal Ripken Donruss rc's for a 1975 Topps complete set. I did win the bet and the set.

[WilyWestbrook0]

ooh, reading these memories brought some others to surface that aren't as horrifying as the cat vomit memory, lol..like my random team assembling game!

About assembling these teams - I used to fling all my cards in a giant box as a kid (um, yeah, I wasn't aware of terms like 'mint' and stuff until later) where they would fall in a random manner. I would then scoop them around a bunch until they were totally mixed and I didn't know what was where..this gave me an opportunity to close my eyes and grope until I picked some random card. I'd take out random cards like this and assemble them into imaginary teams..man that was fun! Of course, this required player cards only, so if I picked up a team card or checklist or something, I'd have to toss it back and go for another card. I also had to make sure all the positions were even - if I picked 12 cards and I ended up with 5 or more guards/forwards or 3 or more centers, I'd put the worst player back in the box and sift around again until I got a player of the position I needed. :-)

[xarzy]

I remember a good story from when tim duncan was a rookie. I was living in Puedrto Rico at the time and every few months there would be collectibles conventions at different malls. During one of the conventions I went and bought a blaster box or press pass from which I greatly enjoyed my first big pull. if I remember correctly one of the boxes from the bunch (there were two different boxes) came with a 4screw case. I had gone through the boxes and put the au of some random rookie into the screw down. as I took my cards to one of thevendors I I noticed that one of the inserts was probably better than the au I put in the screw down.. I get to the booth and turned out the the insert was a tim duncan lottery pick inserted 1:720 I believe with an $80 bv. I was so excited.
I miss those old card shops and mall conventions

[mattyj]

I remember when i was about 14, a guy at my school pulled an autographed card from a pack of AFL (australian football) cards that me and another mate bought off him for $8 (he was happy, that was enough to get another 3 packs), then later that afternoon at a local card shop i managed to sell the auto for $80, and used the profits to "invest" in a box of 93/94 Fleer, what a great investment that was :)

[WilyWestbrook0]

ooooh.. I got a 93-94 Fleer series one basketball box for my 9th birthday..I got the Lottery Exchange card and sent it in - I thought that set was going to be worth oodles since the odds of pulling the exchange card were 1:360, lol

eventually got the set in the mail and wondered why it wasn't worth millions..:-)