Your first memory, please, of collecting cards.

Don't be bashful.

You can include fond memories, and be explicit!

Not sure about explicit......

My first purchasing of cards was 1976 Topps baseball. I also bought Wacky Packages and, of course, Star Wars by the pack too. I'm 41, so I was 10 in 1976. Perfect timing for starting a life-long hobby. Bought heavily in 1978 and 1979 and then for some reason lightly in 1980. 1981 was the big year cause there was CHOICE in the baseball world. I was 15 or so and bought packs of Topps, Fleer & Donruss, found card shops pretty plentiful and picked up a magazine put out by Renata Galasso. After I finished my 1981 Topps set, I saw that Galasso had the update sets, so I bought that from her. Guess that was the way Topps could differentiate themselves Fleer & Donruss after losing the court case.

Ensuing years was much the same, wax, wax, wax. Didn't spend a TON of time on non-sports. I bought my first 19th century non-sports card at an antique show in Bashford Manor Mall here in Louisville. Probably circa 1984-1985. I was pulling in $3.50 per hour at the popular watering hole of Baskin Robbins and the mall had antique shows probably quarterly. Couple of card dealers there, so I'd pick up some old baseball but found an N86 Dukes Scenes of Perilous Occupations card. Think it was the one picture a Steeple Painter of a church but I cannot be 100% sure. So that started the non-sports. Didn't really grow that bug until the late 1990's, so it was dormant while the baseball bug raged on.

Started doing shows locally in Louisville, Cincinnati and the surrounding areas in the late 1980's through late 1990's. My dad helped out a lot with those and started collecting some baseball items himself. Mostly autographs. The camraderie of hanging out with my dad while doing shows was great too. EXCEPT for travelling shows where we slept in the same room. Or at least, HE slept cause he snores HEAVILY. Anyway, went to my firs national in 1992 and been ever since. Went to the first one with my soon-to-be ex-wife. Got to go to 1993 with my dad. That worked much better........

Great times.........

Summer nights in Connecticut mid 1950's. The constant banter of lovesick bullfrogs, the occasional bellow of an unhappy cow, and the call of Red Barber on the radio. The glow of radio tubes lit the room and you could almost see Mickey and Yogi and the Moose. My parents were very strict when it came to eating candy and other junk, but somehow overlooked our constant consumption of gum from Topps baseball cards. We bought them at a mom and pop store which was half way home from our walk to school. It seems more like the 1800's. Before the interstate highways, before constant television, while planes crashed every month. A time of duck & cover and Yankee baseball.

1958. Englewood New Jersey. Bought some wax at the local candy/liquor/soda fountain/comic book store (they used to multi-task in those days lol). Distinctly remember walking back home, opening the packs and seeing a Tony Kubek with the orange background. Should have kept those wrappers or better yet, just put the unopened wax packs away. Who knew? I probably started buying wax in 1957, but you asked for the first distinct memory.

My first memory of cards was in either 1955 or 1956 when my older brother gave me a penny for myself and either a dime or a quarter to buy some 1952 Bowman Baseball cards that were repacked into a clear cello pack containing either 10 to 15 cards. I can remember buying a pack with Musial on the front of the pack because of how beautiful his uniform was. I do believe either Bowman (or Topps) were dumping 'old' product and just trying to get some money out of out dated inventory.
My own personal first memory is buying first series 1957 Topps cards and getting Mantle over and over. I think he ended up being a bicycle spoke card. At that time, the gum was the big piece and my friends and I would try to throw it onto a roof across the block. Oh, to be young again!
Sorry if this post appears twice I was interrupted and don't remember if I hit respond or not!

Local ballpark, fall of 1952, night game. Bought two packs of baseball cards, and older kid next to me told me two of the cards were no good because the player had been traded.

Jon.

In 1966, trading for a set of Batman (orange backs) cards with a neighbor for my father's watch when I was eight years old. My father was displeased with the deal upon finding out about it.

Richard--Sounds like a good deal to me, you started owning nothing and ended up with a Batman set.
My first card memory was going with my mom to an older cousin's house. It must have been around 1959. He had gone off to college and all his cards were in a big cardboard box. To keep me out of everyone's hair(I was 9) his mother gave me the box to look at and told me I could take any cards I wanted. The cards, which were all baseball, went from the 1948 bowman set through the 1956 Topps set. I picked out about fifty star cards and took those home. As soon as I figured out what years the cards were from I wrote the years in ink on the front borders so I wouldn't forget.
Although I bought packs prior to 1960 I still remember opening 1960 baseball packs for the first time and thinking how ugly the horizontal format cards looked. My first memory of non-sports cards was the Mars Attacks set. I opened lots of those packs and probably made two or three sets. I also remember Civil War News cards and the currency inserts. I bought most of my cards at Sam Stroller's candy store on Walton Avenue in the Bronx. He made the best chocolate egg creams ever.

Did you have difficulty in figuring out how much to put towards chocolate eggs versus 1960 Topps? Having a sweet tooth (and matching gut), I'd have had similar problems.....although I skipped quite a few lunches in 1976-7 to take the 75 cents to buy cards. My mom had this little milk glass bowl in her bedroom and would put a roll of quarters in it. I was EXPECTED to take 3 out on a daily basis to get my lunch until the roll lasted. It would rarely last the 12-13 days it should. Generally about 7-8. Lots of questions about those finances.....

Tom--I was a fat little kid and I divided my money between comic books, ice cream, soda and candy bars(payday was my favorite) and cards.

that you were ever fat.........

5' 170lbs---I dropped all the fat in high school and have managed to keep it off

Charlie and I first met at school in the 4th grade. A new school which was built 2 houses from me on the East, and, across the street from him on the South. Fourth grade. 1954.

Charlie walked with a brace on his right leg, and he was a hemophiliac. Charlie could not partake in physical education, and could not horse around with the guys. Any bump on him would result in large bruises, and possibly bleeding to death. His father took him to Gillette Hospital at the University of Minnesota once a month for transfusions to try to increase the clotting factor.

He was shunned by most of the grade school kids, but we became good friends.

So, one day, after school, he invites me over to his house, not more than 300 feet from my house. We go in, I met his mother, she gave us cocoa and cookies, and started watching Howdey Doody, and a bunch of black and white Western movies on TV. Then, he takes me downstairs.

His father was a Sea Bee during WW2, and now running his own exterior and interior carpentry company, building homes. Man! You should have seen that basement! All paneled by him in solid oak, with framed Hawaiian bills, Jap flags, etc.

So, then, we go upstairs to Charlie's bedroom. Solid oak paneling, and a built-in 16 cubic foot aquarium, scrolled and decorated with solid oak to hide the glass seams.

Then, his uncle Scott would drive up 3 times a week in his red 1951 Hudson Hornet convertible, and give Charlie 10 cellopacks of Topps Wings. Man, 30 packs a week, for about 20 weeks. We opened all those packs and carefully organized them by number. I would run home and back, giving Charlie Cheerios premiums plastic pistols, and other cereal premiums I had, in trade for his duplicate Wings.

I was hooked!

My first experience with non-sport cards happened in 1973 when Topps issued the first series of Wacky Packages stickers. I lived only 3 blocks from downtown Urbana, Ohio. My 2 brothers and I would walk to "Carmazzi's" which was a New York style candy/everything shop located right on the town square. It was a tiny little shop with barely enough room to shuffle down the 2 dinky isles. But if you needed something - he had it! It didn't matter what it was - from toothpicks to deodorant he had it all. He also had every type of penny candy and sport and non-sport cards. We would buy bunches of Wacky Packages, some kind of fizzy candy, and 3 foot long pixie sticks. (I think I can still feel the sugar buzz to this day!) Then on the way home we would buy foot long coney dogs from the Dairy store which was one block away. (Yes my brother and I were little butter balls!) That's where we would tear into the packs - laughing at the jokes and getting coney sauce on our stickers.

Anyway, in 1999-2000 I started my own trading card company called NostalgiCards. I went back to my hometown and met up with John Carmazzi who still runs the little shop today. He remembered me (as we were buying cards by the full box from him throughout the 70's and 80's). And he decided to carry my cards in his shop. They even ran an article in the paper on us. It was a very special moment for me as that little shop really helped make me the collector I am today.

This was a great thread that Keith started . . . more memories, gang?

** BUMP **

What a great old thread. My earliest memory is 1971 Topps Partridge Family. I had the hots for Susan Dey. I traded all my non Susan cards at a 3-1 ratio. So I never achieved a complete set, but it didn't matter.

Late 1985, my brother and I spot a pink box high on the upper shelf of a candy rack - clearly out of reach for us 5 and 8 year olds. We acquire several packs of a new series of gum cards that would later take the country by storm - Garbage Pail Kids.

It wasn't easy at first being the sole possessor (at least in my small town) of the coolest cards on the planet. My greatest marketing ploy to promote this incredible concoction of all that I deemed good in the world of kid-dom occurred on Valentines Day 1986. While kids in my 2nd grade class dropped various standard issue Valentines into colorful red and white hand-made construction paper mail boxes, I counteracted with a rebellious gesture. After giving it some thought, each classmate received one 1st edition GPK from my humble dogeared collection. The next week everyone had their own handful of GPK's, and the rest is grade-school history.

Mine unfortunately took a dive out of my desk during an afternoon math lesson. Mrs. Burnett (actual name - no need to protect the guilty) promised a prompt return of my beloved cards at the end of the school year. Mid June 1986, excitement in the air - I shyly meander to Burnett's desk to retrieve my gold, only to hear an all too common line, "I don't know what happened to them Jeff, they disappeared...".

Rumor has it the principal had a small bonfire...this coming from several reliable sources. Didn't matter, Third Editions were already in the pharmacy's, and summer was in the air....

I can not remember how I got started collecting, but my first memory was trading cards with my fellow classmates in middle school in 1987. I had a lot of decent cards but did not get serious until a few years later. I can remember going to the Kentucky Flea Market every month and cleaning house. Could get great deals and the dealers would love to trade with younger collectors. They use to have about a hundred card booths set up there and now only have a handful. So sad!

Tom, you brought back great memories of the Bashford Manor Mall. (Do you know that the whole mall now is gone, including Bacon’s? All leveled) I used to work at Bacon's in 1991-93 and would take my lunch break to buy cards when they had the shows at the mall. I did several shows in the mid 90's and just about sold off my entire collection. I started back up in 2002 and had a nice collection going until I started to collect whiskey bottles, namely Maker's Mark. Now I am back to collecting cards. I am having a really great time collecting non-sport cards. They are easy to get over sports and they are very affordable as well.

David

I vaguely remember that when I was 5 in 1963 my mother told me I could have my choice of anything at the checkout counter if I helped look after my sister while she was shopping in the grocery store. I chose a bright red pack of the bi-lingual version of Treasure Island cards and worked for two years trying to complete that set. When I gave up at 7-8 I still had three cards to go. I remember the numbers 2,13 and 49. By 1964 The Beatles cards had come out and they were all the rage until word spread that there were Batman cards. When Batman started coming out with (IMO) too many sets I remember moving on to Hockey cards and 1966 Marvel Super Heroes cards.

In 1991 I was on the phone with my parents who came down to the South every year to spend Christmas with us, I mentioned that I had hidden all my cards, hundreds and hundreds of them in a certain place in the house. That year my parents loaded the cards into the car and when they arrived I went out to the car and virtually every card I had ever collected was there.

The next time I was up north to visit I went to a card store and I didn't see a single non-sport card. I asked the owner if he had any non-sports he said go behind the door in the back wall and there were row after row of non-sports from about the 1950-1975. I bought out as much of that stash as I could afford at 5 cents a card.

When I got them back to my parents house I looked through about 150 Treasure Island cards and found the three cards I needed to complete that set-that was in 93 so I can honestly say it took me 30 years to complete that #@##@# set.

Best
Gary

I'm with Richard L. I used to have a photo of myself (I was 6), holding up a Partridge Family card of Susan Dey. It was from the green set, so I could spot value even back then - LOL. I do remember buying 1970 Topps racks and presentation boxes in the variety store near my house, but that is on the sports side of cards.

First card trauma related memory was getting knocked by some older kids while we were flipping cards in the playground. For whoever doesn't know "knocking" is when someone would slap all the cards out of your hand while your were flipping. This led to the inevitable race of picking up as many as you could, while the bullies did the same.

Back . . . back . . . baaaaaaack ........

Uhhhh .... I see pyramids ..... and sand, lots and lotsa sand......  seem to be in some, um, ancient court, somewhere. 

Hmm, I think I must be a royal transportation minister or something. No, wait a minute. Looks like I am actually working in a stable or something.  Hmm, shoveling that bad stuff, not so good.  Okay, okay . . . but anyway, now here's my home.  There look to be, what, cardboard? No, papyrus trading cards on the shelf of my closet...... Hey, I can maybe make out a few titles ..... hmm .... Babylon Attacks . . . .  Horrors of  War Against the Roman Empire . . .  wait, now, it's all fading out . . . .  well, that was too far back . . .

Fast forward a few centuries . . . OK. 

Now this is more like it:

I was probably about 8 years old or so, standing in front of the neighborhood variety store, Lindner's, in the western suburbs of Chicago, in the late 1950s, opening pack after pack of baseball cards.  (Probably more like 5 packs, since I'd never have more than 25 cts in my pocket, but it seemed like a lot.)   We kids were like machines:  take out the pink slab of gum and stuff into one's mouth; throw the wrapper on the ground; quickly evaluate the new cards ("got it, got it, don't got it, don't got it, got it -- jeez, another Jim Landis card!") and then slap the new cards onto the big stack in my back pocket and toss the wrapper on the ground.  Start the next pack. Can remember specific card fronts very well.  I am placing this memory at about 1958 or 1959.  When we had used up money we'd scrounged, we'd have to hunt through the weed-overgrown empty lot, next-door to Lindner's, to find empty bottles to return for the deposit.  Was either 1ct or 2cts deposit, and we almost always could find enough for at least another 5 ct pack.. 

First non-sports card memory was from around that same time period.  Foney Ads showed up at Lindners and quickly became the rage of the playground at the local parochial school.  We'd never seen anything like it -- so irreverent and funny.  Never completed the entire set but probably had most of the cards.  Clear favorite was Rats Crackers, which later led to Wacky Packs (which borrowed and perfected the ad parody concept, couple decades later.)  The biggest non-sport sets in the next few years were Spook Stories and then Civil War News.  CWN was huge huge huge, nothing ever like it before or after.  Every last boy in the school was building and trading for a set.

Running down to the corner store with my nickel to get a pack of 1968 Topps baseball cards. I got most of the set that year, then my mom didn't let me collect anymore until 1973 when I had my paper route & was earning my own money. Still have the original cards (including a nice Nolan Ryan rookie card). We played games with the cards so most of the stars got beat up a bit. Ryan was on one of the two-player cards so it wasn't worth anything in our games so it (fortunately!) went into the back of the box. Collected baseball cards in 73 & 74 then got involved in high school sports & lost interest.

I got back into sports cards in 1987 when they started to become popular. When I was home visiting my folks one time around then I mentioned the T206 Honus Wagner tobacco card and how much it was worth. My mom told me that they had found a box of old cards in my grandfather's stuff after he'd passed away. Well, we went up into the attic and found an old box of about 200 or so cards - mostly tobacco non-sports, some caramel cards including boxers, and yes!! there was a Honus Wagner in there. Unfortunately, it wasn't a T206, but an E95.... (still, can't complain!)

I set all the old cards aside in an album figuring I'd never see another one and continued to collect sports cards for several years. Finally getting sick of all the hype and greed in the "hobby" at that time, I started looking around for something else to collect. I was looking at the old cards one day & thought I'd see what else I might be able to find. I got a lead on a non-sports magazine called the Wrapper (some of you might be vaguely familiar with it) and sent my money in for a subscription. I started buying tobacco card lots and trading some of my extra sports cards for tobacco cards (a great deal in my opinion). Along the way in my search I realized that there weren't any good references so I started building my own files and checklists. That then led eventually to linking up with Terry Mitchell & writing a book!

This is a great thread. Thanks for resurrecting it Ralph!

As with many others, my first memory starts with baseball cards. In the late 50's through mid 60's, my dad worked for the A&P in Brooklyn (plant/factory was in Bush Terminal). As the Superintendent of Shipping and Receiving, one of his duties was to oversee the daily trash collection from the plant. He became very good friends with the owner/driver of the trash hauling company. Also on this guys route was the Topps plant. He would often give my dad uncut sheets that Topps had tossed. My older brother and I would sit at the kitchen table at night and cut up all the sheets. We always had more cards than any of our friends, but they were all hand cut (by kids) and raggedy!

Oh to have those uncut sheets back! But because they were free, they were disposable. As each new year came out, we tossed the old ones.


Occasionally, my dad would take out the old cards he had collected as a kid. 1933 Goudeys, Indiam Gum, U.S. Caramel Presidents, Gum Inc. Wild West, and more. He had saved them all. They later became the basis for my collection. His favorite was what he called the "big cards." I have often shown these on the Baseball board. They are 1932 NY Giants Schedule Postcards.



(Apologies for showing baseball on the non-sports board, but the thread brought back memories.)

Aieeeeeeeeeyah!!!!

What a nightmare scene -- you can just see it: those grimey little Van B brothers at their kitchen table, back in the 1950s. Two kids busily and quickly hacking apart uncut Topps BB sheets, blobs of ketchup smearing the backs and fried chicken grease fingerprints gracing the fronts. Oh, Lord, the horror !!!

1952 was my first year with cards. And I really did not know the baseball players apart. So, they were not very impressive to me. And the next year was not much better for me. In between, I think was Look N' See. But although the hidden information on the back was a nice variation. The subject matter of the cards was the historical figures which we were learning about in school = yuck!

Then all of a sudden there were cars! Lots of 'em! Old, new, futuristic and fascinating. Ohhh, this I liked. Then before this quieted down for me, there were airplanes! Whoaaa! Lots of 'em.

By '54 I was beginning to understand who was who in baseball. But before I got hooked on that there were trains! How things changed since way back in 1952. Thank you Topps for Wings, Wheels and Rails - I got totally hooked on baseball before you released the Sails part.

But not totally. There was Flags, Davy, there was Roundup - a set I actually finished! And more.

Just to clarify, I was born in 1955, so most of my cutting was done in the early 60's. Any early cutting would have been done with those plastic safety scissors.

My brother (born in 1946) was the chief cutter in the 1950's.

The rest of Ralph's picture is, unfortunately, very accurate.

This thread deserves a bump!




My earliest memory of trading cards was when my older sisters and I would collect baseball cards in, I think, 1971-72. We were living in a place where the local TV stations were coming out of Cincinnati, so we were big Reds fans. (This was also when the Reds were doing really well in the playoffs.)

A few years later I saw my first non-sports cards in the form of the mid-70's Planet of the Apes and Star Trek sets. Then in 1977 I saw a girl at school who was looking what I instantly knew were Star Wars cards, first series, and that started an absolute mania that lasted for a few years.

As an adult I am going back and collecting the cards I like - mostly older issues but also some new ones.

I got laid up in 2nd grade and spent most of the year in bed. My neighbor's son was a few years older. I didn't really know him, but one day either he or his mother came over with a paper bag full of cards. I must have known about other cards because I knew these were small. In retrospect from "Johnny Zero" I know they included 48 Bowman football. Because of the play cards that I couldn't get rid of, they also included 48 Bowman Basketball. I'm pretty sure that they also included 49 Bowman baseball.

In future years, I had a hard time flipping these away because other kids didn't want to gamble their big cards for these small ones. Eventually though, I lost most of them although in the process I did get the card I wanted most -- a dinged up 55 Topps Jackie Robinson.

Like some others, sports cards were my "gateway."

Wrapper "dropout" Keith really knows how to hurt a guy(ha)(Only kidding,Keith; we have many dropouts.) But I'm jealous how fast this wonderful thread comes alive. If only Wrapper readers would email me their first non-sport memories. Alas, the computer shows its power over the printed page(sniff)...

My grandfather worked for Tip Top Bread and I remember him bringing home hundreds of the automobiles and rocket cards that were issued with Tip Top Bread.....But my fondest memory was opening Topps Scoop cards at my other Grandparents store and scraping the black film off to see the card....then being so mad when I would get one that would not scrape off....I would throw a fit even though I was getting the cards for free...

My first memory of card collecting was my second grade teacher giving out 1 card per person and I got a 1965 Topps Ron Santo baseball card. After that I got some 1966 Batman black bat cards and really studied them closely, especially on rainy days. I remember my family eating dinner at someone else's house and they had a son who had some Batman cards, but they had red bats instead of black bats. I was amazed.