Win one of 10 2013 Topps Archives wax boxes for Father’s Day … from Topps & Beckett Media

When I was about 5 I started getting some packs of cards as gifts. Well, what truly got me into collecting was one of my mother’s cousins who would come visit for Easter. It was a time when my whole family would get together. In his Easter basket he would always get packs and boxes of cards. I remember sitting with him and watching him open. Being from a family that is full of Mets fans he would give me the Mets cards he pulled that he didn’t need. I still have the majority of them. Today I collect with my friends and my lovely girlfriend. Thankfully I was able to find a girl who enjoys collecting as much as I do! Even if we don’t collect the same team.

From mod: Be sure to include your age and location in your posts!

My uncle was the one to get me into collecting. I started in 2012 and now have a pretty big player collection. Would love for Beckett to showcase it but I doubt it’s there yet

My story is very simple actually, me and my dad watched sports together when I was younger, but i started drifting more towards video games. Because of that my dad took me to the local card shop and he knew my favorite player was Ryne Sandberg, we live in VA and some how I was a cubs fan, still am to this day. Anyway, I think my dad saw an oppurtunity to bring us close with cards, knowing that with the options available it may catch my attention, I opened my 1st pack of cards and was amused by holograms and cards of different players. It was good to be a kid in the 90s when things were so simple but you got so much enjoyment, as i got older i learned some cards had value but at the time i just kept collecting. times have changed, and i still keep some stuff just not as much as I use too. Collecting was awesome in the 90’s now its all very expensive.

Brian weinsheimer
31
Harrisburg, PA

i was about five or six when my dad gave me my first pack of baseball cards. He wanted to start what my grandfather did with him start collecting at a young age to understand the value of cards. every since then i been collecting cards with my dad and my grandfather. Now my son he is four years old loves cards just like me i wanted to do what my dad did with me start collecting at a young age. my son got his frist pack of cards when he was 3 and it was a basketball pack and the first three cards were okay but when he pulled out the fourth card he seen a jersey on it and he got the biggest smile on his face and that made my day seeing his big smile knowing he got his first hit at that age and he is just like me. it felt great knowing what my dad and grandpa did with me i can do this with my son now. so i know if i get picked i would open the box up with my son and we will sort out the cards together because that is the best feeling opening cards up with your son

I never really had anyone to introduce me to collecting. I just had so much love for the game if baseball that I started buying wax packs and that was all I needed!! The thrill of seeing what was inside the packs and the joy of getting my favorite players!!! It was just a rush that I still enjoy till this day!!

I started collecting when I was 5. My father got me into the hobby at a young age. There were never any hobby shops close to us so we would hit all the shows in Cincinnati & Dayton every weekend. I stopped collecting for a while until around 2003. Once my two sons were old enough we started collecting again. On March 22, 2009 my youngest son Cam passed away unexpectedly at the age of 5. Since then his older brother & I collect numbered Auto’s & Jersey Swatches that have 17 in the numbered plate for his birthdate. Card collecting keeps him with us every day!

Billy
Age: 33
Clarksville, Ohio

FROM MOD: ONE OF OUR WINNERS

My dad is the reason I got into collecting. When I was born, he had a nice collection of trading cards and vinyl records since he’s a part-time DJ. My mom made him choose one collection to keep because it was taking up too much space so he decided to hand me his collection at a young age. When I started playing little league, he would reward me with packs everything I got a base hit or made a nice defensive play. I loved opening packs and to this day continue to add to my Dodger collection. I appreciate all of the time/money my dad spent to make this hobby a great one for me.

Jesse R.
23
Los Angeles, CA

My brother Jim got me into collecting baseball and football cards when we were kids in the late seventies we live the old story of our mom threw out our cards many times and every year we would start a new collection and now many many years later I collect with my sons we collect any Chicago team and Junior Seau and Miami Dolphins cards

Chuck Dupree
age 40
Riverside,IL

27. It was Little league day in early 90’s at A’s game where Mother’s cookies gave out team cards. It was with my dad and little league team where I first got hooked. The thing was the packs weren’t a full set so I started trading kids on my team as well as strangers for the players I wanted. Those players were Mcgwire, both Hendersons, Weiss, Lansford, and Eckersley. http://www.baseball-almanac.com/baseball_cards/baseball_cards_oneset.php?s=1991mot01 This was just the start of what has become a 20+ year hobby for myself and still my dad from time to time. Nothing better than opening a fresh box to this day and the anticipation of who you will get. My dad still asks when I get some boxes who were the good cards. Thanks for the Awesome Little League days and Mothers cookies then and also thanks to Topps and Beckett for this awesome giveaway.

My father never collected cards, but he’s the reason I collect them now. He’s an avid baseball fan. He played in college, coached my brother and I through Little League and into High School. My brother was a pitching prospect in the minors before having TJ surgery. Baseball was always in our blood. When I was little, he bought me the Topps box set the year I was born. He did the same for my brother. When we were teenagers, he passed them on to us. I still have it sitting on my book case. I collected on and off as a kid, but not as heavily as I do now. I picked up the hobby full time a couple years ago. It was a natural extension of my love of the game. When I got married and we decided to have kids, I wanted to pass on both my love of baseball and of collecting to my kiddo. I bought the box set the year they were born just as my Dad has done, and I continue to collect sets to pass on to them once they’re older.

My father might not have collected, but he’s responsible for my love of the game, and as a father myself, I hope that’s something I can continue passing on.

Matt, 33
Houston, TX

i first started collecting baseball cards back in 1988 when going to our local mall back in dover,de. at a place called sheilas party world (a place where u would never expect a place to sell cards). as i looked into a glass case i saw team sets and common lots basicly to start a collection. what caught my attention was a phillies card on top i just had to have it (being a phillies fan and all). every weekend after i would go there jus to pick something new branching out to football in 1995, and then dabbled in some basketball,and have been collectinjg ever since…so i guess i owe it all to my dad for taking me to the mall every weekend….john age 38

Once upon a time….at the age of 10 something changed in my life…nope it wasn’t the girl stage (though don’t get me wrong that was just as exciting but that came much later after my hobby) it was a grocery store trip with my father. There were some shiny wrappers sitting on a shelf. My father said, come here. I followed. We both gazed at wrappers with baseball and football players on them and the word Topps written across the top. I figured Topps just meant thats where the wording was. I didn’t know much about sports then but my dad was trying to get me into them. I was more interested with the Power Rangers and Ninja Turtles at that point. Those things rocked..Cowabunga!!! So he thought by picking up a pack of cards that it might interest me into sports and maybe get me a hobby other than dressing up as a Power Ranger. We picked up 2 packs of each and proceeded to the checkout line. We made the purchase and headed out to the car to open them.

After the first pack and scrolling through finding shiny reflective and cards marked rookie it kinda caught my attention a little. My dad sat next to me like a little kid at Christmas time ripping. He said he used to collect once and having this time with me opening up kinda brought his interest back. And for some reason inside of me the cards caught my attention. Did my dad just get me into a hobby other than my lack of ninja skills going around and fighting the forces of evil known as Shredder? Yup and boy he didn’t know the monster he was about to create. He was Dr. Frankenstein of the hobby to me.

Everytime we drove by the grocery store. I wanted more. I went home and sorted and sorted. Wrote down pretty much everything. Organized it crazily where it takes hours. My mom wasn’t really in too much support of our hobby addiction since we were spending a lot of money. So we started to sneak it creatively into the house after purchases (kinda like a spy…very fun game) We would hide them in coats, shoe boxes, pockets in coats and pants, sadly may have a few unspoken of places ;)

Now my dad has since gotten done the hobby and I have continued on like the monster he made, I look back at those times and laugh. Now I fast forward to the future where I have ones to pass the hobby onto myself.

Thanks for the chance at a great Fathers Day Gift! And as all Once Upon A Time stories say….THE END…for now.

Matt Gilman
30
VT

My first set of cards came in a brown bag my dad bought me and it had 5-packs in it, I think 1990 Topps, Donruss and 1989 Bowman. I didn’t like them that much (the players who I got). After getting more and more. Eventually my parents got a divorce and my mom took all of our stuff (to include several Mike Piazza, Derek Jeter, Nomar Garciappara, and David Justice (Personal Fav.)) and put them in storage where they were all lost. I bought more for a couple of years, and then my house burnt down and lost the whole collection. After a year hiatus, I bought some boxes with my own hard earned money and the single card the renewed my vigor was a 2001 Topps Chrome Albert Pujols, who’s beckett value at the time was $100. I collected heavily for a few years and then joined the military and stopped collecting for 5-years during my tours. I eventually got nostalgic and pulled out my packed stuff from my parents, I have been collecting fully since 2008. I have made it a mission to get the cards that I had lost in the fire and in the divorce back, and I have more than done that. So after 2 total collection losses I have come full circle and have surpassed my previous collections.

The first cards I ever remember getting was the 1988 Topps Baseball set for Christmas when I was nine. My cousin who is two months older than me is who got me into collecting and I remember he got the same set that year. We instantly had them out of the boxes so we could sort them! We didn’t have a card shop near us, so any time there was a local show we would go – even if it meant talking our way out of church! Without Ebay back then, we focused on trading. There was always someone to trade with and if you found someone from out of town, even better! It grew from there until high school and college got in the way. After graduation I brought my boxes of cards with me and got the itch to collect again. Chad Greenway was drafted by the Vikings right after I started collecting again and decided to go after him (https://picasaweb.google.com/106680291684119570737). My sons, 2 and 5, think it’s great fun to look at dad’s cards and recently I put together their own box of cards that they can look through when I am going through mine. The main cards in that box? The same 1988 Topps Baseball set that I received for Christmas that started my collection. I can’t wait to be able to share the excitement of opening packs with them. I hope it’s something that we can do together for a long time.

Alex Oey
33
Marshall, MN

I got into collecting baseball cards when I was a child. My grandfather and I would do it as a past time. My fondest memories as a child were when we were busting wax packs and collecting our favorite payers and teams. When he passed away, I pretty much stopped collecting until I was an adult and one of my close friends at work was showing me some cards that he bought. Well, after that day he kept trying to talk me into getting back into collecting again. I went into it head first and started to buy several boxes a week. My first box that I bought was a National Treasures football box. It was an incredible box, I pulled several great hits but my biggest mojo pick was a 1/1 auto of Paul “Bear” Bryant. What a way to start back in the hobby!!! Ever since then I have been enjoying it a lot. I started wanting to trade cards so I became a member of Beckett and have enjoyed trading cards with people all over the United States and sometimes outside of the states. I love to collect baseball and football.

I’ve been collecting with my brother since I was 6 and he was 3. Initially, we collected baseball cards, usually being rewarded with a pack from the grocery store for behaving while our mom did the weekly shopping. Because of an occasional dispute over ownership (usually spurred on by each of us owning the same card), my mom would occasionally write one of our initials on the back of a card in pen. Somewhere out there there’s a 1985 Mark McGuire USA Team rookie with the initials “JK” on the back. That card belonged to my brother, Joe.

Around the time that we reached middle school, our interests changed to collecting football. What caused the switch in sport? It was the discovery of our dad’s 1967 Philadelphia football card collection in an old lunch bag in the back of our grandma’s cellar. My brother and I split the find in half, each coming away with a Ditka, Unitas, and Butkus in the deal.

After school, we both stopped collecting for a stretch of almost a decade. Then around 2007 we both began collecting again in earnest. My main collecting focus turned back to baseball, with my brother collecting mostly baseball and football. While his collection usually focuses on the key players of today (living in Orlando, he gets to see more teams play spring ball than most), my focus is on Milwaukee Baseball, going as far back as the early 1900s, and more specifically my John Axford Supercollection.

Appropriately, my dad started me on my collecting journey. He found a small stack of Topps ’90 someone had left behind at a little league field and gave them to me. I of course followed baseball and knew some of the Braves players at the time, but I had no idea what to do with the cards. The funky, non-uniform color borders from that year made my brain hurt just a little bit… but I was intrigued. Then I noticed the cards were NUMBERED, and the numbers went really high! To like, 700 or more! Who knows how many there were! Thousands?!? Maybe! And here I had some in my hand, already well on my way to having the whole set (it was like, 50 cards, but hey Math is funny when you’re a kid…). I quickly got the itch to collect. Soon thereafter, my 3 brothers joined the fun. We were a very competitive bunch; there weren’t a lot of trades between us, but a lot of taunting from the one of us that had a card another obviously wanted… Today, even though we’re states apart, my brother Sam and I are quick to call and share and exciting collecting moment as it happens, and we’re way less stingy with the trades. It’s funny, I’ve never thought to thank my dad for that seemingly inconsequential gift those years ago that started what has now become a large part of the joy and simple happiness in my life. I will be sure to do so this Father’s Day. Thanks, Beckett, for helping me remember!
Alex – 31 – Cornelius, NC

adam
my dad got me into the hobby 20+ years ago , i remember he took me to a show at a local mall 1 time and i had given him a urlacher rc auto he showed me how to turn that into a brett favre auto!! i collect with with friends but mainly myself and got to shows .
adam traeger
32
rockford,il

I started collecting in the late 80’s. The company my dad worked for had a yearly company picnic, and probably either ’88 or ’89, my dad convinced the owner of the company to bring a box of Topps football cards for the kids to have as a sort of door prize. There were only two of us kids there that actually were interested, so we split the box. The next year, they did the same thing, and I got more cards, and from there, my grandmother used to give me 50 cents to buy packs when I went to visit her. Really didn’t start avidly collecting until I was in high school, mainly because there was never a local card shop in the tiny town I grew up in until around then. Funny thing is, I grew up in Bengals/Browns territory, and the rivalry between the fans of the two teams in my school drove me to pick a team in the NFC to like, which ended up being the Packers. Sterling Sharpe was the player that convinced me to start following the Packers, and I’ve been a fan since.

Joe
34
SW Ohio

I began collecting cards at 5 years old. A friend of mine (Jason) had a nice collection of basketball cards in the early 90’s. I began going to swap meets with him and his grandparents, where I’d take my allowance with me or money I earned doing work around the neighborhood. I started then and have continued ever since. Still have many of the cards from my childhood. Now being 27 years old and living in Le Mars, IA, I’m quite enjoying the online scene now. With no local card shops within a 1 1/2 hour drive, its keeps me busy. Now with children myself, only girls, they have started to take interests in the hobby. They may collect My little pony cards and a few Buckeye’s cards on occassion, but I’m glad to see my passion moving on with my children.

I picked up the odd pack here and there when I was little. In 1988 I was at my friend Anton’s house, we were in maybe 4th grade. He had some sweet micro-machines boats I was interested in. He wanted my Destro action figure so we worked out a monster trade.
Part of my take was a 1986 Topps box bottom Pete Rose.
I took my winnings home and as I was checking out my haul when my dad picked up the Pete Rose. It got him talking about collecting cards when he was a kid. A few days later we were at the store and he picked up some 1988 Topps packs for my brother and me. We all sat around checking them out. It turned into all of us making stacks of cards with players from our favorite teams. I had a stack of Mets, my brother had Pirates, my sister Twins and my dad had Yankees. We collectively decided we needed to make team sets.
After a few weeks we finished our team sets. I remember Don Mattingly and Dwight Gooden were two of the last cards we needed. The next logical step has finishing a complete set.
And so it went. Every weekend was family trips to card shows and local shops. It was what all of us did, me, my siblings and both parents. If we walked into a shop in the greater Mpls area they knew us all by name. As a family we collected cards until around the mid ‘90s when we all went away to college. My dad kept with it though.
Around 2004 my wife and I were at a Target outside of DC. She is a massive Yankees fan and saw a 2004 Topps Yankees team set in the card isle and decided to pick it up. The flood gates were re-opened. My wife and I started collecting as a team. In 2007 when my son was born I put together every set I could to give him when he grows up. As he has grown he has joined the team of his mom, my dad and me. The rest of the family hasn’t found their way back to the hobby, but still have their old collections.
Recently my dad finished a quest that began back in 1988 when he finished his 1952 set, giving him every Topps flagship set from 1952-2013. The Super Collectors story about it in Becket is framed on the wall at my folk’s house as a reminder of the hobby that defined us for so long.

Kevin
36
Waynesboro Va

A friend of mine got me collecting back in the mid 90’s, i first started out collecting NASCAR then went into baseball and football. But now i only collect football since i watch it more than i do baseball.

Hugo
44
Mineola, TX

I got into collecting as an 8 year old in 1978. I remember going Moore’s Convenience store, yes, these stores once had packs of cards, and asking for two packs of cards. I could not wait until I got home to open them. When I opened the first pack, the first card was Dave Rozema with an AS Rookie trophy. I was a Tiger fan, and remembered the season that Rosie had the year before. I was so excited that first card I can’t tell you what the rest of the cards were. I would use my allowance to buy cellos, wax, and rack packs whenever I could. I would always go for rack or cello because I could see the cards on top and would only get packs with cards showing that I needed. When fall came around, it was time for football season, and cards came along with that. I still remember going to the grocery store and picking out football rack packs. To this day the 78 baseball set is one of my favorites because it is the first set I ever collected.

Don
43
Arkansas

My tee ball coach and his son back in the 80s. he loved baltimore. Tried out for them in his younger days.said he pitched 3 balls hit so far they never found them. But never gave up his love for the game.took us to card shows back when they were big.from him i have directed others into baseball and cards.now my 10 year and i do it together.

Shawn davis
38
New Brockton Alabama

So in 1987 some guys that I used to work with were collecting Baseball cards,I got involved because it seemed like a neat Hobby.I remember Denny’s Restauraunt had a promotion if you purchased a grand slam meal you would recieve a hologram card well 40 pounds later I completed the set.
lol,any ways I’ve been hooked ever since I collect Mainly by myself I hope to hand them down to my Kids some day.

I stated collecting at 4 thanks to my dad and grandfather I never met. My grandfather owned a gas station just outside of NYC from the 40’s-80’s. Many of the yankees knew my grandfather and used his station including Mantle, DiMaggio, Ford, Berra, Rizzuto, and McDougald. Knowing my dad had a son, my father, some of the yankees would give him their cards. McDougald was actually their neighbor and gave cards out at Halloween. Problem was, my dad used them in the spokes of his bike and my grandmother threw the rest out so I never got any of them. Feeling bad, my dad got me into collecting and taught me the value of keeping everything in pristine condition. One of the highlights of my collecting career was in 2008 Berra did an autograph signing in NY and I told him who I was. He still remembered my grandfather from all those years back and because he bowled at Berra’s bowling alley across the street from his gas station. Pretty cool a legend remembers my grandfather.
Bret
29
Pittsburgh

I would have to say Ebay is what got me into collecting. As a young kid I did collect a bit for fun. but stop as I wasn’t really interest anymore as I got older. But when I discovered Ebay in 2004 I have been collecting since.

Moshe
age:37

Israel

My foray into collecting began on my 10th birthday. My older brother started collecting baseball cards a year earlier, and naturally I wanted what he had(as I always looked up to my older brother). On my 10th birthday, I was given a few 1988 Topps rack packs, one of which had my favorite player(though manager by then), Pete Rose.

After my first trip to a card show in 1989 in which Griffey was signing during his rookie year, I was hooked. We didn’t get Ken Griffey’s autograph that day, as the tickets were sold out. We ended up in an empty line for George Kell and Al Kaline. We talked to them for close to 15 minutes, and being 11 years old, I didn’t really know who they were until I started to read about them. I can say that they were both world class gentleman. I understand what a treasure it was to be able to talk to two Hall of Famers. I can thank them, and my father for my love of baseball.

That, and watching my father jump up and down and scream like a little kid when Kirk Gibson hit his game winner of Game 1 of the 1988 World Series. Proving you are never to old to be a kid at heart over the game.

Jeremy Boynton
35
Port Angeles, WA

PS-One of my current collecting projects is to get 1 of each Phillies card from 1950-1978 (the year I started collecting). I am well on my way since I am buying wrinkled, written-on or otherwise poor condition cards. They have more character that way, in my opinion since I am collecting for me and not for $$$.

I started to collecting basketball cards around 1995 or 1996, basketball cards was a totally new thing in the country(no other kind of trading card could be found either before that, but also other kind trading card had no chance here since baseball, football, hockey were not a typically popular here), one of my classmate started to collect basketball cards(1994-1995 Collectors Choice as the first brand what arrived to the country) and he was selling those cards what he had doubles, and since i loved basketball i bought a few. Than i decided i want more cards and started to save the money what i got to buy food at the school, and bought packs instead. Collecting basketball cards became very popular in a short time, and many guy collected them in my town too. We used to get together 5 or 6 of us and went to the home of one of us to check each others cards and to make some trade. My mother was laughed sometimes because she said it was funny when 5 or 6 of us was sitting quietly in the room just checking the cards, and in every 5-6 minutes a question broke the silence: “Ezt adod?” (are you trading this?) “Ezért mi kell?”(what do you want for this?- sorry i put it in hungarian just to show how long sentences was spoken during those times when we were totally focused on the cards). But unfortunately those times ended soon, in a few years, the popularity of collecting cards dropped fast, and the cards disappeared from the stores, we couldn’t buy them anymore, i heard that one or two store still have packs in Budapest, but it is 150km from here, and back than internet was only accessible for a few people who could afford it, and to buy anything from oversee was something we couldn’t even imagine. So basically i was forced to quit collecting but i kept my cards, and after a time i felt i am over it, i don’t care about collecting cards anymore.
I gave away many base cards after that in kids basketball camps where i was coaching basketball, and those cards what basically worth nothing for collectors, can be great treasure to the kids.
Than next fall i wanted to sell my old basketball cards, and someway i found myself in a facebook group what is kind of a community for hungarian basketball cards collectors(around 360 members now). I tried to sell my cards there too, and i had to soon realize it is impossible, maybe a few cards, because i have cards from those products what were in the stores back than, and all the stores had the same kind of products so those who collected back than they had all the cards from that products what they wanted, and many people was trying to sell their old collections just like me. Than i saw all those cards what others just bought, and i soon had to realize i am not over at all of the desire to collect basketball cards. But concept is different know, i used to collect Jordan cards, just like almost everyone, but got saved during the time i wasn’t collecting, and when i admitted to myself that i am not over collecting i decided i am gong to collect the cards of born again christian players. But it is not easy to collect cards when you are unemployed, so i decided i will try to do it without investing money, the only exception was when ordered 3 pack this february, i guess the reason for that was i was a little nervous about my upcoming surgery, but anyway those were the first packs after 14-15 long years what i opened. I found out there are some contests where you can win different boxes, and i try to find contests like this. Thanks to God these contests already resulted 2 unopened basketball box (i won one ant the other was a compensation from the company for the lack of missing guaranteed hits) and a opened football box. If i find a contest where i can enter, i try it, i don’t car if i can win football, baseball or hockey cards, because one way or the other those can be turned int basketball cards. From the boxes i won i traded a lot of cards also sold some, and from the money i made i invested, and my first order from the US just arrived last Friday.
I know my collection is nothing special, but i have already over 100 cards of those players i started to collect a few mounts ago(and about 2000 cards from the old days and from the boxes), including jersey and auto cards, and all this is basically without investing money or investing only that money what cards resulted me.
Only God knows what the future holds, but i hopeful that i will be improve my collections, and it would be nice to extend my collections with auto cards from different sports, where the players put a Bible reference next to their autographs.

Age 28
Location: Kisújszállás, Hungary

My Father started me collecting when I was 8 years old. I remember as a kid every time we would clean the garden we all got a pack of cards. Of coarse that was in the early 80s when cards were a quarter a pack.

I started collecting when i was 6 yrs old. my grandfather gave me some cards and i was hooked. From that point forward all i wanted every birthday or christmas was cards. I collected everything baseball, basketball, and football. I stopped buying new in my early 20’s I had everything in a storage unit with an ex of mine and she sold it all out from underneath me. I didn’t collect anything up until this year when my son wanted a pack and now i am hooked and we love buying cards together. we dont have an LCS near us so we drive an hour to our card shop and have a great time!

I started collecting back in 1988 with my dad. I remember us both sitting there with a box each busting the packs, sorting the cards and then trading back and forth to help complete each others sets. Pro set was the funnest to be honest. 1998 Score football was the worse. We most have cracked 8-10 boxes and only ended up with 1 Brett Farve. GO FIGURE!

Today my daughter(11) sits with me and does the same thing and tries to get EVERY Bengals card she can from me.
Mikael 38, father of 5
Tacoma,Washington

I grew up in a single parent family with four sisters. My father passed away when i was only three. My sisters were all older and like to do their own thing like girls do. I had to figure out my own hobbies and activities. I started playing baseball at age 7 and I was hooked. I started collecting cards around the same time just thinking about how cool it would be to one day be on one of them pieces of cardboard. My mom spent countless hours shuffling me from card show to card show. I was a huge Braves fan and wanted to pull a Braves card every pack. As the years went by I found a few guys that collected and we started trading. Yes I was a baseball playing, card collecting kid. I am 38 years old now and still collect. Although I never made on that piece of cardboard, I have had the opportunity to have some of the best players to ever play the game on that piece of cardboard. From 1981 to present, I have been a card junkie and have introduced my kids into collecting. My wife thinks we have way too many…..but as far as I am concerned you can never have too many. That’s my collecting story and I hope my kids and their kids and their kids keep the tradition going.

I’m 76 years old but started collecting when I was in high schools in the early fifties. I had a paper route in my home town of Beaver Dam, Wisconsin and when ever I collected for my papers I’d stop off at one of the three mom and pop grocery stores to buy a pack of cards. I collected several shoe boxes of cards before I went into the Air Force in 1955. The usual story, by the time a retired in 1976, Mom had disposed of my cards so I had to start over.
I’ve been seriously collecting since then and now have a collection of over 100,000 cards. Unfortunately I don’t have any sons and my daughters and my grandchildren don’t have any interest in my collection. I’m now preparing to sell off or donate my cards to charity. I currently live in the state of Washington very close to Mt. Rainier.

My brother was the one who got me into collecting and he didn’t even collect. When I was 7 years old, he brought home 3 boxes of 1987 Topps and we busted the packs. I loved the wood design of those cards. We stored them in a few albums and from there I was hooked.

Adam
33
Bloomfield, NJ

My name is Michael and I am 51 years old. I grew up in the foot heals of West Virginia. I started collecting ball cards and NASCAR cards at the age of 6. I collected cards up to the age of 9, then I was put in a foster home until I 12, And then I lived on the streets until I got old enough to join the army. So when I got put in the foster home I didn’t get to take my collection with me , The way my life went after that was all down hill with a lot of not having the money to buy any cards. So in 2008 I fell of a roof while at work and broke both my heels and that made me disable . This is when I started collecting ball cards and other things , I really enjoy collecting again,I feel like a child again when i open a pack of cards, there is just one thing different there is no boozoka gum. Thank you for what you are doing . Michael 51 Dalton GA

I was 12 years old. My grandma used to have a friend who ran a hobby shop. She has boxes of commons (including about 40 Raul Mondesi rookies) she never pressured me to collect much. I had started collecting really in 2008 with my older brother. We bought the Upper Deck for the codes on the back and he would put them in a drawer in my room. About December 2009 before the 2010 Topps release I had grown tiresome of the mess. So I took them all out and started organizing them. By team, rookies, name, everything. It was a magical feeling, the pictures, and all the different feelings. I then took the rest of his old collection and started to do the same. Since then my collection has grown from the few hundred base cards then. To about 25,000 base from the last 50 years and several dozen autos and relics. I don’t have the money for hobby or high end but I just love the feeling of ripping packs and pulling these beautiful photographs.

Harrison Epstein
16 years old
Las Vegas, NV

I began collecting around age 9 because I loved the NFL. I grew up in a very small town so the card availablity was very limited. My father saw my passion about card collecting and decided to open up a card shop part time. This was back in 1992 just in time for Shaq’s rookie cards and an up-and-coming baseball player named Derek Jeter. We have collected together ever since and it has really helped develop our bond over the years, and now I have a son that enjoys collecting as well! Last year one of my son’s close friends and his father started collecting because of them seeing my son and I’s fun we have together.

Casey
34
Colorado

My cousin Roy took me to a card show at University Park Mall in Mishawaka IN when I was 12 and he bought some card. When we got him he let me open the packs with him. I remember the first pack I opened there was a Ken Griffey Jr rookie card in it. My cousin was so happy cause Griffey was his favorite player that he bought me 4 packs of cards. I quit collecting for 20 years and just last year I bought a box of Triple Threads baseball and been collecting again.

I started collecting with my father-in-law about two years ago. We both love baseball so we travel the country collecting autographed baseballs and cards from up and coming prospects. Best hobby I’ve ever had.

I collected for years when I was younger, worked in a card store making 1.50 an hour sorting cards for a card shop (under the table off course cause I was 13). I stopped collecting around the age of 16. About 2 years ago at age 34 I bought 4 boxes of old 80’s baseball cards and got hooked all over again! As soon as I saw the Ken Griffey Jr RC in the upper deck box I opened I was hooked all over again. When I really got back into it I was shocked to see autographed and relic cards, I was so far removed from collecting I had no clue they were making such cards! Who would have thought after 18 years I would still live the hobby so much! Now I’m a proud Beckett member and baseball card collector, super collecting Paul Goldschmidt.

My dad got me started as a kid collecting baseball cards, I have since moved on to football as well. My interest in the hobby spread to my friends also. We quickly learned back in the late 80’s that we could use the cards to put together our lineup to play baseball in my yard. I will never forget catching as Tony Pena with my leg swung out or hitting as Julio Franco with his unique stance. So much fun and great memories with a group of guys that I am still friends with today!

Evan Dyer
32
Indianapolis, IN

The person that got me in to collecting was my father. Before I was born him and his best friend ran their own card shop for a few years and he loved it. After me and my brother were both born in a 16 month time period, he unfortunatly had to stop selling because he did not have time for it anymore. Collecting never stopped though. He has had me collecting practically since before I was born lol. After collecting with him all through the 90s we both unfortunatly slowly stopped. That all changed though about a year ago when me and him decided to split a random blaster box at Walmart one night and it rekindled the inner collector in both of us lol. Now a days we both go about collecting a little differently (I am a team/player collector, he is a vintage set collector) but we both share the same love for the cards. We do not really have a whole lot in common but cards have done a great job of bringing us much much closer. I try and snag him a few surprises for his 1960s topps set when I get the chance and he always seems to surprise me with an amazing Dodgers card when he gets back from the card shop. Collecting now is not just something I do, its something I am able to share with my dad and will always be able to share that with him. That feeling of sitting down with him at the table, splitting the packs between us and taking turns showing eachother what all we got reminds me of back when I was a kid and it is something that I plan on enjoying with him for as long as I can and then hopefully be able to pass that joy on to my kids one day!

Thank you
Blake Meyer / 25 / Lakewood, WA

I started collecting when I was 9 or 10 years old. My family took a 2-week road trip across the country every summer, and I remember my brother and I getting to pick out a couple packs of cards every time we stopped for gas. It was fun to have someone to trade with (and try to dupe–he is my younger brother after all!) right there in the car. Our dad got us into it–he had collected a little as a kid, but didn’t any more. It was just a fun thing to do to pass the miles and miles of highway. I kind of stopped collecting when I got to high school and college, but picked it up again in 2000, when Ron Dayne went to the NFL. I was at UW during the same time, and saw him, and plenty of other players, around campus quite a bit. I thought it would be pretty cool to have a card of someone I’d actually met. 13 years later, and my UW Alumni Collection just passed 3,000 different cards, and over 1,000 auto/mems. I have cards of nearly everyone who attended UW and went on to the NFL, and plenty who didn’t. Despite collecting football exclusively now, my favorite cards are still the old shoebox full that my dad passed down to me–baseball cards from the late 50s-early 60s (Mantle, Mays, Aaron, Clemente, Koufax, etc, etc) and a couple of authentic Mickey Mantle autographs. They hold a special place in my collection and aren’t going anywhere. Great contest!

Brendan
35
Madison, WI

I have been a passionate baseball and basketball card collector since i was about 12 years old. My parents were immigrants from Italy, and didn’t have much to offer us but the essentials while growing up. They always told me if i wanted something I had to earn it myself. So i would sell candies and home made crosses at school between classes. I would make about 10 -15 dollars a week, which would give me enough to splurge when we went to our local Fiesta supermarket, where i would spend the entire time talking it up with the local Card store booth owner. My father taught me to respect and keep what i earned in great condition. Over the years my collecting cooled off completely. Now in my thirties, married, about to celebrate my first father’s day with a young daughter. I found myself at a local Walmart, where i got wind of their card section. With in days I had purchased hundreds of dollars of retail packs and special box sets. lets just say i go bit with the collecting bug big time! There are no local shops near where i live, and its hard to get my hand on hobby packs. Since then i have been trying to catch up with all that i have missed in the collectors world. I hope to someday share the excitement of opening a pack of cards with my daughter, and seeing the joy on her face, when she pull that special card!

I started collecting baseball cards when i was 12. At that time my uncle would take me to the Orioles games and I would also ride my bike with my friends and go to the 7-11 near us to get slurpees and baseball cards. We would stay on the front steps and front porch and just sit there until our parents would tell us to eat dinner ormthat it was getting late. We would take turns biking and hanging out at each others houses in the neighborhood conducting trades for favorite players or orioles players or hot rookies and young stars.

I loved trying to complete sets and would always save my allowance up for more backs or even better a hobby or retail box! It was an event to purchase a box and i still have a lot of my cards from when I was a kid to pass on to our son who is 3 . I still collect base topps cards to this day and ow love opening them with our son Noah.

From Millersville, MD
Pius Dominguez
Age 33

I grew up in rural Alabama and got into baseball really young. I watched baseball games with my dad when they were on tv and that is what got me to Love the sport. I saw some baseball cards on a shelf at a local store and asked my dad for them. He bought them and told me he had something to show me at Maw Maw’s and Paw Paw’s house. He went up into the atic of the old house and brought down a shoe box that had some old 70’s baseball cards that he collected when he was little. I didn’t know who any of them were but loved how they looked. I felt like I inherited that love of baseball cards from him. I have since split them with my two brothers but they are still with us. I have collected baseball cards ever since I saw that old dusty box of cards. I now live in north Georgia and have my 3 yr old looking at the old cards with me and starting his own collection. Go Braves!!

I was into baseball at a very young age, I started regularly watching games with my father when I was super young. My father took me to check out an underhand pitch league (the buffer between tee ball and little league in my town) for 8 year olds the year before I could join tee ball one evening. On the way home that night we went to a card store named Phil’s, which was essentially an extension on someone’s house. I was into card collecting from that day forward. As I got older collecting started to involve targeting specific players that either me or my father thought were going to make some kind of significant leap. I still remember cherry picking Brett Favre Stadium Club rookies and Mike Piazza 92 Bowmans out of peoples common boxes before they did anything professionally. Some of my fondest memories and greatest lessons came from those experiences with my father. I still talk about cards with my father to this day. In fact, a football or baseball box of archives might be the perfect box to split with the old man which hadn’t dawned on me until this.

Ryan/ New Jersey/ 31

Minneapolis, MN – 33

My dad got my brother and I into collecting baseball, basketball and football cards probably around the 87 season when Topps and the wood grain cards and I think it was Bonds’ rookie. We went to card shows pretty much every weekend until I was 18 and realized how my money needed to be spend towards more important things like rent and food. But, I still found time to collect here and there but took a while off until a couple years ago when I try to get those relic cards but with not a whole lot of luck. My brother is back at it very aggressively trying to get minor leaguers now. Collecting cards could be considered an addiction since it never leaves you but to my brother and I, its reliving our childhood and reminiscing of the old cards we used to get.

My dad actually got me into collecting as a kid. He grew up collecting cards, having no idea they’d be valuable in the future. Unfortunately, he didn’t get to keep very many as my grandma (his mom), threw out most of his cards. It’s both funny and a little devastating to think of what she threw away as my dad recounted how he had multiple Mantle rookie cards, among other greats.
I started when I was about 7 and I vividly remember the 1987 Topps cards with their iconic wood grain borders. It was actually baseball cards that was a tremendous help to me with reading comprehension and pronunciation of names at that young of an age. The classic example was how I used to always pronounce Eddie Murray’s name literally, as Mer-RAY. As I learned the different ballplayers names, so too did I improve and advance with reading. I’ll always be thankful to my dad for getting me into collecting as it helped me in one of the most important facets of life. Plus, he let me keep the cards!!!

Kenneth Douglas
Age 33
Downey, CA

My brother got me into collecting he used to collect cards and he’d give me the gum

I remember starting collecting in the late 80s early 90s. At first, my mom would buy me the old sticker books and then tranformed into collecting Baseball, Football, and Hockey cards. I was born and raised near Pittsburgh, PA where pro sports are huge. I remember chasing after Jaromir Jagr and Ken Griffey Jr. rookie cards. My Dad would take me to the local card show once or twice a year and I remember being only allowed to spend a dollar or two per card. I collected all the way through my High School years. I am now 31 years old and have a daughter and son I’ve passed the family tradition of collecting cards down to them. I am in the miltary and move around alot, but one thing is certain, I make sure I carefully pack my cards and take them wherever I go. I currently live near Montgomery, AL and we only have one card shop, but we frequent it often. They hold trade days once a month, which we always attend. I have never had the privledge of busting a hobby box mainly because I’m too cheap. I usually spend about 40-50 bucs a month at the card shop on packs my kids can bust. My collection I had when I was a child is already passed down to my children and they are enjoying it and will continue to enjoy it for future generations. Thank you and Happy Father’s day out their to all the wonderful dads!

When I was 12, my grandmother got me a 1987 Topps Green Christmas set for Christmas. It was the first time I had ever seen cards. But I was hooked. My grandmother and I sat there and put the entire set in order from 1-792 on Christmas Eve. After we put it in order (and over the next couple of weeks) we would sit there and look at the stats of each and every player, and she would tell me about her experience of going to games. If she ever saw the person play, she would tell me about her experience. Through the years, I have sold and traded various cards and most of my collection. But I have never let that set go. It has stayed in my possession since Christmas Eve of 1987. A few months ago, I put it in a notebook so I can look through the cards more easily. However, I kept the box and put in a cabinet next to a picture of her so I will forever remember who got me started in cards.

It was actually my late grandmother who got me into collecting cards. She was an avid garage sale hunter. One weekend I tagged along and while en route she asked me what hobbies I had. Being only 5 or 6 years old I didn’t really have any. At the first sale we went to that day she picked me up a large box completely filled with unopened packs of football and baseball card. Ever since that day I have been collecting cards and loving it. Today I collect with both of my children,my 5 year old daughter and my 7 year old son. I have also passed down this passion to my (much) younger brother. Every payday my children know we will be making a trip to pick up a pack or 12.

Forgot to add in my earlier post:
Name: Lindsay
Age: 19
Location: West Michigan

I Startewd collecting in 1969-70 as a Young kid through 1974 and I still have that 800 ct box of those cards.–Fast forward to 1986 and My Wifes Uncle gets divorced and gives me 8 Binders filled with Topps Football—Still have all of them in Binders,,loaded with all the greats..Thats what got me hooked…1987 was the beginning of my collecting and I have been collecting ever since….Doing card shows in the 90″s and even Having my own card store in 97 =98—-As of now I am Unopened box collector which may seem weird but I now have 300 + unopened boxes in my collection—I am hoping to add this one to my collection!!!!!!—Tx—-Dan
Daniel Loy
age 52
Annville,Pa—

I started collecting when I found my dad’s collection. I was very amused when I saw it, and when I told him that I wanted to start collecting, he took me out to a card shop and I bought my first pack of cards. I pulled a Carlton Fisk, my favorite player, in that pack. I was very excited and never stopped collecting since then. Over the years I’ve opened packs from all different years, even packs that came out before I started collecting on my phone, and have gotten rookie cards of players like Dave Kingman and Rickey Henderson, two more of my favorites. My favorite sets are Heritage and Archives, because they remind me of collecting in the old days. Right now I am collecting with my son. My dad got me into collecting, and i got my son into collecting. We have so much fun together ripping packs.

Ed Simon
Age 44
Mesa, AZ

I got sucked into collecting through basketball cards (Inaugural season of Hoops). I had opened packs previously when I was about 10, but hadn’t thought much about it. It wasn’t until I started taking the basketball cards and getting them autographed in person did I begin to like collecting (I wanted to get more cards to get them signed). I then branched out into football and baseball and started collecting football predominantly. To this day (I’ll be 40 next month) I still will try and get autographs in person. Last year, I managed to get John Elway and Peyton Manning to autograph a card each in person for me. I love the in-person autograph and if it weren’t for my initial card collecting to go and try to get autographs with, I never would’ve been brought into the hobby.

Will Rosenthal
Denver CO
AGE 39.9 (40 next month)

I was 8 years old and my older brother started collecting the 1974 set with me. I was hooked. Have completed every set from there on out and am now working backwards.

I first strted collecting when i was 11 I played baseball since i was 5 and started to follow different players My dad had always been a collector of cards and comics so he helped me get started with some cards at 13 decided to go the football route because of Darrell Green since then I have put every topps football base set together My oldest complete set is 1977 all the way thru 2012. Im also a Redskins team collector and im trying to own at least one of every card made im almost 10k unique cards. We adopted our son 4 years ago when he was born and I now have him his own little collection of spiderman and race cars.Its our families passion. My dad is a general collector 1 brother is a!Cowboy collector 1 a box breaker and 1 is a coin and set collector I live in virginia and im 42 so 31 years i have been at it. Thank you for the contest

I started collecting in 1971 and my two older brothers got me into collecting. They have since moved onto to other things, but I still am!

Tim L
48
Michigan City, IN

Well for me, collecting started when I was deployed for Desert Shield/ Desert Storm. We would recieve care packages all the time from random people all over the US. This one package was different because it contained some trading cards inside. They were the desert storm cards non sports and they were hot at the time. Now I dont have a great story to tell you guys and I wouldnt be upset if I didnt win a box, but I feel the importance behind this is to state that America showed its resolve and patriotism to its armed forces, including all the companies like topps and others who risked profit just to show that we back our armed forces and refuse to have another Vietnam. I started collecting when I got back from the war just to take my mind off of what happened over there and now 20 plus years I am still collecting. God bless America!!

Randy Moore
48
Killeen,TX

My dad got me into collecting at an early age,when he bought a box of cards at a garage sale. I loved those cards. After years of loving. Sometimes sorting by number other times by team or stats. My oakland A’s cards show the most love as they sometimes would find their way into my pocket in hopes of autographs at the games. I was also the kid sitting in the top section of the coliseum with my glove ready for that fly ball that never came. I now bring my 2 year old to the games and let her look and play with my old cards. She likes their hair and glasses and to put the cards end to end to make train tracks. I’m sure I did the same thing when I was younger. As I got older I learned the value of a mint card I started collecting completely different. When my daughter gets older i will share those with her too. She sometimes looks for her favorite player Coco. She can do a mean lean. She also looks for her boyfriend Buster. She tells me daddy cute. I think that came from her mom. I never thought I would share my passion for collecting with a child of my own so it’s that much more special to me to be able to share the love.

I started collecting comic books when I was 8 years old. I collected for several years until my younger brother went with a neighbor to a baseball card show. He came with a few packs to open and when he pulled out that Willie Stargell card and showed me, it was good bye comics and hello a life of card collecting. I don’t think I’ve bought a comic book since. Eleven years old and living in Pittsburgh- sports took over my life.

My father and I never had much in common. He was a cowboy and I, well I preferred the city life as a kid. By the time I was 7 or 8 years old, we rarely talked. He tried to get me to go ride the horses with him but I would prefer riding bikes with friends. I know both he and my mother were concerned about our relationship.

In 1990, I was 11 years old. My father and I rarely even talked. One day, during the middle of the week, he picked me up from school early and we drove nearly 50 miles to the nearest baseball card store. I had never collected and neither had he but I was really into baseball. Growing up, we never had much but we made due. That day was different though. My father and I picked out a box of 1990 Donruss and a Beckett magazine with Jose Canseco on the cover. We took them both back to the house and he let me open every pack while we looked up the cards together.

It took us two hours. But, looking back on it, those two hours changed our relationship forever. We began collecting more and more. Always the same thing, I would open the packs and he would open the Beckett. We could never afford much but we didn’t need to. It was our things. Even if it was only one or two packs, we would spend hours reading the backs of the cards and forming a real relationship for the first time over cardboard. To this day, my father and I still open packs together; I open the packs and he opens the Beckett. The 1980’s and 90’s cards still inspire those memories. I’m 33 now and expecting a child and I can’t wait until he gets to open the packs and I get to hold the Beckett.

I don’t remember specifically anyone getting me into card collecting, but my dad is my inspiration for having a love for baseball. At a young age (5) he got me hooked on listening to Jack Buck and Mike Shannon and St. Louis Cardinal Broadcasts. Not long after I spotted nickel packs of cards in the early 70’s in which I spent my allowance. When the bookmobile came to my elementary school, I bought all the great books of sports legends (Most I still have). Cutting out box scores of every game during Lou Brock’s breaking of Maury Wills SB record is a prized possession.
As a father I got both my sons interested in collecting. My oldest son Titus sent letters to his favorite players such as Jerry Rice and received great responses with personal autographed pictures. While he was in grade school he sent Beckett a letter that was published about his hometown (Stillwater, OK) and his favorite Barry Sanders. Having you post his picture and recognize our Stillwater card shop was priceless to this father and son.
Titus is now 26 living in OKC and still has his cards stashed here at home. Dad still collects his baseball cards with a collection that might be a tad out of control (Ha!) In his last visit home the first thing he did was pull out an opened blaster of Bowman ’13 baseball to show me. Excited to pull a rookie Shelby Miller and debating on when the Cards might pull up Oscar Taveras from the Minors.
Our family are still Cardinal fans now rooting for our hometown hero Matt Holliday and fellow Okie, Peter Kosma. For me collecting, and baseball has been a rite of passage, a chance to turn on the game file through cards and be just a father with his kids.

It helped that my dad had a card and comic book store. I grew up in Maryland so naturally I became an Oriole and Redskin fan. I worked in his store all through high school during the summers. It was amazing being on the front lines of buying, selling, and trading cards. I dabbled in pretty much everything from comic books, sports cards and even magic the gathering. But my true passion has always been sports cards. I have a pretty decent Cal Ripken Jr collection. Even though he retired over a decade ago, every year there are more and more cards honoring him. I’ll never be able to catch up! I have close to 3,000 different Ripken cards and it’s starting to get tough to find new ones that don’t break the bank. It’s been great to get excited about collecting football cards again. With all the success of the 2012 Redskins led by Robert Griffin III, I have started an RG3 collection now. I only have a handful so far but maybe one day I’ll have as many RG3’s as I have Ripkens! Only if RG3 learns how to slide better. Maybe Ripken can teach him a thing or two!

I will be 62 next week. When I was in my mid 30s I saw some kids in the neighborhood with packs of baseball cards. I learned that they bought them at a local card shop. I went there and bought a box of 85 Topps. I ended up with complete sets for 40+ years. My sons and I enjoyed putting many sets together, and I am still collecting today.

Lowery Ross, 44, Corpus Christi, Texas

The persons most responsible for getting me into collecting are Nolan Ryan and Marvin Miller. It was the beginning of the 1980 season and Nolan Ryan was all the rage as he was a local boy returning home and had just signed the first million dollar contract. As things at home were not good – cancer – I spent a lot of time and energy on baseball. As I read and listened and heard more about Ryan and Miller and strikes and finances I wanted more and more to SEE who it was I was learning about. There were plenty of pictures of Miller as the strike became real. However, once the strike cleared up and the games began in earnest and my newly beloved Astros were winning I needed to see who it was for whom I was rooting. Thus as I was spending time after school in the local 7-11 I noticed the baseball cards. I bought a pack and was instantly hooked. Here were my heroes!!!

I started collecting when I was 7 with my Dad and Mom. My parents Divorced and every weekend I was with one or the other. My Dad would take us to SAMs Club and buy a box almost every weekend. That was the year of the Topps gold scratch offs and we got the set, and had a collection of Brian Taylor and Todd Van Poppel cards. Then when I visited my mom we would go to the local card shop where I was allowed to pick out three packs a weekend. I collected until the age of 14 when my parents got back together and eventually remarried. Then in December I found out my wife and I were having a boy. We visited my parents and I found my card collection and mailed it to my house. I was amazed to find out most of the cards didn’t amount to how much I paid for postage. So I started to collect again, and was happy to see a lot of sets include players from my Era and I am still able to add to that collection of players, especially Cal Ripken. I’ve been on a quest to get his Auto. Tim, 30 years old, Orange County California

I was very into sports as a kid and learned to read by reading the sports section of the local newspaper. My mother got me into collecting when she took me by a local card shop one day. This was back when my town had 3 card shops (now all gone) and so I had a number of choices when purchasing cards. I traded a lot of cards with my friends, but I was always on the lookout for the chance to acquire more mariners cards. I still remember pulling my first GU card, as it was still something special back in 2001. Nowadays my collection has greatly expanded through the internet but I still have fond memories of collecting as a kid.

Ryan Sutley
21
Bellingham, WA

I was born in 1977. Each year I was born my father had bought a pack of baseball cards and never opened them. He had planned to save them all for me and give them to me when I turned 18. My father passed away when I was just three years old. He was never able to complete his 18 years savings plan. I started collecting when I was a little kid just for fun. I gave it up like most kids do when I became a teenager and girls took over my curiosity. It wasn’t until I was 18 that I began collecting again when my mother gave me those three packs of cards my father had bought for me. She gave them to me just as he had planned on doing. I now collect a set of cards each year for my son. 11 years and counting for the little guy so far. He doesn’t know what I have planned for him one day, but I hope to give him 18 years of cards just as my dad had hoped to do for me.

Paul Braddy
Dickson, TN.
Age 36

My dad got me into collecting when I was about 3 years old. He would show me all of his old cards and I would look at them for hours. He bought me my first sealed factory set of 1989 Topps lol and I wasn’t allowed to open it because it would be worth something someday haha. We would make weekly trips to the card shops here in Cincinnati and I always got $5 bucks to spend so I would look at everything and always end up with something. I started out collecting Cal Ripken Jr. and Allen Iverson. I literally tried to get every card and would go to card shows with my dad to see if there was anything I didn’t have. My collection blossomed into obsession and in my 20’s I started collecting Brandon Phillips and became a Beckett SuperCollector and was featured in a issue. Now that I’m older and have a son of my own I’m doing the same things with him. When he was born I started an unopen pack collection for him. He has almost one pack of everthing since he was born in 2010 and it’s going strong today. His first sets we built were 2011 Topps Heritage master set, 2011 Allen & Ginter master set, 2011 Gypsy Queen master set. Daddy sorted while he tore up the wrappers and box lol. I also buy him a factory set every year just like my dad did for me and he is not allowed to open it because it could be worth something someday. Without baseball cards my life would definitely be different, it has been a bonding tool, a means of survival when I sold my collection after I was laid off for 2 years and now a true hobby again that I get to spend with my son. I have my dads collection after he passed and it will be passed on to my son and so on. This Father’s Day I can see no other way to spend it than to open cards on the living room floor with my son and see his smile and then go to the Reds game that day and do things that my dad shared with me. I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.

@alladinsane69
Old guy here
Wednesday is my 48th birthday
As I was a youngster my brother and I collected mostly hockey cards being Canadian
We would save our allowance and buy the packs
Trading with each other and friends at school
We used to play the toss against the wall game,.. closest to the wall won the other cards
We also…wait for it… Attached them to our spokes on our bikes and road around making cool motorcycle sounds
Good fun
We had no idea about saving or collecting for the future
We were kids and had fun
Our father would always tell us stories about the players if he had seen them play
Now I collect for the fun of the game and try to get the rare cards and just have fun with it
Anyways
Happy fathers day dad
Miss u
B
Halifax nova scotia Canada

My mom actually got me and my brother back into cards somehow. I remember collecting as a 7 and 8-year old, and really liked those 87 and 88 Topps cards, but I stopped for a while. My dad had us interested in baseball, but not so much into cards. My mom was always a bit of an antique collector, and sometimes we’d go to antique shows or stores with her. Along the way, my younger brother got a little older, and he got interested in cards, too. So we’d go to these antique stores with my Mom, and while she was looking for copper luster ware, we’d see if we could find some old baseball cards.

This was probably around 1992 or 93, and eventually my brother and I got mom to ditch some of the antique shows and we would hit up Maverick’s card/comic shop in Cincinnati and go to card shows at least once a month. Now we weren’t finding old singles in an antique store, we were buying new stuff during the boom of product in 1993. See, I’d missed the whole Upper Deck intro into the hobby, but when I came back, UD really intrigued me! The holograms, the interesting pictures – cards just seemed so much higher quality. Inserts, chase cards sequentially numbered, even the potential for an autographed card in a pack? I really think in the ~5 years from 1988-1993 I wasn’t paying attention to cards, the hobby had changed more than it had in the previous 30 years.

It got us hooked, and I tried to buy anything Upper Deck baseball, my brother loved anything Leaf baseball. We even had some player collections – Griffey for me, Bonds for my brother, and we got my mom to collect Roberto Alomar. The other thing, we were big fans of Michigan basketball, so when the fab 5 went to the pros, I kept up collecting that way. I kind of left the hobby for over a decade, but collecting Jalen Rose was the one thing I did consistently before coming back to baseball cards a few years ago.

It’s a little different having my mom as opposed to dad being the main proponent of collecting, but she always had the collecting gene!

Charlie
33
Chicago, IL

Tom Waldron
Back in 87 I was working for Verizon just barley got the job had to move out of my home town inRoanke VA
to Leesburg va to work at the time Directory service. Unfortunatley i got sick and mover back home for awhile .
i started watching a young kid from UNC pLAYING BASKETBALL and i decided I need to get his card.
So it was Michael Jordan who made me want to go and start collectin cards.
I would rather have the Archives baseball since I have a chance to get some heavy metal ro topps original auto.
thanks guys and I haven’t stop collecting either and so far no Michale Jordan auto’s either

My grandfather, who lived in Jackson, Mich., was legally blind and thus could not drive … he rode his bike or walked everywhere, including to the mall across the street (which was built about 50 years after his house was).

One of his favorite things to do … and what really got me into collecting … was to walk over to the mall and stand in line for free autographs from retired Tigers legends such as Barbaro Garbey, Denny McClain, Willie Horton, and “The Bird,” Mark Fidrych.

As he explained, there would usually be a dealer or two who would sell cards of whoever was signing that day, usually for $1 apiece.

I never went with him, however, because my family moved out to California when I was 6.

So, during the school year, without telling me, he would go get these autographed cards and save them for me when I came out to visit him and my grandma in the summertime.

They are not around any more, and neither is “The Bird” … but I still have the cards to remind me of those special summers at my grandparents’ house, which I think of every time I look at those signed Tigers cards.

RJ
Age 38
Napa, CA

I started collecting just to meet the girl working at the card shop at the time…I was 13 and she was 15….I went in there as often as I could…Once the shop ended up closing, she was gone…Little did I know, 10 years later, we would find one another again and start dating…Now she is my wife and mother of my 2 kids! I think that was the best pull ever from a card shop!!!

Age:34
Location: Mountain Home AR

Josh J. (Age 30) – Canton OH

My uncle got me hooked on collecting cards when I was 6 years old. We started going to sports cards shows at the local mall and various hotels that the shows were held at. I’m still an avid collector today and hope to pass on the tradition with my 11 month old son.

In 1968 while visiting my grand parents in san bernadino California (it would be the last time Id see jmy grandfather) , we were standing in his front yard playing catch when we heard the ice cream/ lunch truck coming. Grandpa asked if I was thirsty and I said yes. When the truck stopped we got a coke in a glass bottle and I asked for some gum. Grandpa said not just any gum, we want a pack of Topps ball cards. The truck leaves and he says to me, now you get the best of both worlds, gum and something to keep! He said that cards contained all kind of information and would teach me all about the game I loved as a 6 year old. Still have that pack, wrapper and all. My grandfather passed in 1970 but he started me down a never ending quest of getting” things to keep” and plenty of knowledge from the stats and bios. This year marks my 45th anniversary of the hobby and promoting it to the youth of tomorrow

steve emerick
51
st Louis mo

I began collecting at a young age, after my dad showed me his collection. I loved the fact that I could own a piece of history. But sadly we did not have a lot of cards or opportunity to get cards. I tried to trade and sell what I could to get cards. I never got to where I wanted with collecting but have started back the past couple of years and have tried to involve my nephew. I want to leave him the collection I never had as a kid.

I was seven years old and my dad and Don Mattingly got me started collecting cards. He would usually stop on his way home from work and pick something up for my sister and I. In my case he would bring me home wax packs of all three sports. At the time I didn’t really organize them, I would just throw them in my toy box… One day I got bored and had a cork board of the United States in my room with each state color coded and I started pinning cards of the team in coordination to the state they were in. I randomly picked up a 1986 Topps Don Mattingly card and for some reason started reading the back of the card and found out that he was from Evansville, Indiana. I thought that was awesome because Evansville, Indiana is my home town and were I was born. I have been hooked ever since then! My dad passed away in 2005 and some of the best memories I have with him was going to games and card shows chasing cards and autographs. I have had the pleasure of meeting some of the top players over the years.

I now have a son that just turned 12 and got him started on cards the same way my dad did with me. When he was seven years old I would bring him packs of cards home and just let him open them. Since then he has fallen in love with cards and started following the same teams as me. I loved collecting with my dad then and love collecting with my son now. I hope this is a hobby that my son will get his son/daughter into later.

Nick Tegeler

chibear72@gmail.com

Lawrenceville, Illinois

To be honest, it was a collection of family members who really got me into collecting cards. It all started when I was about 5 years old and my mother passed on to me my fathers (who had passed away when I was 1 year old) collection of old baseball cards. My mom continued that tradition each year and would give me packs of baseball and football cards each Valentines Day, Easter, Birthday, and Christmas. I even remember one year for Christmas opening a box of Upper Deck baseball she ordered from the local news room/convenient store, along with a giant plastic candy cane filled with packs of cards and a card organizer. My mom would also take me to card shows at the mall where she would buy me any Chipper Jones card I didn’t have already as well as any Starting Lineup I didn’t have. She would always tell me the story of how she would go to the store and look through the Starting Lineups for all the good players and knew when the shipments came in so she could get to them first.

From there my collection continued to grow and would have to really credit my uncle and my cousin for continuing by collecting habits. I remember would would take road trips to Toronto to see the Yankees play the Blue Jays each summer. Each trip, my uncle would get us 3-4 packs of the Donruss Studio 8×10 portrait series until my cousin and I completed the series. My cousin and I grew to obsess over cards to the point where he would have a book just of of favorite teams and only the current players on those teams at the time (he had a NY Yankees and Dallas Cowboys book while I an Atlanta Braves and a Carolina Panthers book). Any time a new player was acquired, we would sort through our cards and update them in our books and remove whoever was no longer on the team. We would have boxes of cards sorted out by team so we knew exactly where to look. My cousin and I would even save up all of our money and instead of spending it at Disney World when we went down for a family vacation, we bought cards instead at a Wal-Mart in Orlando. When jersey cards and autographs were introduced into packs, I remember we would try to feel for the larger cards in the packs hoping we were selecting the right ones. Any time we would get doubles of cards, we would give them to each other.

Even though we have gotten older, my cousin and I still have the urge to tear open some wax, not as much as we would like to though. We will purchase some hobby boxes off eBay now and again, or whenever we get a chance and are in Buffalo, we will stop into a Dave & Adams and pick up a few packs or boxes. I would love to really get into collecting more often, if my wife would let me! Who knows, maybe I can pass on my collection to my 2 year old daughter some day!!

Joshua Ebbs
Age: 25 – 26 on June 26!
Rochester, NY

i have been collecting cards for 25 years a collect them all by my self been trying to get some good name cards but cant get lucky enough to find any would love to win sa box and see if i can get lucky

Well of course my dad got me my first pack of cards but my friends were the ones who really got me into collecting. They were the ones i went to to trade for my favorite players and who i argued who was a better player more by their pictures and later on by their stats.

I started collecting in the early ’80s, when I would have to go on family vacations to visit family in Illinois. The town was small and all my cousins were so much older than I was. I would walk to the local dime store and buy a few packs and then make my own baseball games when I got back. I stopped collecting in the early 90’s when I started a family and could not afford it any more.

I recently got back into collecting thanks to my daughter. She started to collect wrestling cards which then led to me starting to buy baseball and football cards again.

Ian Moore
41
San Diego, Ca

I started collecting sports cards when I was about 30 Years old.It’s fun to find numbered and autographed rookie cards.I cant afford boxes but the packs are fun to open.When things get to boring I just start checking out My collection of cards.Then it seems like time just flies by and I’m having fun going thru the Beckett Price Guides.It is a very nice Hobby collecting Sports cards.

My late grandfather was a big baseball fan and I would watch the games on TV with him when I was young. Around 1985 I started to notice that the liquor stores sold baseball cards next to the candy and I bought some. I thought it was a fun way to learn about the players on TV and Ive been buying packs ever since.

Matt, 35
Orange County, CA

My uncle Pat got me into collecting back in 1989. He picked me up a couple of packs of Upper Deck baseball, and I pulled a Griffey Jr. The rest was history.

I started collecting on my own, back in good ole 1989. I was 10. Jose Canseco was my guy and, well, he still is. My interest in cards got my younger brother into it, as well (Ken Griffey Jr. was his man), but he eventually gave it up, as did I, eventually, but in the past couple years I’ve fallen back into it … hard. Thanks to my 8 year-old son’s new found love for the Tigers (after we moved to Metro Detroit). So now we buy packs together, hoping to pull a Miggy or JV, and what can I say, I’m still filling out my Canseco collection. I may not have had a dad to collect with, but I’m there now with my son. Always have been and always will be.

In 1967 My Family and I were visiting at a couisins house and he gave me a shoe box of 1966 and 1967 baseball cards. I have been collecting baseball and some football cards since then.

Dean Eaton
55
Mount Airy,NC

I started collecting when I was 14. I had just moved from big city Boston to little town Deep River, CT. Total culture shock. New high school, no friends, new environment and totally lost. I was at a Toys-R-Us with my mother and little sisters when my mother saw a baseball card collector starter kit. It had a binder, some 9 card pages, some cards and a how to collect manual. My mother suggested I get it and to start a hobby. I did and never looked back.
Danny Tucker
39
Sanford, FL

Well I can remember when I was 8 or so my uncle joined the Air Force so he left me all of his baseball cards which were almost complete sets of 1973 1974 and 1975 Topps. I was very thankful for this and loved the cards. But as time went on I also joined the Air Force and left the cards with my mother. Well long story short my mother had no idea what they were so when she moved she got rid of them. I was heart broken. It wasn’t the value of the cards it was the idea behind them. They were a gift from my uncle. Well after basic and at my second base I got pretty heavy into collecting. This was around 1993-1996, I had thousands of cards, still do. I love collecting and I love the hobby. I have new additions from 2012 Fleer Retro and 2012 Classified Football as of today! Just have to be a bit more sneaky about it now around the wife, but my daughters know what I am doing!

My dad got me into collecting in the Christmas of 1976

One of my first and best childhood memories involving baseball cards was from 1976: my best and most favorite Christmas ever. One of my favorite gifts was my first baseball glove. It was a Glen Beckert model. I had never heard of him, but that was OK with me. I had my first glove.

A nice rival to that glove was a stack of unopened packs of 1976 baseball cards. It was probably 5 or 6 packs. I don’t remember who was in the first pack, but I sure remember who was in the last pack…and in his last year in cards. Hank Aaron, the all- time Home Run King! I had to see how many HR he had. 745, way past Babe Ruth! Wow, he kind of looks old now compared to the pictures in the Scholastic books in my elementary school library, but now I had Hank. Brewers? I had no idea that he was no longer a Brave

Those same memories came back to me five or six years later as a teenager when I was finishing building the sets from my earlier years and I sorted my small stack of 76’s. Now that I was complete with 77-81, I had to go back and finish the ‘76 even though I only had about 100. Card shops were now around now although only a few. Some of my friends collected cards, but not many…and they did not have any this old, mostly ‘78 and ‘79 cards.

My parents were big fans of the flea markets, so I of course would look for cards there and found a dealer that set up almost every week, and I was able buy many of the commons for 10 cents each. The last card I needed for the set was Robin Yount. He was pretty expensive since it was his second year card. It was hard paying 20 bucks for him but I saved up and finished the set off.

mark zentkovich-age 46

I wish I could say that my father got me started collecting, but he never shared my love of collecting or even sports for that matter. I got into collecting in 1987, after a sleepover for a schoolmates’ birthday. He got a bunch of packs and his mother gave everyone else in attendance a pack as well. I was hooked right then and there. Fun times trading cards at school with friends.

Today, I collect mostly with the wonderful community we have here. I love being able to get on the internet and trading, sharing my pickups, and sharing in others’ pickups. While that’s all fun, it would be nice to have someone to sit with in person to trade with, talk cards, and share my love of this hobby. For those reasons my wife decided to bless me with two little pack rippers of our own that are now 1 and 2 years old. (OK maybe that’s not the reason why we had kids but it sounded good anyway lol.)

Anyway, I’m hoping my kids have the same appetite for collecting that their Daddy does. I think my two year old does quite literally. Which reminds me, there are really only 60 2012 Topps Mini Gold #265 Aroldis Chapman’s left out there instead of the stated print run of 61. And in case anyone was wondering Topps Gold cards are obviously not poisonous. However, my advice to any new father is to make sure your children have better sources of fiber in their diet than Daddy’s baseball cards lying around.

Patrick Hefel
Age 35
Walford, Iowa

patrickhef30@gmail.com

Let’s see…I’ve been a baseball fan since seeing Dennis Eckersley and his funky delivery/ mustache throw the walk off homer to Kirk Gibson. Even after that, I was always a fan of his. So I begged my dad to join a little league team. I didn’t understand why no one really wanted me on their team, but then my dad reminded me that I was a girl and little boys have a hard time accepting ‘our kind’ on their team. Seeing my disappointment, my dad decided to coach a team and put me on it!!! I was the Seattle Mariners new 2nd base/ Right fielder ( I didn’t realize the irony of being drafted by the worst team until I was much older…). As my little league career began, I thought I should learn more about the team I was on. My dad took me to the card store and made me the happiest girl in the world by buying me my first card ever…a 1989 Ken Griffey Jr Donruss rookie. I’ve been collecting Griffey ever since…

Age:31
Lakewood,CA

My grandmother was the one that started collecting baseball cards. She gave me a 1980 Rickey Henderson rookie when it was around a $200 card and I fell in love with collecting. Henderson quickly became my favorite player and I soon amassed over 4000 cards of him. She had been collecting cards since 1980 and it became my favorite thing to do was go to grans house. I showed up every time with a box of cards in tow and she would go through her extras and help me out. She passed away a few years ago and I was suppose to inherit half of her cards and only wound up with less than 1/4 th of her collection. I still enjoy collecting today and hope to pass down my cards to my daughter or to her kids.

It all started in beautiful Brooklyn, on an early Fall day in 1967. My grandfather, in an attempt to bribe me and keep me still while his “Old School” barber-buddy butchered my hair into some semblance of a flat-top crew-cut, went to the candy store and quickly came back with these cool packets of cardboard and bubble gum sticks. Much to my surprise, while studying these colorful cardboard baseball players’ photos & stats and chewing a huge wad of pink bubble gum, I lost all track of time …. and in the process, lost all of my long hair. :) But it didn’t matter, I was hooked and soon told as many of my friends about my newfound obsession!

My Grandfather died 6 months later, and those cards that he bought for me became extremely important. I guess it was my only tangible reminder him. I continued collecting from 1967-1972, then slowly drifted away from baseball cards.

I kept those cards very safe throughout my childhood, never thinking to ever trade them, sell them or flip them. I would buy some various cards here and there over the years, but in 2011, I re-entered the hobby and I’ve been going strong ever since. Throughout various moves, schools, homes, etc my Grandfather’s cards have always been with me and are the core of my collection obsession today.

It’s very fitting that on Father’s Day I have my grandfather to thank for planting that first seed.

BTW: Here are the cards that started it all!

http://i1352.photobucket.com/albums/q641/DrMitchJ/null_zps908eb8ec.jpg

Thanks for looking!
If chosen, I’d love to get a box of the Baseball Archives … The recent box break was terrific and the 1972 design inclusion immediately grabbed my interest! Looks like a great new product!

Thanks for your consideration,
Dr Mitch – 52 – Hollywood, FL

I was 12 years old and a card shop opened up in a spacious location in the middle of the local mall in Richmond, BC. For 24 years, I watched the hobby change with the owners of my local card shop. They were obviously the catalyst for my card collecting habit. They carried everything over the years. They were really good about bringing in product; whether it was hockey, baseball, football, golf, or even non-sport items. We shared a lot of good box breaks over the years and we saw plenty of awesome hits. I’m sad to say that they closed up shop at the end of 2012. Good times and good memories from this year on!

What first sparked my interest in collecting is when I gained an interest in baseball at an early age and my dad telling me how he used to collect cards when he was my age at the time. He told me about how he had Mantle, Robinson, Maris, Ford, all the old greats…that got thrown away by his mom (my grandmother) while he was serving in Vietnam. I remember he bought me my first pack of cards at the 7-eleven down the street from where we lived, two packs of 1986 Topps cards. I was so stoked when one of the first cards I pulled was one of Texas Rangers manager Bobby Valentine, since the Rangers are my hometown team I was excited to get a card of a guy I instantly recognized. Since then I’ve mostly personal collected certain favorite players and my hometown Rangers, and made sure that my collection is taken care of.

Today I’ll occasionally show my dad some of the big hits I get and it always stirs up conversation of the cards he had, stories of ballplayers he watched when he was younger, or just give us a reason to talk about last night’s games. Baseball cards to me will always be a great father son catalyst no matter the age and I’m thankful to have had it as a great way to bond!

Randy Russell
Denton, TX
age 36

I started getting baseball cards with my dad in1960. We would go to the drug store and have a soda. Then a special treat of a pack of cards was given to me and after to my brother once he was old enough to understand. What i didn’t realize at the time, was that was not really affordable in the family budget. My dad always made sure we had that treat and I have loved baseball and collecting ever since.

This takes me back to my grandmothers old house, sitting in the kitchen with my uncle, in the mid to late 70’s. I’ll explain – I am Sam McDowell’s nephew. He and I shared a number of things together including our love of drawling. What I remember is sitting there in Pittsburgh as a very little kid while my uncle was opening his mail. He gave me one to open. I opened the letter and a baseball card fell out – of my uncle! I didn’t understand that he had played baseball and really didn’t understand him being on a card and someone asking him to sign it. This got me to start thinking about cards of all types. My Dad took me to a comic store the following week. I walked in and saw this large display of baseball and football cards. Something spoke to me – I had to have these. The feeling of holding a wax pack in my hand and not knowing what was inside was a huge rush. I couldn’t wait to get out of the store before I opened the three packs my Dad bought me. There was nasty tasting gum and a bunch of people in uniforms that I didn’t know. I was hooked. I sorted all the cards by team colors. I never got cards from my uncle – he didn’t collect those things. I love collecting baseball and when I think of who introduced me to it – it just all seems like fate. I think my collection is around 20,000 cards. And I just bought my 5 year old son his first pack of cards. Bowman Platinum 2012. We now go every weekend and buy a pack. Soon he will know who these people are. I secretly still buy hobby boxes. Shhhhhhh

Sorry –

Jim Francis, 41
New Orleans, LA

Gave my son a box of cards when he was barely old enough to talk. (Start ’em young!) He used to love going through and finding the Mets — we videotaped him once, and it’s still hilarious: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlcUNQvoqvs

My collecting experience started with Boy’s Life magazine. When I was in Cub Scouts, I got a subscription to that magazine. In the back there were full sets of Topps Baseball cards listed for sale. I was curious about these but did nothing else. Then, it happened: the Super Bowl between the Vikings and the Raiders. My “friend” at the time had football cards, mostly of the Raiders. I was a huge fan of the Vikings and Fran Tarkenton. He was so sure that the Raiders would win the Super Bowl, he wanted to “bet cards”. Since I didn’t have any cards, I was dense enough to suggest that we “bet money” instead.

Anyone that knows their NFL Football knows how I came out on that bet. I did NOT have the money so I had to go ask my mother for it. Needless to say, there was a LOT of payback work at home on the farm! It was then that I decided that I MUST start ordering these card sets. By ordering full sets of baseball and football (basketball came later for me), I would have more cards than my “friend” could ever dream of having. It was my ultimate revenge! LOL

Since then, card collecting has brought me not only all of the joys that are inherent with cards, but many friendships and great conversations in my lifetime. Collecting has greatly enriched my life!

David Z., 32, Charlottesville, Virginia

Not surprised that most people got in to collecting because of their dad, but for how many is it the other way around? I started buying cards at my local shop in Herndon, Virginia, when I was about 9. Pretty soon my dad remembered all the great series from growing up in the ’50s, and he was hooked again. We went to card shows as attendees at first, and then we upgraded to a table selling our wares. I focused on the modern stuff–Griffey, Cal, Big Hurt and (yes) Tim Salmon were the biggies for me, while he went to estate sales looking for Jackie, Mickey and Ted. Not sure it was a profitable hobby, but it was a great way for us to spend a Saturday, and I hope to do the same with my kids someday.

When I was 7 my parents got divorced and my Mom and I moved away to a different town. It was there that I met one of my good childhood friends and he collected football cards. He’s the one that got me collecting and interested in sports in general. Plus it was good for me to have a hobby to keep my mind off what happened with my parents. We would stop by the gas station every weekend where they had Fleer Ultra packs for like $3 and I would easily blow my $5 weekly allowance. Now Im 24 and still collecting. Also still blowing my so called allowance, now other wise known as a paycheck. This hobby isnt one of those things that I grew out of because I love it so much! I still have a really good friend from my childhood that collects as well. I met him later on but we would always tell eachother at school what we pulled from packs and such. Who would have thought we would still be doing that 14 years later?

Nathan
24
Cleveland, OH

Ive been collecting for over 20 years now. It all started in 1991 with my older brother while my dad who was active duty Army at time stationed at Mannhiem Germany. I grew up in a family of 6 myself being the second oldest. My parents didn’t have much really just enough to make ends meet, but they always did as much as they could to make us happy. I still remember it like it was yesterday opening 1991 score baseball. The cards weren’t much then and still aren’t worth much now. The thrill collecting today cant compare to those days. There was really no such thing as an insert then but I still remember it like it was yesterday chasing after the 1991 score card with Ken Griffey Sr and Ken Griffey Jr called (THE GRIFFEY’S). To this day I still have never owed that card. Reason being my older brother was a huge Ken Griffey Jr fan. As my brother and I grew older he slowly stopped collecting, but he always held onto his Griffey cards. I myself could never give up the hobby.

Id say around 1998 is when my older brother quit collecting. Since then my older brother joined the Army that summer the five years later in the summer of 2003 I joined the Air Force. Over the last 10 years ive seen my brother a hand full of times.

Now we are coming into the summer of 2013 my brother is still in the Army stationed in Connecticut and myself stationed in Ramstein, Germany. Im proud to say thanks to Skype and hip hop artist Macklemore and his song, “My oh My”. My brother who is now 34 has been collecting again for almost 1 month now. Being so far away from my brother, Macklemore’s video has changed our lives forever. MY OH MY were has time gone….

I started collecting in 1975. I got my first pack down at the local corner store and then I was hooked. Of course, that was the year my beloved Red Sox played in that memorable World Series with the Reds and I was forever hooked on baseball and baseball cards. My mom would take me to a local candy distributor and I would get a box. The fun I would have trying to put together the set. I completed the 1975, 1976 and 1977 sets. By then, as most teenagers, I found a new hobby, girls! It wasn’t until my son was born in 1994 that I got back into the hobby and have been enjoying it ever since.

I love the Archives sets as the designs bring back great memories of my love of baseball cards. Thanks Topps! And thanks Beckett for giving away these boxes!

Wayne Stearns

I started collecting cards in elementary school with my friends who went to the same daycare that I did. Every time my mom would take me to Wal Mart, or a gas station, or really any retail store in the 90’s, they always had packs of football cards, and I’d bug her till she’d get me one or two. Many of my friends were the same in that regard. It always made school days very exciting because we couldn’t wait till 3:30 when we could get to daycare and see if anyone got anything new the night before. We all had several binders and spent hours every day working on trades, looking at them, looking up their values in our Becketts and seeing who had the best collections. As an only child, football cards helped me bond with kids I didn’t know and make lifetime friends. I still trade with some of those people to this day.

Nathan Craig
27
Farmers Branch, TX

My father is the one who got me started in collecting football baseball and basketball cards. See he was and still is a high school football coach so sports have been a part of my life since I could walk. I remember every sunday we would always watch the cowboys game together and really sparked a tradition and in fact we still do that to this day. We always had and still have sports to talk about and we could always relate to it. My father gave me his card collection when I was young probably around 6 or 7 and ever since I have felt it my obligation and my pleasure to build on his collection doing my best to make it unique. We would always make trips to our local store to buy a couple packs and it really brought us together. I am currently 18 and live in Shelbyville, Texas.

Age 35

When I was about 5 years old, my uncle bought me some packs of 1986 Topps Football for my birthday (in 1989). He had just started collecting and thought it would be a good thing for him and I to share. I busted open the packs with him and he explained to me that I needed to be careful with these, as some of the players I had found, were worth some money. I took his advice to heart, well at least, for a short while. A few days after my birthday, being bored and grounded (cut my sister’s hair, I thought I did a good job, parent’s didn’t), I decided to go back thru the cards. To a 5 year old, unsupervised, these things are just cardboard. So, I decided to make a game out of them. I snagged some safety scissors and began to cut away. I was going to make puzzles out of them.

Well, a few weeks later my uncle came over and unfortunately, I had to fess up to what I did to my birthday present. He was not upset, well, not nearly as upset as I was once I got a little older. In my puzzle factory, I had cut up three Jerry Rice and two Reggie White RC’s.

By that time, I was 9 and much wiser. To a 9 year old, the money I could have gotten for those cards would have made me an instant one hundred-aire and an obvious celebrity amongst my peers.

It was a tough lesson to learn, but I continued to collect, and share great memories with my uncle well into my early 20s. We attended countless local and national card shows. My collection grew but my interest waned. I went to college, worked full-time, and the time just wasn’t there for me to stay up on the industry and make educated decisions. It did not help that I saw the value of my collection plummet as the product runs during that time (early 90s to early 2000s) were so bloated, everyone had ten of everything I had.

I recently got married and we had our first child (a boy). I am back into collecting and am as addicted as I was in my younger years. I want to my son and I to share the same memories that my uncle and I had. Cards were a pivotal connection for us, and I hope I can experience the same thing with my son. While collecting certainly put a large dent in my wallet (without much return to show for it) when I was young, it was the memories and core values that I will always cherish and appreciate. Hopefully, my son doesn’t decide to start his own puzzle factory under my watch.

When I was growing up my family (Dad, Mom, 2 brothers) were all huge football fans. Each had there own teams (Dad-Vikings, Mom Steelers, Brother- Packers, Brother-Rams). Living in Seattle I thought I would be a Seahawks fan. My brothers had collected in the 70’s and had football and baseball cards from then. I was 12 years younger then them so I started in the mid 80’s. Card shops had just started popping up around the area and my dad, mom and I started collecting cards together. We would hit up all the corner stores around the area to pick up .35 cent packs! Boy have those days gone! After watching the Seahawks be a miserable team I decided to pick a new team and now I’m a Falcons, Braves and Hawks fan for life. Collecting is always been in my blood and I find nothing more exciting then busting a pack of cards hoping for that big hit!

Bryan
37
Puyallup, WA 98372

I was introduced into collecting by my cousin Johnny Silva Jr & a church congregation member Keith Swanson. My first pack that I bought contained 1989 Ken Griffey Jr. rc. I was hooked ever since. My most valuable pull non-auto is Marshall Faulk Score Rookie Redemption. It has lost some value over the years but still a beautiful card! I only collect football now. I introduced my son into collecting and he was pumped when he pulled Adrian Peterson Topps DPP Black Refractor. He has shied away as he is a junior in college, but still enjoys going thru his collection and mine. I reintroduced one of my best friends Hernan de la Rosa Jr. He used to collect and really jumped back into collecting 2012 football. My son and I would really like the Topps archive football box to bust on Father’s Day!

Alfredo Martinez
37
San Juan, TX 78589

i remember when i was 10 now 48 i went to this old bowling alley next to fenway park boston they had a 25 cent arcade game in which you could win baseball cards i spent my allowance but i had all these cards i thought it was cool and i was hooked now kmart had these 1980’s packs i remember i came home with these packs going thru pack even 1989 packs chasing griffey not upper deck overall the cards i had from the bowling alley/k-mart wasnt worth much but it was just fun and just fellll in love like i couldnt resist buying 50 cents pack then 1 day i was in cvs they had these hangercards that had like 50 assorted my best hit as a kid was a chipper jones rookie even tho these hanger packs were $3.95 then i remember when i got older like 19 or 20 i love scoreboard you could get autograph cards but redemption for autograph memorabilia the best redemption i got was a kobe auto mini basketball then there were old judge packs just love these product until scoreboard went out of business then i found this store called the card dog sport cards store in cambridge mass my eyes open up to all these brands boxes packs as time went on had a good paying job that on sunday nites at that store we had pack wars best card won the pot by the time we went thru these boxes we left with monster boxes of cards,autograph,jerseys and rookie cards and today i have a closet full of monster and shoe boxes with top loaded cards and cards..the best cards i ever got a dan marino autograph card # to his jersey sold it for $750 the pull redemption for autograph glove number to 25 sold it for $1200 that when griffey was with mariners and hot..then a shaq finest gold refractor from 1996/97 topps finest and list goes on and today cant afford as many boxes prices were different back in the day i think more exciting then but still pop a hobby box or 2 maybe 3 today………..and walmart retail boxes….just love sport cards……
ed rubin
portland,maine 04101
48 years old..

I started collecting baseball cards when I was 6 years old. The first pack of cards I ever received was from my Dad. While growing up I was a huge California Angels fan and the joy of opening the packs and finding a Wally Joyner, Brian Downing, or Chuck Finley card was always really exciting for me. I continued to collect cards all the way until high school. This was about the same time that the hobby was getting over saturated with all kinds of cards of the early 1990’s.

Back in September of 2012 I went searching for all my old cards when I found out I was going to be a Dad. Since then I have gotten that hobby bug back I had when I was a kid. My favorite thing to do is to break wax, try to create a set, find inserts, and cards of players in today’s game that I admire. Every time I go to Target or I am near my favorite sports card shop, I get something to keep me busy. It makes me feel like a kid again!

The best part of this, on June 1st, just a few days ago, I had my first child. Until the birth we didn’t know the sex because it was a surprise. Can you imagine how excited I became when we had a little boy! Now I get the chance to share all the fond child hood memories I had as a kid collecting cards with my own son. It is something that we will be able to do together and create new memories for the both of us that will last a lifetime!

I was always involved in sports when I was a kid, be it baseball, football, basketball, whatever the season called for. Due to me playing sports all the time, I started watching it, then collected my favorite players. I started out buying cheap wax packs at the corner store near my house with my allowance money. I remember pulling a Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card and me bringing it to school, while all the other kids thought I was god because of it. HA! My mom never was big into me collecting cards, so I had to scrape whatever allowance I could together to pick up a few packs here and there. And I would go through EVERY card, and memorize the stats on the back of each card. Then I would organize and re-organize my cards in many different ways: by professional team, then a couple days later by college team, then home state, it was never ending for me!!!
I remember when I realized that I really loved football more than anything else. My mom picked up my first complete set of football cards for me for Christmas from the local supermarket: 1990 Topps Football! What a great first set! I spent so much time looking at those cards over and over! There were the Super Bowl highlights cards from the Super Bowls, All-Pro’s, Super Rookies, WOW!!! I didn’t put that set down for months!!!!
Now I have a 2 year old daughter who I introduced to cards pretty much within her first month home from the hospital. HAHA! I was sitting at my desk holding her in my arms while thumbing through some cards, and she picked up one particular card, a Jordan Shipley rookie auto (protected in a penny sleeve and top sleeve) and tried to put the edge of the card in her mouth!
Prior to my daughter being born, I took it upon myself to put together an autographed name plate for my soon-to-be-arriving daughter, Taylor Marie. It took me 3 months of trading on the Beckett site and buying only one card on Ebay (the rest were traded for), but I completed the task! Once all of the letters were in for her name, I went to a local craft shop and purchased a shadow box frame of sorts, putting in a Minnie Mouse background, spelling out her name with the collected auto lettermen. It has been hanging on her bedroom wall since before she was born and will be there until she doesn’t want it any more!!!

(sorry for the reposts, wasn’t posting right!)

I was always involved in sports when I was a kid, be it baseball, football, basketball, whatever the season called for. Due to me playing sports all the time, I started watching it, then collected my favorite players. I started out buying cheap wax packs at the corner store near my house with my allowance money. I remember pulling a Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card and me bringing it to school, while all the other kids thought I was god because of it. HA! My mom never was big into me collecting cards, so I had to scrape whatever allowance I could together to pick up a few packs here and there. And I would go through EVERY card, and memorize the stats on the back of each card. Then I would organize and re-organize my cards in many different ways: by professional team, then a couple days later by college team, then home state, it was never ending for me!!!
I remember when I realized that I really loved football more than anything else. My mom picked up my first complete set of football cards for me for Christmas from the local supermarket: 1990 Topps Football! What a great first set! I spent so much time looking at those cards over and over! There were the Super Bowl highlights cards from the Super Bowls, All-Pro’s, Super Rookies, WOW!!! I didn’t put that set down for months!!!!
Now I have a 2 year old daughter who I introduced to cards pretty much within her first month home from the hospital. HAHA! I was sitting at my desk holding her in my arms while thumbing through some cards, and she picked up one particular card, a Jordan Shipley rookie auto (protected in a penny sleeve and top sleeve) and tried to put the edge of the card in her mouth!
Prior to my daughter being born, I took it upon myself to put together an autographed name plate for my soon-to-be-arriving daughter, Taylor Marie. It took me 3 months of trading on the Beckett site and buying only one card on Ebay (the rest were traded for), but I completed the task! Once all of the letters were in for her name, I went to a local craft shop and purchased a shadow box frame of sorts, putting in a Minnie Mouse background, spelling out her name with the collected auto lettermen. It has been hanging on her bedroom wall since before she was born and will be there until she doesn’t want it any more!!!

Warren Nascimento
Fall River, MA

I got into collecting to be part of the “cool” kids when I was in elementary school in 1986. I’m a military brat and moved frequently…and collecting cards was huge back then. I started out with baseball because that is what everyone else collected…I’ve never been into baseball much but names like Gregg Jeffries, John Olerud, Jim Abbott, Mark McGwire, Wally Joyner and Ken Griffey Jr. became indelible in my daily lexicon. I collected until 1992 when a new high school and new “popular kids hobbies” grabbed my attention — anything I could do to be part of the crowd and blend in was my survival tactic.

I got back into collecting in 2009 after wandering into a card shop just to browse. I now collect a sport I truly love almost exclusively (football) without any peer pressure of trying to fit in :-) I ended up joining the military like my parents and have been active duty Coast Guard for the last 15 years. I have two daughters who are 2.5 and 1 years old so they haven’t been able to enjoy collecting with me yet. However, I have enjoyed making a few hobby friends that I have met when I travel for work and visit local card shops. The best one so far has been my buddy Andrew in Virginia who shares my passion for building a respectable PC and learning more and more about the hobby in general. Andrew has to toddler boys and we help each other out and send each other cards that we come upon in our travels.

Lushan
35
New Orleans, LA

My brother actually got me into baseball cards! Strange as it sounds, my dad was born in a foreign country, so he didn’t get me into it. My brother was the one who really got me into baseball and cards. I now have a huge collection, all thanks to him.

I was about 5 or so when I got my first pack of baseball cards, probably because my dad bought my older brother a pack at the local party store and didn’t want me to feel left out. That would be 1972 in a western suburb of Detroit. By the time I was 10, I was addicted – not to the gum, not to the individual players, but to the numbers. I would beg my dad to buy my a pack of cards if he was going up to the party store, and sometimes I would ride my bike up there with allowance money to buy them myself. Then I’d get home, sort the cards by team, then by BA and ERA within each team. I’d grab the sports section of that day’s newspaper, a calculator, and a pencil and paper so I could update each player’s batting average and ERA. I don’t update BAs and ERAs anymore, but to this day they are still the first thing I look at when I open a pack of baseball cards.
My name is David, and I am a stats addict.
David, 45, Tampa, FL

My brother got me started collecting cards in 1979. He was opening packs and I was getting the doubles. In 1980 my mother joined in by picking up rewrap packs for me from a flea market vendor she was friends with. In 1981 I started pack busting for real myself and put the 1981 Topps set togetehr by hand. Most of my friends at the time were also collecting and the trading we did kept us busy all season long. Two things really cemented my interest in cards at an early age. In third grade, my teacher decided to work witha teacher from the local high school connecting their students as pen pals. I was 8, my pen pal was 16 and also turned out to be a baseball card collector. After a few months, the teachers were able to get the young pen pals to the high school to meet the older pen pals. My pen pal presented me with a 1952 bowman card that I still have locked away in my stuff to this day. While I’ve bought and sold untold numbers of cards since then, that card has remained.

The other thing that happened was that my father stepped into the collecting picture. Noting that I was very serious about collecting he started taking me to shows and while I was buying my cards, he began to pick up his lost Boys of Summer, 1950’s Brooklyn Dodger cards that his mom had long ago thrown away. He also took me to flea markets in the area. I live in Staten Island so we went into New Jersey to shop at Route 18 and Route 1 flea markets where we bought many cards for our collections.

These days, my son is more into video games than collecting cards though he loves baseball and will sometimes accompany me to a show or store. When they make Call of Duty cards I’m sure he’ll be all over those.

David Blyn, 40
Staten Island, NY

I collected when I was a kid and I started collecting again in 2003 when some friends showed me some game used, autographed, serial numbered, etc. I have been collecting ever since. My favorite player is LeBron James. I also have players from every other sport.

*RE-posting to include name, age, and location*

My late grandfather introduced me to baseball card collecting, somewhat by accident. In 1985, he was diagnosed with lung cancer and became hospitalized quite often. Each time my parents and I would go visit him, he always made a point to have $1 waiting for me when I got there, so that I could run down to the gift shop and buy something. The first night I came back to the room with a handful of candy. He told me that I didn’t need all that stuff and gave me another dollar, “Try something more fun, like baseball cards or something.” To me that translated to “Go buy some baseball cards.” So I did. I can remember, even back then passing over the Roger Clemens RC, the Mark McGwire RC, and other great cards but getting super excited to pull a Whitey Herzog, Willie McGee, or any other St. Louis Cardinal. Most of those cards, and my grandfather, are gone now but I do still have the Ozzie Smith cards I pulled way back then. It sparked my love of the hobby and my passion to collect anything and everything Ozzie Smith. I am now instilling the passion in to my six year old son, who gets more excited to pull a Jon Jay than a Mike Trout or Stephen Strasburg!

John R.
Age 36
St. Louis, MO

I got my start in collecting when my mom and dad brought my brother and I packs of 1988 Topps Football cards at Dick’s Supermarket when we were young.

I remember the packs of football cards were in the checkout lanes next to candy bars and bubble gum. For only 45 cents you could own the 15 cards AND a stick of gum.

One of my dad’s co-workers once found a box of sports cards in a dumpster and gave them to dad, knowing I collected. In the disregarded shoe box were Warren Moon and Steve Young rookie cards (though far from mint condition, both are still part of my collection over 20 years later).

My collecting days started, like most, with a pack of 85 Topps baseball from the local grocery store. It REALLY took off after going to see a Great Falls Dodgers (rookie league) game and watching Jose Offerman and Eric Karros play. I came back home, and rode my bike as fast as I could to the local card shop to spend my ENTIRE allowance on anything I could get my hands on. I ended up spending so much time there, that the owner would pull anything new, and let me get first crack at it, before he put it on the shelves. After-hours wax packs littered the ground and display counters. I even got my own tab! How’s that for great customer service, giving an 8 yr old a tab (granted it had a $20 limit). I took a little hiatus during later years of high school and college, but I am back in. Great thing, is now my children want to get started. They marvel at the commons, and are just in awe of the memorabilia/autograph cards.

Great idea for a contest!

Derek Frank
32
Great Falls, MT

I started in the 5th grade , 30 years ago, when a kid named Ronnie had a birthday party and gave 1978 topps football cards out as party prizes.

Collected Football and baseball together with my brother (back in the 80’s). Stopped collected after a while and now have gotten the bug back.

John H
Age 43
Lansing, MI

my brother got me into collecting back in 1971 and still collecting today, my brother since passed away 5 years ago thats what kept are bond was collecting

About 6months ago while at a yard sale i bought a box og unopened 1990 score series 2 football cards and thought i hit the jackpot until i went home and started doing research on the case. I learned that cards deminished in value so i figured this box has been sealed for 23 years, I am just going to keep it selaed. About 2 months ago, My buddy bought a car and in the trunk was a box of various baseball and football cards along with sets of spiderman, x-men, star wars and superman trading cards so he gave them to me and i took them home and showed them to the kids (6 and 8) who fell in love with traidng cards so i started buying them wwe and yugio cards and then bought myself a couple packages of various cards and once i began opening them, it took me back to my child hood when i would purchase and save cards and leave them in milk crates because i didnt understand the whole concept other than they looked cool. Now that i am in the my 37 with young kids i understand how it was for me and teach my kids that these cards are fun to look at and save them for their kids and not make the same mistakes i did. Its been great buying packages of different stuff and placing them in holders and yes even the wwe cards because the kids are starting out that way and watching me.

My dad got me into collecting baseball cards when i was a kid, now i still collect and get to share the same experience with my daughter. We both get to enjoy it and ripping open packs is the best. Thanks for the chance at a box if i win , my daughter and i will be ripping opening them together on father’s day.

Mike Smith
36
Collinsville, illinois

forgot the contest details. See above

When I was around 6 years old I had the idea to go downstairs alone and check out the wonderful and mysterious basement lol. I was down there searching through tub after tub until I opened one and I saw something pretty cool. It was my dads large baseball collection! He had multiple sets from most of the 1990’s era, like 1990 Topps and 1990 Upper Deck. I Then saw 2 un-opened boxes of 1986 topps, and right before I was about to do some wax busting my dad walks down the steps and catches me before I have a chance to open any! Needless to say now I am glad he did as they are a wonderful pieces of history! Since then me and my dad have gone to shows, flea-markets, yard sales, auctions, and wherever else you can get cards! We would mostly buy stuff the 1980s as this is my favorite decade of cards, there is nothing like pulling a pristine Ken Griffey Jr. card straight from the pack! We now have a very large collection and we are both die hard fans for the hobby!

Noah Folk
Age: 21
East Greenville, PA

My collecting starting when I was 8 years old after my 1st year of little league with my brother who was 7. I collected my favorite team the LA Dodgers and my favorite player Steve Garvey. I wanted to be just like him, I smiled like him, played like him, cut my hair like him. That is when I a tarted playing 1st base. I collected cards for years. I enjoyed it do much we would play games based on the stats, we flipped and traded with all our friends. One year my mom even threw out a set, the 75 Topps with Brett and Yount RC’s, ouch.

After some years away for college and family my best friend got me back into it with hockey. I love the sport and love the business. I have not left again.

I am getting ready to go to my 6th National.

I collect the vintage baseball RC’s, I got back my Yount and Brett cards. I also collect hockey specializing in my Columbus Blue Jackets and BGSU players in the NHL. I am now 46 and I still also collect the 1981 LA Dodgers!

Ken

When my grandfather, Bill, was dying in a hospital of lung cancer about five years ago, I was having trouble visiting him because it was hard to watch him deteriorate so quickly. My father had told me to stop by Bill’s house and grab anything I wanted because my grandmother had Alzheimer’s and was headed to a nursing home. Someone had been hired to clean out the house. There was nothing of monetary value left, only sentimentality.
I was standing in gramp’s kitchen looking at a chicken casserole recipe taped to the cupboard that I had given him only a few weeks before. Next to the cupboard was a window that looked out over the back yard, I pictured us having a catch. I remembered how he had introduced me to baseball and baseball cards and how he had pushed me to be a better baseball player. That was years ago. I was ten then. I was 35 now. He was a better man than me. He took care of his family. I had turned to beer and chasing skirts after my divorce. I needed to change.
I went downstairs where he kept his baseball cards. I knew my father didn’t care about them. There weren’t any hidden gems. Just the ones I knew of, some mucked up Mickey Mantle Home run cards worth a couple of bucks and a great Jose Ascue card he’d had autographed in another day and time. I grabbed them up and swore I’d be a better man that day, promising God I’d stop to see gramps the next morning and tell him. He died that night. I was tore up. I still regret not seeing him.
But I kept my promise. No more beer, no more skirts. Just a renewed dedication to my son, Tye, who was six years old at the time. That included introducing to him the game of baseball and collecting cards. He is eleven now and has played baseball for four years and has a pretty good collection working. We crack packs and have a healthy competition going. Sometimes he gets the better of me and sometimes I luck out. He loves Mike Trout and has a Bowman blue refractor that is his pride and joy. I’m into the prospects more.
Collecting cards saved my life and restored sanity in my son’s life. Tye and I go watch Buffalo Bisons games in downtown Buffalo, NY at least a couple times a month. He works like a horse to get a foul ball and we take it to the flagpole by the players’ exit after the game. He gets it signed by any ballplayer who’ll oblige him.
Thanks for loving baseball gramps. We all still love you. We all still remember.

I started collecting baseball cards in the mid-80’s, featuring the likes of Topps McGwire, Gooden and Clemens. I would also be sure to pick up the latest give-away sets during local ball games. My routine involved riding my bike to the local hobby shop, accompanied by two friends, to marvel over the cards behind the glass, or within the coveted binders. Half the fun was seeing the actual cards that everyone was talking about.

I always made sure to pick up the latest Beckett magazine, along with a few random packs of cards hoping to score a diamond in the rough. I was never able to share the hobby with my father, but I am already planning to turn my two young sons on to the hobby of collecting as soon as they can appreciate all that it holds.

Paul, 40
SF, CA

My cousin’s husband, Todd got me started collecting at age 11. He would buy me boxes, graded cards, and complete sets for my birthday and for our Christmas get togethers. Those get togethers were so boring until Todd came around. He made me enthusiastic about collecting then, and after a long break, I’m back it. Todd is a great father of two, wonderful girls. He’s been through a lot lately and was diagnosed with brain cancer just this week. If I win this contest, I’ll surprise Todd with a hobby box of 2013 Archives baseball and try to give him an unexpected surprise and a little happiness now that he needs it most. I don’t win contests, and I never try to garner sympathy online, but I think this is a great opportunity, and hopefully I can turn this into a chance to do some good. Thanks for your consideration.

Moved from England, UK to Orange, CA in 1980 as a soccer-mad 10-year old kid – straight into 8th grade and a whole new World. Father made me attend school first day dressed way too smart – short, neat hair, I also wore black leather shoes, collared shirt and tie on a sweltering hot day. All of my classmates had shoulder length hair, bermuda shorts and Vans footwear. Dude, did I look outta place!!!

My salvation was a box of vintage baseball cards I’d been given. I studied them hard, read all I could about the history of the game, got quickly familiar with all the greats – from DiMaggio + Ruth to Ryan + Carew, and actively built my collection. An after school collectors club proved my chance to shine – my card knowledge (homework) really paid off. I knew as much if not more about America’s favourite past-time as any of my peers – acceptance was immediate. I made friends for life through cards. Better still I got to wear shorts to school next day and never saw the that tie again – sweet, just like Tony Gwynn’s batting stroke!!!

I got started collecting as a kid in small town minnesota we had a bakery,hardware store and a gas station that sold cards (every store in town sold cards back in the 80s) me and my buddys would always hit the first store to open in the morning and drop 25 cents a pack and go to the city park and crack them open and chew that hard old stale gum then we would go to someones house and trade are cards we just got everyone had there favorites will clark,daryl strawberry and of course kirby puckett being a bunch of minnesota kids who did not love kirby…Now i have son who is 11 and i have got back into collecting with him and teaching him the things we did as kids…its just to bad other kids dont have the passion he does for the hobby… i love the look on his face when he cracks a BRYCE HAPER!!!!!! MIKE TROUT!!!!!!!!! PRICELESS

Matt,38
Columbia Falls Mt

There are a few people who got me into collecting:
My dad got me into collecting basically right when I was born. He bought me a couple boxes to save for later on the year I was born (1991), and as a kid I was constantly looking through his cards . When I was about 5 I started getting my own collection started, and it has just blossomed from there. My mom also plays a big role because she kept the passion my dad gave me going as she would take me to the local card store in my town after I got a haircut when I was a kid. Finally my best friend growing up Steve collected alongside me, and was in the card collecting club that my LCS had when I was in elementary school. His dad took us to card shows, and that’s where I bought my first ever game used card: a dual bat card out of 2002 Absolute of Vlad Guerrero and Jose Vidro, because Vlad was my favorite player at the time.

Michael Kiley
Age: 22
Danvers, MA

I fell in love with collecting cards at the age of 12 and can thank my cousin, Jim Spohr, for getting me involved in the hobby. As life progressed, I stopped collecting at 18 as I wanted to do all of the grown up things and enjoy life. However, I kept my collection intact and as of last year I became intrigued one day while shopping at Wal-Mart. I checked out a few of the products and noticed that Topps and some of the other companies were offering a chance to score an autographed card which wasn’t offered back in the mid 80’s to early 90’s. So there it started. I grabbed a few packs here and there, but still had no luck with grabbing an autograph. Being an avid collector of autographs from every sport I did some research online about card collecting and discovered the “Hobby Box” or “Jumbo Box” . Well say no more, but 1 year later, married with a child, I am collecting cards hard core. The problem now is I have an addiction!

I began purchasing my own boxes and some boxes offered 3 or 4 autographs, but there’s more. With searching the internet and being a loyal Twitter/Facebook user, the discovery of card breaks just added to the addiction. The chance of getting a crack at a case of cards for purchasing a spot in a break just sent excitement through my skin. Having a good paying job, I hopped into break after break and was buy 3 to 4 boxes a month. My collection grew like grass watered everyday with the perfect amount of sun! I was in heaven. Needless to say I had a rude wake up call last month when I began to realize that the thousands and thousands of dollars I was spending was not paying off in the amount or quality cards I was getting in return. I realized at that point that I wasn’t collecting for the enjoyment but the profit or ability to sell cards and purchase more boxes or card breaks.

So I have dialed it back a few notches and taken time to enjoy the autographed cards or relic cards I acquire. More importantly I only have a few years before I can get my son into the hobby and hopes he enjoys it as much as I have. Regardless, some day he will be the owner of a decent collection of autographs but autographs I gained with pride and shared with love. I hope he enjoys it cause his mother thinks that collecting cards is a waste of money! Lets keep the hobby alive and thank you Jim for introducing me into the hobby of cards. Happy Father’s Day!

Scott Frost
Algonquin, IL
40 years of age
@scottfrost12

I was 9 years old at the time and went over to my cousin’s house who had a TON of cards. He was older than I was and had been collecting for a while. I thought it was so cool to see a Nolan Ryan rookie card. I couldn’t wait to be able to start collecting for myself. He said he would help me get started and handed me a 1989 Upper Deck baseball complete set and the September 1990 Beckett with Rickey Henderson on the cover. He told me to look up the value of the first card of the set, which is the Griffey rookie card of course. I couldn’t believe my eyes and I was instantly hooked! The Griffey was and probably always will be my favorite card.

Reposting because I didn’t include my address and location!

When I was about 5 I started getting some packs of cards as gifts. Well, what truly got me into collecting was one of my mother’s cousins who would come visit for Easter. It was a time when my whole family would get together. In his Easter basket he would always get packs and boxes of cards. I remember sitting with him and watching him open. Being from a family that is full of Mets fans he would give me the Mets cards he pulled that he didn’t need. I still have the majority of them. Today I collect with my friends and my lovely girlfriend. Thankfully I was able to find a girl who enjoys collecting as much as I do! Even if we don’t collect the same team.

Ryan
30
Greenville, SC

I started collecting in 1987, when I was 10 years old. My friend got me into collecting. We used to take our allowance to 7-11 or Circle K and buy packs of cards and trade our duplicates. I got hooked in 1988 when I got my first price guide (Hygrade price guide) and realized that my cards were worth money. 26 years later, my collection is still going strong. I wonder if my friend who got me started still collects? I haven’t seem him since high school.

Listen, I’m only 13 years old and I still have a lot to learn about cards. My collection started 5 years ago when I went to my first Atlanta falcons game with my dad. A vendor gave me, a 8 year old kid, a free pack of cards. At first I didn’t think much of it. Little did I know, this would be the spark that would ignite my collecting fire. That day when I got home, I opened the pack. I told my dad how cool it was. So, the next day, he took us to our local hobby store. My eyes almost fell out of my head when I saw the glorious amount of cards. There was boxes upon boxes of packs just waiting to be opened, So naturally, I walked over and started opening the card packs. Since my dad was looking around, he failed to notice that I had already opened 10 packs of cards. My dad quickly rushed over and told the owner of the store he would pay. The owner was very happy to see a new “card collector”, so he just let me keep the cards. This is how I began my collecting.
The next couple of years I became interested in baseball cards, as well. By the time I was 11, I already had a display set up in my room of all the spectacular cards I had collected over the years. Now I have Robert Griffins, Andrew Lucks, and other great cards just because of that one day

FROM MOD: ONE OF OUR WINNERS

My name is Chad Clark and I am 31 years old. I live in Hardwick, Massachusetts. When I was young I always wanted to do anything my older brother was doing. And it just so happened at this point collecting cards was thing for kids to do. So naturally I wanted to do it too. I was about 6 or 7 at this time. Jose Canseco was my favorite player and I still have my 1986 Topps Traded Rookie of his that I got for my 8th bday. (I also cried when the the earthquake hit the bay area during the world series because I wanted to see Jose play so bad). I stopped collecting when I was about 13 (for obvious reasons). Then in 2003 I was at Toys R Us and bought one of those retail repack baseball boxes and pulled a 2002 Upper Deck MVP Mike Piazza Dual Mem Card I once again I was hooked. I had no idea about mem cards or autographs at that time so I was pretty stoked and to be honest there really isn’t too many things on this planet that are more fun than cracking a box of baseball cards. I now have 2 kids… a 7 year old daughter and a 2 year old son and hopefully they will enjoy the hobby just as much as I do. My daughter doesn’t seem to care too much about collecting but my son loves baseball and loves those shiny Bowman Chrome Refractors that he always manages to grab when I am not looking. I would love to be lucky enough to win one of these boxes for Father’s Day not only for myself but for my kids to enjoy with their old dad on his day!!!

Happy Fathers Day to my fellow Dads and Dads to be,

Chad Clark

I opted to go a little bit of a different route here. I’ve uploaded a video to YouTube with my entry, and it can be found here. It isn’t terribly long, and I hope you enjoy it!

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNUFDUHaEuc

And, to meet the qualifications specified in the contest rules per se, it was my father who got me into collecting and I currently collect with my wife!

Ryan K. – 27 – Des Moines, IA

FROM MOD: WINNER

So my Dad is who really got me into collecting in the late 80’s early 90’s. I always enjoyed buying and collecting cards but my Dad always seemed to take it to the next level. I did not really have the funds so my Dad pretty much took over in that department. He grew up a huge Oakland Athletics and San Francisco Giants fan which is somewhat odd considering he was from Yakima Washington. As a kid he could get the bay area stations to come in on his radio so those were the teams he grew to love since he got to listen to them all the time. As I got older I continued the legacy of being a huge Oakland A’s fan and that is who I enjoy collecting the most still to this day. All of my friends and coworkers always ask me did you grow up in Oakland and I always reply no but they still want to know why I am a fan. I simply tell them it has a lot to do with my Dad and the fact that we used to have the Triple A Tacoma Tigers stadium not too far from our house in Tacoma Washington. Growing up I got to see a lot of the greatest Oakland A’s players come through the farm system. Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire, Jason Giambi as well as many others. I know there are quite a few more great Oakland A’s players but these were the ones that I knew as a kid. Rickey Henderson is still one of my favorites to collect.

I can remember going to the card shop 5-6 times a week bringing home cards and my mom would just laugh at us. We would get out our TV trays and just start ripping bragging about the cards that we pulled. We pretty much collected all sports. Even when we would go to Costco my Dad would always manage to grab 3-4 boxes in bulk. Keep in mind we had no idea that these were the down years and that they were mass producing at the time. Most of our cards we own are not that valuable but they mean a lot as we did it together. They did not really have all the autos and the relics that they have now so we were not really looking for a huge pull more just to collect. What’s funny is every time we would go to the card shop together I would always beg my Dad to get me one of the cards in the glass case. Turns out that many of the cards I would get him to buy me are worth the most today. Pretty funny how that all works out. Still to this day I am very picky on what I buy. Things have changed so much as far as high end cards and there are so many more products. You just can’t do it all like you used to be able to do. Stuff is just so expensive now.

To make a long story short my Dad recently passed away on December 22nd 2012. He was only 61. I had to move all our cards to one location so I have been going through a lot of the old stuff trying to complete all the old sets as well as keep up on all the new stuff. Even though it is a very time consuming task it is well worth the time and energy. I am not getting rid of anything even the 1991 Score. It brings back so many awesome memories and I pretty much get to relive my childhood. The cool thing is that I now have a family of my own with a 2 year old son Hunter and another son due in October 2013. I am so excited to keep our family’s hobby alive as it is stronger than ever. Everything I collect here on out will be passed down to my boys and there is nothing cooler than that. They will have great memories of Papa through these cards as well as me. Cards are more than dollar signs on Ebay they are what create bonds and lasting memories.

I have included a couple short videos of my collection that mean the world to me. Thank you for taking the time to read this and consider it for the contest.

vine.co/v/bl5Vm0dQMva

vine.co/v/blJu1pAAAaU

vine.co/v/bl52r7iXvwK

Adam Sali
@Chestrockwell29
31
Kent, Washington

FROM MOD: Winner

Forgot to add, Age-16 years old
Graham TX

My grandfather began buying me football cards when I was six years old and I had taken an interest in the sport. Everytime I visited my grandparents, he would always place a pack of cards under my cereal bowl in the morning. Over time, I started getting them other places, but my favorite cards were always the one I got every morning when I visited him. He passed away when I was 10 and when my grandmother was going through his things, she found his “stash” of football card packs he had purchased for my visits. There were still five or six packs there that he had been saving for my next visit. I’ve collected since and occasionally surprise my own son with packs of cards in the morning.

My older cousin got me into collecting. I was about three when my family used to go visit them in New York. After dinner, we would go into the living room and get out his box of baseball cards. We would look through them together and he would let me have a few to keep. Thanks to him I now have about 10,000 cards in total and I even have a YouTube channel where I open various cards from different sports and years. I would really like to have a box to open for my viewers.

Thanks

My dad started buying me packs of cards when I was 8 years old after my Mom passed away. I never realized until years later that he was using baseball as a bridge to connect us and bring us closer together. We used to sit and open up one pack together after my chores were done or as a reward for something I had done, be it a good report card or whatever. He showed me the fun of collecting and helped fuel the passion I had into the late nineties when I was really into it. After he passed I got away from the collecting world, but now, with a son of my own, I look forward to showing him the fun of collecting cards and introducing him to baseball and hockey through these little pieces of cardboard that can help hold so many memories.

Mike Barton
Age 36
Baltimore, MD

I started collecting in 1978 – I was 4 years old. Would go to my grandfather’s house and listen to the Red Sox games on the radio. He always had an old stack of baseball cards he kept rubber-banded together in his cabinet. They were 1959 Topps cards and included Mickey Mantle. I was fascinated, and would beg to look at them every time I went over his house. I started a collection of my own… He gave that stack of cards to me before he passed away in 1987, there was about 30 of them. I still have them… and have been slowly working on cpompleting the 1959 Topps set ever since. I am 39 now and have two kids of my own… my daughter enjoys looking at my boxes of cards… and even has a small collection of her own. :)

Mike Pappagallo
Age: 39
Location: Saugus, MA

I’m not sure how I got in collecting. The thing I think of was when my brothers and were younger my grandma worked at a local mall. We always spend a a few weeks with her the summer. The mall she worked would have sports cards shows about once a month. They would local sports players there signing autographs. I have few autographs of Tiger greats like Gates Brown, Darrell Evans and Denny McLain! I think this where I started collecting cards and autographs.

Mike Henry
Age: 40
Port Huron, mi

My name is Chris Langston currently in Afghanistan from Piedmont, Alabama. I got into collecting with my dad in the late 80’s/early 90’s, then quit for about 9 years just like everyone else did. I’m to tired to type anything else,cheers lemme win something for once eh? God bless america! Im 38 yrs old, approaching the big 4 zero, stay away would ya.

I started collecting in 1975 when I saw a friend’s copy of the Pete Rose all-star card from that year. I was seven at the time, but all I wanted out of life was a copy of *that* Pete Rose card. In fact, that card became my very own Joe Schlabotnik as I opened pack after pack, and never pulled that card. My mom used to take me to Dennison’s Market in Marion, Indiana after my T-ball games. She’d buy five packs of baseball cards and a red pop for me, and I would open the cards on our way home. I know she couldn’t have cared less about the players or the cards, but she dutifully listened as I explained why I liked each card, who the big time players were and so on. She also listened as I lamented the fact that I never found my coveted Pete Rose card. It wasn’t until years later when I was a teenager with a job that I was finally able to buy my very own copy of the card at a card show in Indianapolis. There are few landmark purchases in every person’s life – first car and first house come to mind – but the one that sticks out for me is that first 1975 Topps Pete Rose.

Rick Kughen
45
Kokomo, IN

My name is Sam, and I’m 30, currently living in Sacramento, CA. I actually got into collecting twice over the years. Initially, I collected baseball cards. I got into it around the age of 6, as my Dad took me to a lot of Oakland A’s games back in the day. One of the giveaways was the “Mother’s Cookies Cards” team set, and when I got my set, I was hooked. We went to those giveaway days every year, and I think I still have all of my team sets. Heck, as an enterprising 7-8 year old, I would actually buy them off of people in the bleachers around us so I could trade in extras at the local card store.

Eventually, with the baseball “hiatus”, my interests shifted. I became more of a football guy. I didn’t get back into collecting unti 2006. I had enjoyed playing Magic, and I enjoyed collecting, but with a move to college, all of my old circle of card-playing buddies were quite far away. I still enjoyed collecting, but I didn’t see the point when I couldn’t play the game all that often. Enter football cards. I randomly picked up a few blasters at Target one day figuring that if I enjoy football and I enjoy collecting, I should still like football cards, right? I ended up opening up two game-used cards, which threw me for a complete loop: one was Dante Hall dual GU and one was a Vince Young GU RC, both out of Absolute. I loved the idea of having memorabilia WITHIN a card, and I was immediately hooked again. Been collecting ever since with an emphasis on the autos and GU that got me back into things.

And there you have it! That was actually a longer story than I thought it would be. Thank you for the contest!

My dad was the one who got me into collecting. Many people in his family gave him cards when he was young, even though he didn’t really like them. He decided that instead of throwing them out, he would save them. Over the years, he started to pick up some boxes of unsearched cards at flea markets and yard sales, for if he had a kid. He had my older brother, and gave him some of the cards. My brother Chris sold most of the ones he got. My dad still saved some, as a just in case type of scenario. Later, I was born. He kept the cards till I was old enough, then told me I could either sell them or keep them. I kept them, some for when I (hopefully) own sports memorabilia shop, and others for a collection of my own. I hope I win, to be able to thank him for more cards! (without him starting my collection, I probably would not be entering this)

Richard Hardy
Age:15
(Near) Uniontown, PA

I collect some when I was a kid. Didn’t have much money we were kinda poor. I would pick up soda bottles on the way to town to sell and I would buy a pack or two. I never really knew about the players or stats I just liked the photos I kept some traded some never knew the price value of the cards As I got older kept them in a shoe box I guess like a lot of kids. Really sorry now that I never kept up with them now that I’m grown I buy a few now and then. I do have my favorites like CalRipkin and A few others. So now I have bought sets for all my grandchildren each one has a set with their name on it and will get their set when they each turn 13. My oldest is 4 now. She had some cards of her own and a price book it’s cute to see her look at a card and find it in her book her eyes just light up and she shows me the price to tell her what it is and it only worth 25 cents. Ha ha. She thinks it’s a big deal so I encourage her to handle them with care ok that’s about it keep up the good work Even if I don’t win I will still collect and enjoy all kinds of cards

I started out as a stamp collector. My dad has always been a stamp collector, so he helped push me into collecting something. My parents got tired of me picking up every rock in sight (they were all different, I had to have one of all of them!), so stamps became the next obvious choice. I got into dinosaurs and put together exhibits at the local stamp show for a few years. However, after awhile, it started to feel more like a chore than a hobby for some reason. Baseball has always been my favorite sport, and around that time, Topps hooked up with Post and inserted baseball cards into cereal boxes, most importantly, Honey Bunches of Oats, which still stands as my favorite. Finding those first 10 cent cards of Willie Mays and Babe Ruth really sparked my interest in baseball cards. I still have those first few cards stored away in a Pepsi fold-out 12 pocket page that I must have also gotten for free out of a food product. My passion only grew from there as I grew to appreciate the hobby and understand more and more about it. Needless to say, it stuck! Today I find myself with tens of thousands of cards, and still a lifetime to enjoy the hobby. If it weren’t for Topps and Post, who knows what would have happened!

Matt Smith
17
Apple Valley, MN

My dad got me into collecting around age 8. He had found a set of 1981 Topps cards at a garage sale in 1982 or 83 and decided to buy them for me. I had really never had cards and he wanted to get me into sports and appreciate the players by reading the stats with me. I went straight for the Mets, but he was a Brewers fan because of all of the Polish people in Milwaukee. Go figure, right?? Well, it made me respect other teams and the set is still with me through multiple moves. Dad is no longer with us, but I appreciate him introducing me to card collecting. Thanks, dad!!

My story is a bit different I’d guess. My older sister got me into collecting when I was about 7 years old. She bought me some retail packs from target, Walmart, and some other local shops. I would trade them at school in the mornings. Once I got to middle school I lost interest in collecting. Then we get to skip all the way to 2010!! I got married to the love of my life, when we were gathering up my stuff we came across a box of mine that I hadn’t opened in a long time, my wife opened it up n found my card collection!! She thought it was interesting, and it brought back some great memories of my childhood. I didn’t think much of it, got it packed back up and moved, not long after we got settled in our new place I come home from work one day and she two hobby boxes of 2010 topps on the table and says she thought it would be fun to do together, so now were collecting together, it’s been a very fun hobby to share with my wife, and now we have a 1 year old son that were building a collection for. Card collecting is a family activity for us, that’s what makes it the most exciting.

Jeff Yates
25
Cushing, ok

well let’s see it all started back in 1987 when my best friend took me into a comic book store to but the comic of superman and as i was waiting i saw this guy buying some packs of basketball cards and i heard him tell the cashiers i hit a good rc . till this day cant remember who it was. i ask him how much did he spend on the pack he told me $3.00 but the rc is worth 25 bucks i said wow that’s pretty cool bro so i said i don’t know much about sport so why not give it a try i brought two packs and guess who i got a Jordan card he said i’ll give you 30 dollars for that, yep i was thinking what a way to make big money kind of like gambling so before i knew it i till this day buying packs so i can pull that hit and turn around and try to get rich, but now i love this hobby really it’s like playing a slot game hoping for the jackpot.. all it took was opening that pack and triple my my now i’m hook for ever…one thing for sure wish i held on too that Jordan.. passing this hobby down to my kids not so much of making money but the fun of pulling that one hot card…thanks jordan for a priceless memories

john calvert
pendleton oregon.

I am 36 years old and I got into collecting when I was probably 6-7 years old. My dad was my muse with collecting just as he was for almost everything else I am into these days. I was always is collecting baseball and football and I occasionally dabbled in hockey and non sports. I collected up until I was 28-29 years old. I am on disability now and can’t afford to buy as much or as often as I would like. I have 3 sons aged 10,7 and 5 and hope that someday I can pass it on to them but so far no luck. Oh and my name is Greg Dutko.

My Dad really tried to get my brother Jim and I started collecting in the spring of 1972. He’s stop home for lunch and make lunch sandwhiches and give us each a 25 cent 1972 baseball cello packs. We both saved up a bunch of cards for a while, but lost interest. Later when we were moving to a new I tried to look for the big box of cards as I started collecting again with the 1974 Topps baseball and my Grandfather who was living with us told me gave the cards away to other kid in the neighborhood….so seeing 1972 feature in Topps flagship set and Archives brings back memories of getting interested in baseball cards….over 40 years ago! :)

I have been collecting since about 1983 around 10 yrs old I was and my mom was a police officer and everyday she would pick me up from the baby sitters and drive home and when ever she would need her perscriptions filled or any thing from a pharmacy we would stop at the local drug store and she would let me buy packs of football cards and I would collect and collect for years and became a card collector mainly football and when I grew up and card collecting had blown up and cards where expensive I checked thru my cards and realized thru those stops at the drug store I had gotten a Montana topps rookie card my most expensive to date also dan marion,john Elway,jerry rice a few to name and still remember the drug store I purchased it at the drug store on the corner of red lion and verre rd in philly how awesome thanks mom luv ya xoxo the best police women in philly.

I always collected cards when I was young than gave up for a long time now I’m 17 and I was just searching youtube and one of your videos popped up and I was like I haven’t opened a pack of cards in years and I spent like 24/7 just watching all your videos and the next day purchased couple items and got a lot of sick cards and every since that I’m addicted to opening new packs and watching your videos.
Thanks for getting me back to collecting.
Josh Kristiansen
17 years old
Live in New Jersey

I started collecting in 1988. I was staying in Colorado for 2 weeks for a company training class. I had the hotel driver take me by Mile High stadium (snowing) in April so that I could see the stadium. On the way back to the hotel I saw a card shop and we stopped by. I bought several Topps football boxes of 1988 and a 1984 topps football set for . The rest is history and I have all Topps sets from 1973 to present and many many more cards. I have the first issue of beckett football to 2003. I love collecting football cards.

Although Nolan would enjoy the football (Go E.A.G.L.E.S Eagles!), and we’re grateful for any fun that could come our way.

Side note
Both boys trade away their Yankees Boo! & Mets Boo!

And yes it is tradition, and possible the younger ones thinks it is the standard name, to always attach Boo! when mentioning either franchise.

Forgot to mention I am a Phillies & Indians fan.

Thanks again, Zack
36, Outside of Philadelphia, PA.

I started to collect cards one day in school because my friends brought cards to school and from that day started to collect cards

11, Latvia (Carnikava)

Congrats winners!! Great prize! Thanks for contest Beckett. Thought my funny one would had gotten me in but was fun being able to tell my story that way.

Thanks again Chris and Beckett!!

Hope winners post their hits!

Congrats to all the winners! and thank you to everyone who participated! I enjoyed reading all the stories. I will post my pulls as soon as I can! Once again, Happy Father’s Day to all the Dads out there!!

My uncle got me into collecting baseball cards with him. My dad was responsible for making me a Baltimore Orioles fan (from Annapolis, MD), but not being into cards himself, it was my uncle who turned me into 25 yrs now of card collecting (both baseball and football). Started when I was 8 and am now 33.
Several years after my uncle got me into collecting cards, he got into an accident that paralyzed him. I was young and so was he being 28 when he had the accident. It was a tough time for each of us (obviously much more for him), but it was tough for me given being a young kid and not knowing how to handle something so massive and not knowing how to feel and help. Instead of shying away, we used baseball cards to become closer. I would put his older cards in order for him, putting them in plastic/binders, and we would go to card stores together. It was something special that me and him shared. Just the two of us that nobody could take away or stand between. It was OUR thing.
Sadly, he just passed away last year and we are still bound through cards as I have been helping my aunt by selling his collection to get through a hard financial time. That may seem sad, but it actually is a good feeling that even with his passing, I am still connected to him through that and always will be as I keep some special cards close that I see everyday that makes me think of him and the times we had together.
Ryan

I’ll be 56 in July. This year is the first time I’ve ever collected baseball cards. I wanted to leave something fun for some of my 15 grand children..lol I guess they got me into it, and I like it. :)

Congrats to all the winners now we all know to use a sob story to win I wonder how many of these stories were true Kudos to all that were honest shame to the liars