How did you start collecting

[Dlong1]

I ran this once on another site and we really got to know the members.

Share with us the story of how you got into collecting and what it means to you.

Dan

[Brads55]

I was about 5 or 6 when my uncle had me put all of his cards he was opening from a box of 1986 Topps into 9 pocket pages in a binder. The world hasn't been the same since. Thanks Uncle Rick!

[Dlong1]

I starting collecting back in 1963 when Topps put out the Civil War News cards (and I'm looking to rebuild the set if anyone has some). The buddies I hung out with started to buy Baseball cards and we always traded for the Tiger and put the EVIL Yankees (Mickey Mantle) into our bicycle spokes. Oh how I long to have those back.

When we moved to a smaller house my mother got rid of my cards. In 1996 my son wanted to collect Dennis Rodman. We have a great collection of him now. I started to collect Shareef Abdur-Rahim. I had a wonderful collection of him. I bought a card shop and when it closed down I decided to only collect Football cards. maschmit got most of my Abdur-Rahim collection.

A couple of years ago I sold off everything and re-started and now I collect Lions Auto's. My prize Auto's are Barry Sanders, Bobby Layne, Dick "Night Train" Lane & Doak Walker.

I will alway cherish the memories of my son and myself going to card shows and the way he would wheel and deal for the cards he needed. When we set-up at shows together he would take all the $1-5 cards around to the tables and sell every one of them. Those were some of the best times that we had 1 on 1.

Dan

[sportyryan101]

My friends and I used to collect and trade back when I was like 5..

[key2win]

I first starting collecting basketball cards in 1992. I bought my first box at Price Club (now Costco) which was 91-92 Hoops Series 2. I remember I first wanted the box because of the Barcelona Olympic Cards they made.

[GoJets9096822]

My dads friend got me a complete set of 1987 Topps, and I was hooked.

[FrankMcdee]

My grandmother bought a huge stack of baseball cards at a garage sale. They were mostly 71-76 topps. It was 1978 then and I soon put together two sets of 78 topps via buying packs at the grocery store.

[gladdyontherise]

i thought it was cool..lol

[Bondsaway]

A next door neighbor gave me 3 brown paper bags full of every kind of card. At the time I just put them in my room. I pulled out a few Yankees to use for my bike.

Years later when I was in the USAF I went home and got into the cards. First card I found was a Joe Montana RC card. Those 3 bags held almost every great card imaginable. I thought it was just commons boy was I wrong. But didn't start collecting till I was in the military.

[gsj68]

i liked the gum and the steeler cards were a bonus

[SportsCardSeller]

I was about 5 or 6 when my uncle had me put all of his cards he was opening from a box of 1986 Topps into 9 pocket pages in a binder. The world hasn't been the same since. Thanks Uncle Rick!

Same for me but when I was like 8 my uncle bought huge boxes of wax packs off of ebay and had loads of cards. He had me help him break them and put them in binder pages.

[B.I.G.Poppa]

It was a random on and off thing for me. I used to buy basketball packs so I could learn more about basketball players, as I was starting to get into the NBA around the same time. It began to turn into addiction for me, as I begged my parents to buy me packs and those retail packages (150 cards for $5!) almost everyday.

[selby56]

I was like any other kid. When we went to Walmart, I always wanted to get a pack or two. I remember when the Fleer Focus cards came out and the front of the packs were clear, so you could see the first card in the pack. I'd sort through each one and get all the ones with Browns players on the front. Those were good days.

[sanjosefuji]

I started back in the late 70's/early 80's when one of my neighbors gave me a box of 1979 Topps baseball cards. Then in 1981, my parents bought me a Fleer baseball set when we were on a trip to Seattle (which is how I became a Seahawks fan... a whole different story)... but I still didn't really start collecting until 1983. That's when I started going out and buying packs of cards trying to make sets. To this day the 1983 Topps set is one of my favorites of all time.

[CaptKirk42]

I don't have a specific memory of the start of my card collecting since I have 2 older brothers both of which had some cards. There always seemed to be some buried treasure in our basement utility room that doubled as a storage/dump room. My first few recollections were of late 60s baseball cards and "Man ON The Moon" cards. I still have a handful of that set, someday I want to complete it.

One of my first collecting memories from when I was like 5 or 6 was trading with my brother from our plastic storage "lockers". I think mine was blue and my brothers was red. They were roughly the size of a shoebox all plastic with about 10 to maybe a dozen little adjustable "shelves". I also recall I used to "mark" my cards either with red pen bad or black magic marker. I probably saw a Zorro movie because I would put a big "K" on the card sometimes it was on front sometimes on back. UGH. Fortunately (or unfortunately in some cases) I don't have many of those anymore if any.

When I was in Jr High I had a friend that I used to "trade" with, we also went to the comic store once a week or every other week. We would play a card flipping game where we would set up a "field" of about 10 - 20 cards on the floor and then stand or sit back a few feet and take turns tossing our traders out onto the field. The object was to get the card you throw to land on one of the other cards at least 50% of the way. Then you won both cards. My friend was a lot better at the game, I also suspect he cheated a few times, as we often had disagreements about whether a card was being covered enough of the way. I lost most of my early 70s and particularly a lot of 1975 cards that way.