Collecting Baseball Cards is a Wonderful and Awesome Hobby
Part 1-How I Got Started Collecting Baseball Cards
Have You Ever Collected Baseball Cards?
I started collecting baseball cards as a kid growing up in the 1960s. My older brother and father got me interested in baseball in the mid to late 1960s. My Dad was a fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers (he was born and lived there as a child) and the NY Giants. When these teams relocated to the West coast in the late 1950s, he became a fan of the NY Mets, established in 1962.
I became a New York Mets fan and I am to this day. We would watch games on TV using the old antenna on the roof that picked up stations from New York City. Of course with the antenna, the signal was far from perfect depending on the weather, etc. In those days you could watch for free using an antenna and over-the-air signals. Some TV stations are still available today over the air. We would also listen to many games on the radio. In those days, it seems like there was always a project going outside in the summer, be it gardening, or working on building or fixing something. The radio was always a part of these experiences.
I grew up in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains in NY State near Roscoe, NY. Our town had a population of about 100 people. Luckily, it had a Post Office with a small store and one gas pump. On a good day, the gas pump was actually working. We rode our bikes there (it was a good half mile each way). This was our source for baseball cards. In those days, the card packs were 5 cents and contained 5 cards. And of course a stick of bubble gum. The store also had a good supply of candy also.
Over the course of a few summers, my brother and I and our next-door neighbor were well on our way to having a shoebox full of cards. We also would trade with each other to try to complete our collections. It was so much fun as a kid to collect them and then watch the games on TV. A major highlight of being a Mets fan was 1969, the year they won their first World Series.
And Then Things Happened
The cards we collected were classics by today’s standards. The players we collected included Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan, Johnny Bench, Pete Rose, Bob Gibson, Micky Mantle, Roger Maris, White Ford, Carl Yazstrzemski, Hank Aaron, and many more.
Sometime in the mid-seventies, my brother and I gave away our collections to some cousins. We were being nice since they were really interested in them and by that point, we assumed we didn’t need them anymore. Breathe in. Breathe out. Aw well. Sometimes I wish we still had them. You just have to let it go.
My neighbor kept his. However, he passed away tragically in 2004. I believe his family still has them. Sometimes I wish I could go back to those days when the 3 of us collected and traded cards. So much fun. The good old summertime!
Would I Ever Return To This Awesome Hobby?
Time went on and by the mid-1970s we lost interest in collecting baseball cards. If I remember right, the store stopped selling them and of course, this was long before the days of the internet. We never lost interest in baseball, however, and continued to follow the Mets.
During that time, especially, around 1970, we also became interested in music. My sister is 6 years older than me, and she introduced me to a lot of music at a young age. My brother is 4 years older, so a similar situation. Woodstock took place about 15 miles from our house, and I remember the commotion it caused very well. I wish I could have gone but we were all too young.
I will save my music interests for another time. Ah, another topic to write about?
Stay tuned for more articles. The short answer to the question of whether I returned to this hobby is yes. How did you guess? My photo above is a giveaway for sure. Since I gave away my first collection, the photo in this story is from my subsequent collection, which continues to be a work in progress. Except for the photos from Unsplash, of course.
