...^^^ Matts, I remember opening packs of baseball cards when I was a kid. You know, the ones that also had that awful gum that we chewed anyway and the smell stay with the cards for years?
...I'd always open one hoping to find a Mantle card which seldom happened...I'd usually end up with a Bob Skinner or Dick Groat or Minnie Minoso or Gus Triandos...those usually were fastened to my bicycle spokes with clothes pins.
...but it seemed that many of the players that were on the Kansas City A's one year, ended on the Yankees the next year.
I got lucky several years with those Wax Packs, and the stale gum that came with them. Shit that gum could of been 10 years old. But like you said, we still chewed it, while it lefts its stale aroma on the cards in those packs. Several key players I found with Wax or Bubble Gum stains on them, over decades.
My luckiest finds, seemed to come in 66 and 68; when I found both a Koufax and Mantle in 66. In 68; I found 2 each Mantle's with two each W. Mays also, and a shitload of other stars and future HOF'rs, by far the best years for my card collection. The rookie Carew card, along with Killebrew and Olivas also floated my boat. I believe the last 3 were either 67's or 69's. BTW- you may not believe this, but in 68, I indeed had two each Koosman/Ryan Future Star Rookies, which I rode my bicycle clean acrosss Shreveport to trade for my 3rd Mantle and Mays, 1968. Yep, at that time Koosman was coming up, while Ryan was rarely being used, who would of thought decades later, what a blunder I made, LMFAO.....!
My first lucky find was the 63's; with The Mick, and Whitey Ford, as well as Koufax and Drysdale. Shit that made my entire year of collecting alone.
My most coveted card, bought for me by Grandpa when I was still a young kid, was a 57 Wax Pack, which Grandpa didn't even give to me until 1960, honestly I think he felt guilty about tossing away all of those early Tobacco Cards. I often asked him why he did as much, while he pumped me full of stories of Babe, Lou and Joe D. The only tobacco card which somehow evaded the trash can, was a 33 Red Rolfe. When I opened the 57 Pack, 2nd card was a Mantle All Star....I about shit my pants.
I can recall a couple of occasions, when I was putting cards in my bike spokes, and Mom, always a seer for the future, (who kept all of my cards in a Cedar Box, when I left the house at 17, moved out on my own, and she packed all those cards away I almost forgot about, until I settled down got married), then she pulled the big surprise on me, giving all those cards back to me, which I thought were long gone.
I went back to collecting in 82, going balls out collecting, until my sons grew of age, to build there collections too.
The very luckiest find I ran into, was when I moved back here in 01, and a old buddy of mine was desperate to make some money for Xmas. He offered his entire collection of nothing but 50s, 60s, and a few other 70s rookies like Brett, Yount, Molitor, Ozzie Smith, and too many others to list then some 89's of the newer premium sets, ie, Upper Deck, Stadium Club, Fleer Flair, and Donruss leaf sets. He wanted 5 grand, and I told him I couldn't consider nothing less than half of that. When he came down to $2,500, I balked, and Kim made him an offer at $1,250, as desperate as he was, he took it, and I wound up with Rookie Cards, of Clemente, Koufax, Brooks Robinson, Bob Gibson, Juan Marichal, Lou Brock, and a helluva long list of Rookies or Future HOF'r 2nd-3rd year cards, incl. a 2nd year W. Ford, no Micks tho'.
Your right too, I cannot for the life of me, give any PED user card away, while their rookie cards can't even be sold at the Card shop for $1 buck...no shit....!
