General Forum

The 1975 Topps baseball set it was the first complete set I ever got. I sent off a coupon to Larry Fritsch card shop from an ad in the back of a Baseball Digest. I the company is still in business https://www.fritschcards.com/sunshop/

Loving all the stories guys! I’ve got a few other conversation starters rolling around amongst the rocks in my head. I’ll post them over the next few days see if we can’t get some good vibes back in the forums. Have a great weekend everyone. I’m off to see Chris Stapleton and Margo Price in concert with my beautiful bride. 

 I've mentioned this before but mine was the #2 1958 Topps Yogi Berra.  Got it in a penny pack.   The next year or so I redecorated his face with a Magic Marker.   Still have the care and will post it as soon as it turns up.

The 1984 Fleer Update Dwight Gooden. Wanted it badly as kid.  Own about 10 of them now.  

I don't think I acquired any single "holy grail" card as a kid. The Ozzie Smith RC was my dream card in the 80's until I finally got one in 2009. But my most memorable childhood card acquisition... That would be visiting a card show at the mall with money in my pocket when I was about 14. A vendor had a 5K-count box full of cards marked at 10 cents each. I went through that entire box and pulled out every single Ozzie Smith card that I knew I didn't have and a few I knew I did have but knew they had BV's of several dollars. I think it was 60-70 cards. The seller saw how excited I was to find all these cards of one player and gave me a deal of only $5 for the lot. Since I still had money left, I also bought my 1st-ever 100-count box of Ultra-Pro Platinum 9-card pages for another $10.  That purchase got me to over 100 different Ozzie cards (the 1st player I ever hit triple digits for, as well as later being the 1st to 200, 300, 400 & 500).

Another memorable one would be trading a few 1992 Topps Gold cards to my cousin for a 1971 Topps Joe Namath card. It was a little worn and I didn't care about Namath or the Jets, but I wanted it b/c it was 7 years older than me. It's the first vintage card I ever owned (even though it wasn't called vintage then). I still have that card and it's still in the same snap-tite case I put it in after I got it. I later put the case in a team bag though.

For my 13th or 14th Christmas (about 10 years ago), my dad got me a Sidney Crosby rookie card from the Victory series. It was my first and stillonly graded card, so that added to the coolness aspect. Only as I got older did I realize there's a difference in grading companies, because even though it is a 10, it was through GMA grading.

I still treasure it because when your that age and the Pens are your teams, you think every Pens card is the best thing to have.