Your very first time. I mean card.

Oh yes, I remember that night. Carolynn was probably the reason I took a long break from my card collecting career. Back to the reason for my post.

When I was a young guy the only teams I could ever watch on TV were the Atlanta Braves (TBS) and the Chicago Cubs (WGN). Well most of the Cubs games were on during the day while I was either at school or running around the neighborhood during the summer. Living in Alabama, the Braves were and are still the closest team to my home so naturally I rooted for them and their leader Dale Murphy. I had played baseball for a few seasons already and had baseball posters and Sports Illustrated all over my room. But it wasn't until that magical 1982 season where the Braves won the NL West (yes, the West) and the Murph won his first of back-to-back MVP awards that really took my love of the game to the next level. I was so infatuated with the Braves I became a member of the Peter Pan Peanut Butter Atlanta Braves Booster Club.



Man do I wish I still had that sweet shirt on the cover of my folder!! I thought I was all in after that phenomenal season. Boy was I wrong. That fall, November 16th to be exact, is when everything change. My mom and dad gave me my very first baseball card. THE card was inside a birthday card that I truly wish I still had. I knew the guy pictured on the cardboard because of the books I read and the stories my dad would tell but I would never had imagined the impact it would have on my life. My mom is gone now and, like myself, my dad is getting older every day. This card has been and always will be a part of me. I'm anxious to pass it along to one of my kids when the time is right.




Who was your first time? I mean card.

Haha like you I was stuck watching the Braves and cubs in Southeast alaska. The mariners broadcasts wouldnt start until mid 90's.
My braves teams were led by Ron gant, terry pendleton, Dave Justice, Steve avery and the 3 big hof pitchers.
My first card: I'll go two routes with this question. I had a bundle of cards with a rubber band around it for as long as I can remember. Only card I can recall is a braves team leader card with the white haze border.
After treating my cards like old laundry, for some odd reason christmas 1991 my mom gave me a griffey UD rc in a penny sleeve and toploader. I had no clue what the plastic was and no clue who he was... I quickly found out, and was given explicit directions not to take it out of the case or trade it. like you, my mother passed on new years before last. It remains my most cherished baseball related gift.

At the ripe old age of 6, in 1958, I purchased my first baseball cards, mainly because of the bubble gum and I knew what baseball was. I bought them because I loved the team logos, as all of them were so unique at the time. I couldn't even read most of the player's names at that time. I know I had a Hank Bauer in the small stack of cards, so they must of been 1st series, which would make sense as they were usually out first and produced the most.
DANNY

In 1981 at age 8 my dad bought me my first pack of cards for 25 cents at Bobs Corner Store - their slogan was "Eat Here, Get Gas"

My parents are not sports fans so I was on my own and I had just started watching This Week in Baseball and The Baseball Bunch. Because all of my friends were Red Sox fans that's what I became as well. Immediately my favorite player was Jim Rice but my second favorite player was the guy who was on the top of that first 25 cent pack. It is beat to hell but it has survived grade school trades, rubber bands, flipping (yeah I'm that old), mom throwing stuff away and the obligatory break from collecting during college. I have a lot of cool cards but this will always be my favorite

I miss the TBS/WGN days as a kid. I was/am in AZ but had them both here and at the time no DBax. I loved watching the entire game, lived the announcers and just loved the game. Wish I could slow down life and enjoy the actual sport like I did as a kid-high school when I was playing.

I remember my first pack of cards was bought by my dad for me and a friend who was sleeping over at my house. We were at a Smittys Grocery store and grabbed it at the checkout. It was on from then.

While on vaca back in NY a family friend of ours gave me a few hundred 1980 Topps cards right around the same time but I'm not sure if it was before or after.

But those were the first tastes and the first boxes I opened were 1987 Topps.

Ryan

While I don't recall my very first pack of cards, I do have distinct memories of "flipping" cards in the school yard of good old PS 54 in Queens NY. This was back in the early to mid 70's. Years later, when my parents retired and sold their house in NY, I went back to clean out stuff in my old bedroom before they moved to Florida. Tucked away in a closet what do I find, but one of my old school bags (backpacks weren't invented yet....LOL) and stuffed inside were some of my cards from 73 through 78. To my amazement, they weren't as mangled as I was expecting, considering they were just thrown into the bag loose.

So here are some of them.....

My first cards were food issue cards

My first cards were from a box of cereal in 1984. They were Ron Guidry, Dave Concepcion and Dave Winfield from the 1984 Topps Cereal Series. Somehow I lost the Winfield along the way, but I still have the Guidry and Concepcion somewhere, all beat to hell. I've also still got most of the first pack I ever bought, a 1983 Topps cello pack that I bought at a Fred's in Texarkana sometime in 1984.

Have no idea what my first card would have been. I assume it was a pack of 1978 Topps, but it is possible that a friend may have given me some cards to get me started. Back then it was just one of many things that helped to occupy the mind of a pre teenager. I wish I had made notes of these things, but it was not like I knew that this would become a lifelong passion of mine.

My first pack was 1987 Topps. I still remember the first three players I got which was Eddie Milner, Max Venable, and Bo Diaz

I have no idea what my first card was. Probably not a single card, but a pack. I remember my grandfather taking me to the corner store in his South Philly neighborhood to get some candy when I was about 4 or 5. Although I have in my collection some 1974s that I must have gotten before, I would have gotten a pack of 1975 Topps. This was just when I was learning baseball, and must have liked them because I do specifically remember asking him to take me back to the shop the next day "to get a pack with Mike Schmidt in it." He did, and sure enough, I got that Schmidt. To this day, it's probably the image that pops into my mind when you say the words,"baseball cards." Also, now when I get a couple packs of whatever, I make sure to specifically ask for the pack with the "[whatever the best card is]" in it. Most people are not amused, or look at me like I'm an idiot.

My first pack was a 1979 Topps that had a Paul Molitor and a Reggie Jackson All Star card.

I have zero idea what my first cards were as I was much too young to remember. The ones I remember best were when I went to a card shop with my folks and got a Jeff Bagwell rookie(upper deck) along with a 1987 topps Will Clark rookie. Boy I was the happiest kid in the world!

My first cards were when I was 5. They were Burger King cards that looked just like 1980 Topps and were the Phillies wrapped in clear cello with nothing on written on it. They were given out I guess when you bought some sort of sandwich (Whopper?) They may have been 5 card packs. From there I started collecting but it got serious in 1985/86 with the Mattingly/Boggs/Canseco RC craze. I haven't looked back and now my 11 year old son is my mini-me.

Here it is, pulled out of my first-ever pack of cards my mom bought me nearly 17 years ago - the madness has not stopped since then!

Seeing this card on another board got me reminiscing about my early collecting days and it was definitely the first Mantle card I ever saw and for some reason I loved it from the beginning. Maybe it alone also created a love of the 67 set design in general, although a bit later another less than exciting looking card from todays point of view would become a white whale of sorts that I would not own for probably another 25-30 years, the high number 67 Brooks Robinson. I had no special knowledge or love of Mantle or the Yankees either at that point, so not sure why I loved the look of this card so much.

I eventually bought one, but that feeling of seeing a card that you just had to have only due to its appearance is a lost feeling I think. Yes, there are cool cards coming out all the time and many people still buy off of sight, but it just isn't the same as seeing a regular base card like this in 1978! At the time, it was only 11 years old. Imagine excitement like this over seeing a 2005 Topps card today. Not going to happen.

April of 1992. Our first born and my wife had to stay in the hospital overnight. A friend/co-worker stopped by to go out for a drink. Right next to the bar was a sports card store. Since he collects, we went in before going to the bar. Needless to say, we ended up not going to the bar because while I was waiting for him, the store clerk/owner was opening a new box of 1992 Upper Deck and like a dummy, I bought and opened a pack. I pulled one of those Ted Williams insert (non autograph) and that's all it took. I ended up buying a box and by the time my wife came home the next day, I bought about six boxes of the 1992 Upper Deck, completed a whole set and a bunch of extras which I still have in the closet somewhere. /now I'm sitting on more than half a million cards that might be worth a penny a piece and a handful of Cal Ripken cards that might be worth something. If I only knew......