Welcome to our community

Be apart of something great, join today!

What is Your Favorite Childhood Memory with Baseball Cards?

Disclaimer: Links on this page pointing to Amazon, eBay and other sites may include affiliate code. If you click them and make a purchase, we may earn a small commission.

mouschi

Featured Contributor, Bridging the Gap, Senior Mem
May 18, 2012
3,105
170
My childhood is drenched in baseball cards - most every memory has something to do with them. If I had to pick one that I remember well, it is when Mother's Cookies were in stores, circa 1989.

Nick & Bryan were HUGE Giants fans - particularly Will Clark and Kevin Mitchell. They called me over to show me something. They had pulled a 1989 Mother's Cookies Jose Canseco card that they knew I didn't have. I wanted it SOOO badly, but they kept holding it over my head.

We went to my house to see if I had any Will Clarks they wanted and they were so adamant that it was going to cost me through the nose to get the Canseco.

Then, dad showed up.

With Mother's Cookies.

With a Will Clark they didn't have.

They were oohing and ahhing. I remember how quickly the tables had turned, and how I was holding all the cookies ... err ... cards.

We ended up doing a deal. How is that for a good old fashioned trading memory? :)

JoseCansecoPC1989142.jpg


What is your favorite childhood memory having to do with baseball cards?
 
Last edited:

dano7

Well-known member
Aug 7, 2008
13,306
3,807
Roanoke, VA
When I first started working on completing sets, around 1961. The lady at the Peoples Drugstore I went to every Friday night (while mom got the groceries) learned that I was always waiting on the next series and would hold a box back for me when they would come out. I think I bought boxes from there through about 1966.
 

Musial Collector

Active member
Aug 7, 2008
5,671
2
We had a card shop in the corner strip mall, less than a mile from my home. In the summer would spend hours and hours in the small shop. And by small, I mean my office cubicle Im sitting in right now has more square footage then the entrance area of this shop did. But it was AWESOME as a kid. Ride our bikes down at 9 AM, grab a big gulp at the 7-11, go and look thru the latest cards, open some packs, look at the old ones in the turn case, back to 7-11 for a refill, back to the shop to chat with our friends, back to 7-11 for a snack, etc etc etc. Was a sad day when Dougs Cardshop moved from the East Side of St Paul to the suburb of Oakdale to a HUGE location. Wasnt old enough to drive and was waaaaay to far to bike, so ended up only visiting a few times before yes, they closed up shop. Lesson........sometimes bigger isnt always better.
 

zyceoa

Active member
Sep 2, 2012
269
39
Probably collecting from late 89 through the summer of 90. My dad had some extra cash at the time, so I was able to get all the 1989 update sets. That was basically my introduction into the stock market and I enjoyed looking at the up and down arrows in Beckett. How long can Jerome Walton keep up his hot start? Is this Griffey kid a flash in the pan? And busting through packs from 1990 in search of a rare error card or the legendary black & white Bo Jackson. I'm really digging this new Leaf brand! My Frank Thomas for your Kevin Maas! And yes, I also went through bags of Mothers Cookies to finally put together the Will Clark set.
 

JVHaste

Well-known member
Jun 22, 2015
4,751
270
Vancouver WA
Buying a random pack in the early 2000s at a Walmart or Kmart and it having a Mike Piazza GU. I barely knew these existed at the time and it definitely made my day... plain white jersey card and I was in awe.

Sadly pack searchers are doing a good job stealing these > $5 cards from the next generation.
 

JBust80

New member
May 11, 2018
48
0
North Carolina
For Christmas one year my Grandfather, who lived in WV and we only saw maybe 2-3 times a year, showed up with two small paper bags full of 1987 Topps baseball. A bag for me and a bag for my younger brother. To us, having that many packs to open was like heaven. I'll NEVER forget that feeling, and the picture of us on the floor surrounded by a mountain of cards, grinning ear to ear, is still one of my favorites.

Oh and my favorite player to collect was Will Clark :)
 
Last edited:

EtherealSOC

Active member
Dec 31, 2012
198
49
Nova Scotia, Canada
I grew up in a fairly unhappy home and I was a victim of it in some awful ways. Still, I remember one day when I was ten or so (late 1992/early 1993), my mom took the day off work and kept my little brother and I out of school. That alone would have been cool enough, but she spent the day doing whatever we wanted. We went to the mall, got ice cream, went to a local landmark, etc. When it was my time to pick I asked if we could go to a local card store, a very small shack in the middle of town that had only been open for a few months. She said yes, and when I went in I saw a 1990 Topps Debut '89 Dave Justice card. I had heard about it but had never seen it before and was so excited. I bought it for $2 and have treasured it ever since.

When I moved out to go to university my parents split up, a move that probably should have happened at least a decade earlier. My mom changed, got into drugs, and went out of her way to cause problems for me and my family. It's been almost eight years since I spoke to her last and she has never attempted to contact me or make things right. I think she's just fine moving on. I still supercollect David Justice and I pick up copies of that Topps Debut card whenever I can. I have a little more than 300 of them now, as well as the original slide Topps used to make the card from the Topps Vault. Now that I am a father myself I spend most of my energy trying to learn from my parent's mistakes, but whenever I see that card I remember one pretty awesome day in an otherwise turbulent childhood.
 

Members online

Top