How many had to do this to buy baseball cards?

[fordman]

As I was chatting with some co-workers, I reminisced back to my younger days of collecting in the early to mid 70's.

Just wondering how many had to find empty soda-pop bottles just to buy baseball cards?

When they were $0.25 per pack, if you found 10 bottles, you had a dollar and bought 4 packs, felt like a king!

Fordman

 

[gracecollector]

We recycled aluminium cans, and I walked the neighbor's dog each weekday while he was at work. Being a country kid, I also "walked beans," cutting out weeds from between the rows of soybeans with a machete. (Gotta love being 11 with a machete. )

Those things kept me in card and candy money - loved riding my 3-speed Schwinn 8 miles to Schuler's drug store to buy early 80's wax packs and rock candy.

 

[kerryfan5]

Paper route.

 

[PoseyBuster]

Paper route.

Daddy.

 

[predatorkj]

Mowed lawns.

 

[digicat]

That was me in the late 80s and early 90s. Taking cans to the recycling joint to finance my wax addiction.

I'd also skip lunch and pocket my lunch money to spend on packs. Every little bit helped.

 

[jeff_bichel]

Sold weed

 

[Lancemountain]

Shoplifted them

Sorry Mr. Waterman!

 

[JEBJJA]

Lawn cutting, under-the-table bus boy job, paper route, good grades, baseball and soccer if I got RBI hits or scored goals, parents and grandparents. I had alot of different ways to get cards.

 

[DeliciousBacon]

Daddy.

I got this a lot as well, except my father used to give me money to go to the card shop as hush money. After he retired from the Navy, he'd spend his entire weekend at the local American Legion post. On Saturdays he'd bring me and have me sit there for 8-10 hours while he drank himself into oblivion, then drove us home. He'd give me money for the local card shop, expecting that I wouldn't tell my mom where we'd been. Of course, I was 9 or 10, so I didn't figure that out at the time. Needless to say, he was an alcoholic loser who I haven't seen since he took off on us in 1992. But I got plenty of cards out of it!

 

[PoseyBuster]

I got this a lot as well, except my father used to give me money to go to the card shop as hush money. After he retired from the Navy, he'd spend his entire weekend at the local American Legion post. On Saturdays he'd bring me and have me sit there for 8-10 hours while he drank himself into oblivion, then drove us home. He'd give me money for the local card shop, expecting that I wouldn't tell my mom where we'd been. Of course, I was 9 or 10, so I didn't figure that out at the time. Needless to say, he was an alcoholic loser who I haven't seen since he took off on us in 1992. But I got plenty of cards out of it!

Boooooo alcoholic loser!!!

MY dad never came home with earrings or dolls or clothes, it was always packs and packs of cards <3

 

[Juan Gris]

I spent my after school hours at the local YMCA and, when flush with allowance, at the Revco next door buying packs.

 

[D-Lite]

$2/week allowance for doing chores back in the '80s.

And could get mom to kick in for packs at Cumberland Farms when we'd stop for milk sometimes. Vividly remember getting those first run Fleer basketball packs, '82-84 Donruss, and Fleer Star Stickers there. Simpler times.

 

[budvandall]

Mowed lawns.

+1. Along with any other odd jobs that I could do.

 

[TBTwinsFan]

When I was younger, I mowed lawns, did chores, and got good grades.

Now, I scrap metal and cans for extra card money. Really good way to make a quick $20 or so.

 

[tramers]

bottles were .01 each early 60's and I got them from a stock yard . Had to wash them off in creek first .

 

[jbmm161]

As a kid I did household choirs for $5 a week and that bought 10 packs of 1988/89 Topps, Donruss and Score at Wal-Mart.

Got a job in the late 90s as a teenager and purchased whatever my $4.25 an hour could buy. It's crazy what you can do with that little bit of money when you don't have to pay for the things to live like a house, food or car payments.
Air Jordan's, Expensive radios/speakers and a $200 Mark McGwire 85 Topps RC in 1998 in the heat of the HR record chase.

 

[TNP777]

late '70s in northwest Oregon - $0.05 for cans and $0.10 for glass bottles. All it took to buy cards at Miles Grocery or JJ Newberry's was a bike ride from my house out in the boonies.

 

[KLARNOLD]

My dad owned a pharmacy and I got to pick out what to order from the wholesaler from the early 80s to mid 90s. In 1985, the wholesaler rep gave my dad a 1985 Topps factory set for being a great customer. The Mark McGwire from the set graded PSA 9 and I sold it on ebay for $330.

 

[AmishDave]

Paper route, helping elderly neighbors with some easy chores, allowance and doing the aluminum can thing.