Your First Cards

[NJMetfan4life]

What were your first baseball cards? What made you start collecting? Me, my dad gave me a 1988 Keith Hernandez, and Gary Carter, then one pack lead to another. What about you?

[Mike D.]

1987 Topps. I think 15 card packs were 45 cents each. I could get two packs and a couple peices of nickel candy for a dollar at the local gas station.

[vptpt]

1981 Donruss for me. One of dad's friends collected cards and bought a couple packs for me. I remember pulling a Bucky Dent. I didn't really get into collecting until 1986 when I collected Topps. They were 35 cents a pack. Occasionally I'd get a pack of Donruss at the steep price of 50 cents per pack.

[ipitch]

Not sure, but it may have been 1979 Topps/Burger King.

[duckydps]

1993 Topps... The manager of our local drug store gave me a pack (I was 7) that had been opened one day for free and then she started saving them for me when someone broke in to a pack... she did it just because she knew I liked baseball and like to play it!

[Dalkowski110]

1998 Topps Stadium Club. I still remember the first cards I got: Rey Ordonez (my first Mets player), Mark McLemore, Kevin Brown, Andy Pettite, Esteban Loaiza right off the bat.

[tommybaseball]

1968 Topps. I was in second grade. I used to buy them from a newspaper/candy store that had a Breyers ice cream sign above it in the Bronx for 5 cents a pack. I would open up the yellow packs, take out the gum and stuff it into my mouth for about 5 minutes before it would go stale. I would thumb through the cards after I wiped the "gum dust" off. All of the players first names were printed in black while their last names were printed in red on a burlap border. A color circle in the lower right told you what team they played for and their position. I was introduced to flipping in the schoolyard of my grammar school, St. John's, when I was swindled out of my Willie Mays card by a sixth grader! I didn't know that he got to keep the cards when he said, "Match your five?"

[EricDavis]

Sometime 1990 I got a pack of 1990 Topps. I was 5. It contained Eric Davis, Barry Larkin, and Chris Sabo. The Reds became my favorite team and they won the world series that year. Sadly I have NO recollection of them winning the world series. Also in 1990 my great grandma gave me a team set of 1990 Fleer Houston Astros. I believe the Topps cards came first.

[ttmman21]

complete set 0f 1990 Topps

[Extra Innings]

1987 Topps. This was the first year I ever bought a pack of baseball cards. Although I didn't really start collecting until '89. The first wax box I ever got was '91 Topps.

[AutographCollector]

My dad bought me my first pack of cards when I was 9 years old. A pack of 1985 Topps at a local flea market.

[DaClyde]

I think my first cards were three from a box of cereal in 1984. I got the Ron Guidry, Dave Winfield and Dave Concepcion from Topps Cereal Series. Somehow I managed to lose the Winfield, but I still have the other two. Shortly after that I bought a 1983 Topps Rak Pack at Fred's. I think I still have most of those, too (Jim Rice, Clyde King, Dave Stapleton, Richard Dotson, Benny Ayala, Joe Rudi, Jay Johnstone, Joe Niekro, Ned Yost, Lenn Sakata, Rene Lachemann, Gary Carter were all in there).

I don't know why I bought them and it wasn't until about 3 years later that I finally got into baseball cards. In '87, I'd go to K-Mart every Saturday and buy a rack pack of '87 Donruss and the latest Fantastic Four. I think I probably did that for about 5 months. I really didn't have much concept of baseball or who was playing until I started watching the Yankees and Mets back when cable television might offer several regional channels. Comcast back then, where I lived, carried WWOR, WPIX, KTVT, WGN and WTBS. So on any given day, I might be able to flip back and forth between the Yankees, Mets, Rangers, Cubs and Braves. I was really bummed when they dropped WPIX as I was a big Yankees fan and had started following Dave Winfields career. I even had a scrapbook in 1987 that had about the last 9 hits of Paul Molitor's hitting streak that year.

[ehof]

I got a few packs of cards in the 90s at some point for some reason which I don't remember, and bought 3 packs on my own in the late 90s, but didn't really consider them a collection. That started in 2000 when I got 300 cards and a Sammy Sosa card mounted on a plaque at an auction. The 300 cards were mostly all commons from the late 80s and early 90s that weren't worth much, but that was not what mattered; it got me started on a collection that I have been working on continuously since then.

[MadHatter]

My grandfather gave me a handful of cards from 1959 Topps back in about 1978 or so. That really kicked me off... still trying to complete that set in his memory...

[EdTarbusz]

1972 Topps, when I was finishing second grade. Noted member of the Cleveland Indians, Fred Stanley, was in the first pack I ever bought.