National Baseball Card Day

[IndianaTwin]

So, apparently Topps has made this (Aug. 11) "National Baseball Card Day," and one can stop in at one's favorite participating shop to pick up a free pack. Which got me thinking -- what are your favorite baseball cards and/or card memories?
 
Here's three for me: 
 
1. I was eight when my older brother went to college. I'd heard of baseball cards, but never had any of my own. When he came home for Christmas, he said he had "just happened" to pick up a pack, and would I like to have this Rod Carew. Uh, yeah.

 

 
2. I was hooked. And my friendship with Doug was cemented when we both accumulated enough cards to spread them out over the floor, make trades, and sort them by position, and then by team, and then by year, and then by team again, and then by position, and then by...

 

 

3. And one of the best Christmas presents I ever got was when I was about 10 and my brother-in-law gave me his entire collection, mostly 1968s and 1969s. Carew was his favorite player, so as an adult, I gave that one back to him.

 

 

 

[ashbury]

Baseball cards were printed on the backs of Post cereal boxes when I was a kid in the 1960s. I learned about the game via the cards before I ever really remember watching a game in person or on TV. My younger brother and I collected and traded them, as nature intended. Years later, he made it a quest on Ebay to complete a 1962^* Post cereal set central to our childhood. Mostly he did it by wheeling and dealing, but in a few cases it cost him money he couldn't afford - but we both derived a lot of pleasure when he got that last card. (I don't remember which player it was, now.) He passed away, and the set is in my hands now. Good memories.

 

^* ashburybob and I always referred to it as 1961, both at the time and also later, because that was the year of the statistics shown on the card

[IndianaTwin]

Baseball cards were printed on the backs of Post cereal boxes when I was a kid in the 1960s. I learned about the game via the cards before I ever really remember watching a game in person or on TV. My younger brother and I collected and traded them, as nature intended. Years later, he made it a quest on Ebay to complete a 1962^* Post cereal set central to our childhood. Mostly he did it by wheeling and dealing, but in a few cases it cost him money he couldn't afford - but we both derived a lot of pleasure when he got that last card. (I don't remember which player it was, now.) He passed away, and the set is in my hands now. Good memories.

 

^* ashburybob and I always referred to it as 1961, at the time and later, because that was the year of the statistics shown on the card

What a neat story, and I’m sure the set provides significant meaning. I have a handful of cards from those Post sets and always thought they were cool. That’s a couple years before I was born so they would have been cards I traded for.

 

Cards on the box also reminds me of another story. When I was a kid in the mid-70s, Hostess would put three cards on the bottom of their packages. When I went grocery shopping with Mom, she would let me sort through all the boxes of Twinkies, Ding Dongs, Ho-Hos and Suzy Q’s to pick out the box that I wanted while she did the rest of the shopping. Letting me get a box of Ding Dongs was probably a small price to pay for her being able to shop in peace!

[curt1965]

The memory I have is not finding a Stan Musial card one summer. Every nickel I had went into baseball cards, but I never could find a Musial. Only 1 kid in the entire town had one! I remember I was so jealous!