There was a car with Mass. plates that had a "Yankees Suck" bumper sticker parked on my block. The guy behind the counter found me Bucky Dent and Aaron Boone cards to put under the windshield wiper. Very helpful.
Good stuff. This sort of high-end collecting is anathema to me, but that sort of baseball card store as local watering hole vibe is very much in my blood. A huge baseball card store opened in the middle of my town when I was in grade school. It was a regular stop on my walk home from school most afternoons, as much to browse and shoot the shit as to buy stuff, though I always tried to empty my pockets to the degree that the guys behind the counter would actually try to talk me out of spending my last few cents. I was such a regular that they would advise my mom on what to get me for my birthday ("He hasn't picked up the '75 Winfield yet . . ."). Of course, back then packs were about a quarter, and when Upper Deck started charging a buck per pack it was considered uncouth and helped drive me away from the hobby for a while.
That store moved twice to more distant and inaccessible strip malls on the outskirts of town and just vanished within the last year, likely because the owner realized the brick-and-morter aspect of his business wasn't nearly as profitable as what he could make at card shows and on eBay, neither of which have as much overhead. There's a smaller store in town that I will pop in on now and again, but I still miss those sunny afternooons digging through boxes of Topps commons, pouring through Beckett price guides, and finding cards of past stars and Hall of Famers that were just beat up enough to fall into my price range without looking as if they'd come out of the spokes of someone's bike. I will do that sort of thing on eBay or yahoo auctions now and again (which is how I got the Johnny Blanchard card pictured here, among others), but it's just not the same.
I live about four blocks from that shop.
There was a car with Mass. plates that had a "Yankees Suck" bumper sticker parked on my block. The guy behind the counter found me Bucky Dent and Aaron Boone cards to put under the windshield wiper. Very helpful.
Good stuff. This sort of high-end collecting is anathema to me, but that sort of baseball card store as local watering hole vibe is very much in my blood. A huge baseball card store opened in the middle of my town when I was in grade school. It was a regular stop on my walk home from school most afternoons, as much to browse and shoot the shit as to buy stuff, though I always tried to empty my pockets to the degree that the guys behind the counter would actually try to talk me out of spending my last few cents. I was such a regular that they would advise my mom on what to get me for my birthday ("He hasn't picked up the '75 Winfield yet . . ."). Of course, back then packs were about a quarter, and when Upper Deck started charging a buck per pack it was considered uncouth and helped drive me away from the hobby for a while.
That store moved twice to more distant and inaccessible strip malls on the outskirts of town and just vanished within the last year, likely because the owner realized the brick-and-morter aspect of his business wasn't nearly as profitable as what he could make at card shows and on eBay, neither of which have as much overhead. There's a smaller store in town that I will pop in on now and again, but I still miss those sunny afternooons digging through boxes of Topps commons, pouring through Beckett price guides, and finding cards of past stars and Hall of Famers that were just beat up enough to fall into my price range without looking as if they'd come out of the spokes of someone's bike. I will do that sort of thing on eBay or yahoo auctions now and again (which is how I got the Johnny Blanchard card pictured here, among others), but it's just not the same.
had a similar but smaller place on the way home from school. the kind of store that sold me packs of cigarettes for my mom, because they knew.
kay (store owner and butcher) would give you free baseball cards and candy on your birthday
Not only is Gardner still on the team, he's playing today and hitting seventh.