In the past few weeks we lost two baseball greats: Lou Brock and Tom “Terrific” Seaver. One of the first things I thought about with their passing was my baseball card collection. When I was a kid in the late 70’s, I collected baseball cards and I remember seeing both the Lou Brock and Tom Seaver cards you see above. I’m sure all the names of baseball players of that era, however obscure, are somewhere in my brain. After all I was constantly flipping through all my cards and would see their names again and again. The first year I started collecting in a serious and passionate way was in 1976
At this time it was mostly Topps cards that dominated the market, not just with baseball and the other major pro sports, but also with movies and TV. There was Mork and Mindy, Happy Days, Charlie's Angels and other collections from the biggest TV shows and movies of the day. You better believe there were a ton of Star Wars cards out there. My brother had some of those. But for me I think there was something more tangible and fun with collecting baseball cards. 1976 was also the year I went to my first major league baseball game at Shea Stadium to see the New York Mets, so it was thrilling to collect baseball cards and then see those players in person or watch them on TV. Each year the new baseball cards would come out right before baseball season started. It was exciting to see what the new design was and give it a thumbs up or down. I’m sure I disparaged the look of the 1978 baseball card, that year the team names were written in cursive. Yuck. But no matter how little I liked the look of the new baseball cards of any particular year, it would never discourage me from collecting them.
