Baseball Cards

When I was a wee lad we would take our baseball cards and a clothe pin and attached it too the fender supports of our bicycles, and let the cards rub against the spokes. This would make a very cool sound, so we thought, sort of like a motorcycle engine. Now I look back and think of the cards that I tore up doing this, 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle , 1958 Topps Roberto Clemente ,1953 Topps Willie Mays . The Mantle card sold lately for 10,000.00, the Clemente sold for 215.00 and the Mays sold for 9211.00. Holy crap I could have been a thousandaire. You know that back in the 50's they were just cards of our heroes, their worth was just having the card of your favorite player and that was it. And a bonus when you bought your pack of cards ,was that you got this big pink square of gum, that when you started to chew it ,it would break up ,in your mouth into a thousand little pieces. But it would eventually, after working it for 20 minutes, congeal into a giant wad of pink gum. Another bonus was that your baseball cards always smelled like the gum. And that was a good thing. Now a days people collect cards and they don't even open the package because they would be worth less if opened. I don't think the collectors of today get as much enjoyment out of having these cards as we did way back when.

Speaking of old baseball cards. The first house we owned was built in 1910, and while I was working in the kitchen, of that house, doing some repairs of the moulding around a door. I noticed that there was something stuck in the back of one of these mouldings. When I pulled it out I discovered that it was a old baseball card from 1910. They use to put this kind of card in cigarette packs. Piedmont was the brand name of the cigarettes, with the motto "The Cigarette of Quality". The card was a player for the Philadelphia Nationals named George Paskert. This was very cool to me. I still have the card and I have never found out what it is worth. I just love that it survived 98 years ,and that I will preserve it for as long as I am alive and kicking.

PS I will however let it go for the first million I am offered.