Well, it's my blog and I'll cheat if I want to. I had narrowed it down to two cards. When I went to grab them for a pic, I decided to add a couple more.
I remember walking through the living room one evening in 1989 and my mama asking me if I'd heard about the card with the cuss word on it. She'd seen it on the evening news. Yup, ol' #616...the 1989 Fleer Billy Ripken.
Not too long later, we were at a card show and she actually let me pick a couple of packs of Fleer. The seller, who was also my local "card shop" owner (he actually owned a small grocery store) was selling packs that were from the early run. I can't remember for sure, but he was probably asking $3 or $4 for a pack. I was FLOORED that she let me buy these, considering she refused to buy me Upper Deck packs that were $1.
I picked up my packs and headed out to the lobby. The show was in the Ramada Inn in my hometown and there were nice, comfy chairs outside. In one of the packs resided that card that you see in the pic above. There was an older guy that offered me $10 for the card, thinking that I didn't know what I had. He's probably a retail pack searcher now. What an asshole, trying to rip off a ten-year old kid.
The Rickey Henderson rookie is the first "big" card my parents bought me. It was probably in 1989 or so. I had only been collecting for a couple of years and they bought me a low grade copy. As an adult now, I'd have done the same thing. The card is probably a PSA 1. It's worth way more sentimentally than the monetary value.
Those two cards are the two that I've probably had the longest. Through the card purges and moving from Morgantown, WV to Pittsburgh to Indianapolis to Fort Worth, they've been the two that have been through it all with me.
The other two cards were given to my by my uncle when I graduated college in 2001. The McGwire was obviously worth more then. No idea on the Ripken because I don't care. They will always be one of the cornerstones of my collection. That uncle was the man that got me into collecting cards when he gave me a complete 1986 Topps set for Christmas.
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Two Birds, One Stone (30 Day Card Challenge - Day 6)
30 Day Card Challenge - Day 7
I think this is my favorite 30 Day Challenge. I've really enjoyed reading about cards and their relationship to family members. I remember selling those "early issue" packs of 1989 Fleer at the shop I worked out. I always wondered how my boss knew the difference between these boxes and later run boxes.
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