In my early teens I've discovered Some like it hot and fell for Marilyn. In France we didn't have cards everywhere at all. I started to read many books about her and learned about collectible Sports cards of her husband Joe DiMaggio.

Years later my husband and I entered a doll store because they had Marilyn dolls. It was my first time in this store, and I looked everywhere as they had many collectibles. In the back I saw some boxes with a photo of Marilyn. Only a few wrappers remained and I bought all of them.
It was so exciting to open those wrappers and discovered great cards, including shiny ones. It was from Sportstime and soon found more online. Later I've discovered NSU and that there was cards for movies and series and so much more.

Opening my first NSU was an exciting dive into a brand new world. Many boxes and cases followed, discovering a great community and years of fun opening all these wonderful packs.

These are some great stories, keep em coming...

Jademaliburoad, loved your story, made me think of finding Scooby Doo cards in Moscow. Glad you got to chase your passion for Marilyn.

quote:

Originally posted by cardscout182:
Jademaliburoad, loved your story, made me think of finding Scooby Doo cards in Moscow. Glad you got to chase your passion for Marilyn.

Thanks! I ended up buying boxes of Marilyn cards. Then discovered NSU and movie and TV series cards.
Always a pleasure to open packs, reminds me of panini stickers when I was a child. Opening packs, trading stickers in the playground

When I was in 2nd - 3rd grade, I remember getting Odd Rod and Wacky Packs stickers and putting them on my school notebooks, but I didn't really collect them.
I started collecting comics when I was about 11 or 12 (I'm 59 now). One of the dealers I bought from, Gary Walker in Nashville, offered me a job when I was 13, helping sort, bag and price comics. He set up at flea markets in the area, and I would help set up at them and work the booth on weekends. Later on he opened a shop (The Great Escape, which he sold just a couple of years ago) and I worked there until I was in college. I collected comics throughout that period but more or less gave them up when I went away to school.
I often rode the bus to work, and a coworker lived near me, so we'd meet at the bus stop on days we both were scheduled. It was near a Stop-N-Go mini-mart, and that store carried candy and cards and such. In 1978, they carried Donruss All-Pro Skateboard Sticker-Cards. My coworker and I recognized that the art on these was done by a Filipino comic artist we both followed -- Alex Nino. This was the first set I actively completed. I also picked up a few Star Wars cards when they were new.
Although I gave up on comics, I still went to flea markets and card and comics shows regularly, and started picking up older cards -- mostly Arm & Hammer bird cards, and tobacco cards. In 1985 I graduated and got a job and with it came some disposable income, and I started getting serious about tobacco cards and other things. I'd find stuff that I didn't recognize, and would write to Chris Benjamin (the author of the old Sport Americana non-sport price guides, and an eventual co-founder of NSU) for help ID'ing them and became friends with him.
As part of my job, I traveled around the country and would visit card and comic shops and antique malls. In the days before ebay, this was a productive way of picking up cards.
In 1997, I saw a special with Ricky Jay on HBO. This revived a childhood interest in magic, which became my main hobby. I'm still interested in cards, but primarily only as they relate to magic and magicians. I've still got all of my old NS cards, but don't actively collect generally any more.

I should add that my brother and I bought a couple of packs of Wacky Packages Series 2 around 1974. We found them either in the drugstore next to a nearby Lucky's or at the little corner store down the street from my grandparents. Our Grandpa used to walk us down there for a candy bar. He couldn't understand wanting baseball cards or stickers when you could have a good chocolate bar. They were bigger back then and only 10 cents.

I stuck my Wackies on the side of my metal desk in my room or on my Peachies folders so I didn't really collect those.

Flash forward to earlier this year when I was looking at Wackies and other 70's stuff and spotted a Kook cigarettes sticker. That one was in the first pack I bought. For some reason I remember that one well but not the others. I bought it. I showed it to my brother and he freaked out. He said seeing it transported him back to the 70's like when he hears certain songs so now I'm going to get him one too. He's a graphic artist and really appreciated the work.

quote:

Originally posted by catskilleagle:
I started collecting cards with Topps baseball and football cards and Kellogg's 3D baseball cards in 1973. A family moved in two houses over and they had sports cards and G.I. Joes (the space capsule, "Shark's Surprise" set, and the Amphicat, plus various accessories). I wasn't really thinking about building a set, just going after all the great players and all the players from my favorite team, the A's.

A few years later, my brother and I stopped the ice cream truck intending to get Sidewalk Sundaes or Missiles until we saw that we could buy Star Wars cards (red series had just been released). Star Wars on trading cards! It was the greatest idea since G.I. Joe. We bought all the packs we could and when the yellow, green, and orange sets came out, we bought those too. We didn't learn about the blue series until later. We also ate as much General Mills cereal as possible to get those Star Wars stickers.

I still have most of my 70's cards (we bought a mix of Moonraker, Odd Rods, and Battlestar Galactica) but I don't know what happened to my football cards. I bought some singles and more 3D baseball cards at shows in the 90's.

Jess

One of my earliest card memories, is having some of these 1976 Crazy Cars cards that Jeff lists.

https://mail.nslists.com/crazycar.htm

I guess that I must have gotten them from bags of Wonder Bread, as apparently that was the source.

Anyway, I distinctly recall my mom taking me to a clothing store near our home, and while sitting on the couch in the store, I somehow lost the Shoverolet card. I cried and cried all the way home. I must have been 3 or 4 years old.

We didn't have those but we did get Odd Rods. We really liked those. I don't remember the series but there was a dolphin monster in one. It might have been that 1973 reprint set.

I have no idea where my Odd Rods went. I had a decent stack of those. I think I'm going to cry too.