They came packaged with disgusting Topps bubble gum - a tasteless pink shard of something or other. If you got a slightly stale package the gum was brittle and broke off into sharp-edged pieces that could slit your lip. If you were naive or foolish, you might have thought that Topps was chewable. It wasn't. So inferior to the sublime Bazooka!
But you didn't spend a nickel on Topps for the gum. You bought it for the baseball cards.
Back then, a lot of kids collected cards, storing them in shoe boxes, teams clumped together with rubber bands. No one thought they were going to get rich collecting them. It was just a thing.
In my immediate family, cards for the most part weren't for collecting, they were for using.
Boys (and even some girls) flipped cards. You'd stand in a circle and toss down your cards, one at a time. I can't remember the rules, but I think you won the flip if your card touched another card. Being a good flipper helped you accumulate a lot of cards. If you had cards that you really liked, you weren't likely to risk losing them by flipping, so a lot of duds ended up in flipping games. But flipping was fun.
Unless you got skinned. (Sometimes known as getting skunned.) Skinned or skunned, it meant that someone had taken you for ALL of your cards. So you had to scare up another nickel and buy another pack of Topps so you could get back in the game.
Kids also traded cards to acquire the ones they wanted and build their collections. If you were looking for a Pete Runnels (Red Sox), you might be willing to part with a Virgil Trucks (A's) and a Vito Valentinetti (Tigers).
The best use of a baseball card, as far as I'm concerned, was using a clothespin to attach it to the spikes of a bicycle wheel. As you pedaled around, it made a completely satisfying clicking sound.
And when my sister Trish was a baby/toddler, we used baseball cards as flashcards, regularly quizzing her to see if she could identify the players. One of her first words was "gageegyger", her way of pronouncing Gary Geiger, a journeyman Red Sox player of the time. She became quite adept at the player recognition game. This may have been the formation of her becoming an avid baseball fan, a true Red Sox lifer.
My cousin Rob was a collector. He was older than us, and he had an enviable collection. At some point, his mother - my Aunt Margaret - in a fit of pique at him, decided to gift the Rogers kids with Rob's enviable collection. By then he was a teenager. Margaret didn't like clutter. I'm sure she was thinking enough is enough. Anyway, it was quite a collection. Plenty of Teddy Ballgame cards in there!
We did not treat Rob's prized collection kindly.
Sure, it was a treasure trove, but we mostly deployed the trove for flipping (and losing: who cared - they hadn't cost us anything) and for offering them around so all the kids in the 'hood could fully-load their bicycle wheels.
Over the years, Cousin Rob would frequently comment on the loss of his treasure. Especially once cards started getting valuable.
I'm sure Rob's collection would have been valuable.
The cards would have been in pristine condition. He was the youngest child in his family, so there were no younger kids to destroy them. Plus he was careful and well organized.
If he'd had a 1952 Mickey Mantle rookie card in there - which he probably did - it might well be worth a million bucks. (I'm not about to tell him.)
All this came to mind when I read that Target had decided to stop selling sports and Pokemon trading cards in their stores.
Although the Minneapolis-based retailer didn’t give a direct reason for the change, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that it came after police in Brookfield, Wisc., said four men attacked another man over cards on May 7.
“The safety of our guests and our team is our top priority," Target said in a statement. “Out of an abundance of caution, we’ve decided to temporarily suspend the sale of MLB, NFL, NBA and Pokémon trading cards within our stores, effective May 14. Guests can continue to shop these cards online at Target.com." (Source: Boston Globe)
I get that these cards can be valuable, but four guys jumping another to get at some potential big scores? People sure are crazy. And awful.
Give me the more sensible time of yore, when the best use of a baseball call was clothespinning it to the spokes of your bicycle wheel. Clickety-clack. I can hear it now.
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