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Also shown below is the text and pictures from the Introduction page of the blog, giving some context for this latest set build. I'm looking forward to this, and maybe I'll even complete the set in less time than it took my Dad and me to complete the 1956 Topps set.
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| My Dad posing with a 1951 Ford Custom Deluxe Tudor Sedan, circa early to mid 1950s |
When and if I ever have access to a time machine, my very selfish first stop will be Oak Street in Millville, New Jersey in August 1962. My Dad had graduated high school a few months before and he was about to make the eight hour drive to Pfeiffer University in Misenheimer, North Carolina to start his freshman year. Shortly after his departure, or maybe even before he left, my Mom-Mom, a very practical and loving woman with an absolutely wicked sense of humor, gathered some of the now unneeded childhood mementoes from my Dad's former bedroom, including his extensive baseball card collection, and put them in a trash can at the curb. She saved some things, deemed to have sentimental value, including his prized marble collection.
I don't think it was until a few decades later, while cleaning out that house in 1985 following my Mom-Mom's passing, that my Dad fully realized his baseball card collection was truly and completely gone.
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He had held out hope that maybe some of his old baseball cards were stashed away in a forgotten box somewhere. On what was possibly the last day I was ever in that house, now empty and ready to be put on the market, we found the card above on the floor of the attic. At the time, I had no idea how old the card was, or what set it had come from. All I knew was that it was the back of a Mickey Mantle card, and all of Mantle's cards were extremely valuable. My Dad leaned down, picked up the card and flipped it over.
What greeted us was the blank piece of cardboard seen here. This would have been one of his doubles, and he vaguely remembered separating the front picture from the cardboard backing and either hanging the picture on his bulletin board or gluing it into a long-lost album somewhere. We were more than a little disappointed and my Dad's faint hope of being reunited with his old baseball card collection was completely dashed.
Even though it's only the back of a vintage Mickey Mantle card, this little piece of cardboard still has an important place in my collection, as it's the sole survivor from my Mom-Mom's long ago baseball card purge and I'm happy to have it today. My time travel trip, at least the first one, would rescue the garbage bag of baseball cards from the late 1940s to the early 1960s from that curb on Oak Street. In a glass half full kind of way, the mid-1980s saw a resurgence in baseball card collecting, and my Dad's urge to reacquire some of the mementos of his youth led to our collecting (and completing) the 1956 Topps set.
When the Magic Shoebox arrived in our house in summer of 1983 (or 1984?) there were 44 cards from the 1956 Topps set in the box, including the pricey cards of Ed Mathews, Yogi Berra, Willie Mays and the Yankees Team Card. But there were also 18 cards from the 1955 Bowman set, consisting of mostly commons or semi-stars, but no star cards.
The decision to collect the 1956 Topps set came during a family vacation to Cooperstown in the summer of 1987, when we came across a few commons for sale at one of the many baseball card stores on the main drag. We spent the next 20 years collecting that set, and I've covered how each of those cards came into our collection over at my now completed 1956 Topps blog.
And now it's time to get them all back. Welcome to my blog chronicling the latest (and last?) time our family will build a 1955 Bowman baseball card set.
