Monday, February 27, 2012

From the unlikeliest of sources


This is one of my favorite cards.

And you'd never guess where it came from.

A card show? Nope. 

How about a card shop? Uh-uh.

A friend gave it to me? I bought it online? I found it on the street? No, no, and although that would've been cool, no.

Now that I think about it, I'm not sure that any of my baseball cards have a better story attached to them than this one.

I will tell you that this was a dime box find, sort of. I wasn't the one that found it, either. My dad was actually the one that found this card for me. 

A few summers ago, he came across some kids with one of those homemade lemonade stands that you see all the time. Although I never tried it in my younger years, I'm sure it's a great way to make a few bucks when you're eight years old.

Anyways, this wasn't like any other lemonade stand. 

This lemonade stand had baseball cards.

To my surprise, my dad came home with a big pile of random cards for me from that stand. (He bought some lemonade too, of course.)

I couldn't believe it when I came across a 1960 Topps Whitey Ford in the stack. When it comes to the condition on my vintage cards, my motto is "Who cares? It's (insert player name here)!"

In this case, it's "Who cares? It's Whitey Ford!"

It's got some tape residue, it's creased, and the corners aren't great.

But it's fifty-two years old, and it's a Hall of Famer. Good enough for me!

My dad told me that the whole stack of cards cost just two bucks. Two bucks!

This one is definitely one of the cornerstones of my vintage collection. It's mind-boggling that a card like this wound up at some kid's lemonade stand.

This hobby never ceases to surprise me.

4 comments:

Play at the Plate said...

Great find at a great price!

William Regenthal said...

That's awesome!

Ryan said...

I wonder if those kids had their lemonade stand shut down by management (read: Dad) when management came home from work and discovered their collection being used as promotional gimmicks to increase sales? Pretty funny to think about but simply awesome for you and your old man!

Mike said...

I've wondered about the "management" factor,too....but these kids had balloons,candy,all sorts of nick-nacks for sale with the lemonade....I'm thinkin the box of cards was just another thing the folks wanted to get rid of......and the Whitey was probably deemed "too damaged" and tossed in......