Conversing Through Old Baseball Cards

It wouldn’t be fair to mention all of the great people from Twitter I met at the National, or vendors I purchased from or chatted with, or random collectors that I conversed with after they read my Cubs Card-O-Meter sign. I would leave somebody out.

There was one exchange that I had to write about. Near the end of Friday, I had just purchased some vintage and oddball vintage from a booth. This is where I picked up this very cool Ernie Banks piece.

As I was walking away, a gentleman approached and commented we followed each other on Twitter. His name was Justin. Justin had some tremendous ideas for my project and website and we had a great conversation. He said he wanted to contribute to the project.

Not far away was a booth selling vintage 1960’s singles that were well loved and priced three for a dollar. This is my style. Nothing better than some cheap vintage. Justin and I began sifting through stacks of 60’s, and we chatted. It was like one of those episodes hosted by Mike Oz where he opens packs of baseball cards with a former or current player.

Justin found a 1969 Topps Jose Cardenal (pre-Cubs), and shared a story that he was the Jose Cardenal Baseball Camp MVP in 1984.

I came across a Randy Hundley card and talked about the many times I’ve hung out with Hundley over the past few years at Club 400 and the Cubs Convention. Then I shared information about Club 400 and the $370,000 it has raised for charity over the past five years.

Justin pointed out a “Batter Bafflers” card featuring pitchers Don Cardwell and Glen Hobbie.

Then I found the 1963 Topps Don Landrum card…which isn’t a photo of Landrum. It’s actually Ron Santo and pointed that out.

A 1961 Topps Sammy Taylor was found in Justin’s pile, and said he was keeping this for himself. He said when one of his kids was born they were going to name them Sam if it was a boy, or Taylor if it was a girl.

After the dust cleared, Justin added 50 vintage Cubs baseball cards to the collection and a great memory of getting to know each other through baseball cards.