Hi Matt - As you are probably aware, we are currently running Chapter #11 in your serialized autobiography "The Rockaway I Knew." There seems to be a keen interest in your collection of trading cards as mentioned in this chapter, and I was wondering if you might do all of us a favor and expand a bit on your experiences with these trading cards. We have gotten several responses from our readers regarding their own childhood memories of collecting and playing with these cards. I feel a history lesson into collectibles would not be appropriate - but if you would tell us all more about how you as a child got started on saving these cardboard pieces and what you did with them, it would be most appreciated. Marty

Hello Marty - As you requested, this will not be a history lesson but I will relate a few of my own personal experiences - some additional memories of my own youth.

I first began buying baseball cards in September of 1951. I purchased my first "packets" from a luncheonette which was then located on the southeast corner of Beach 35th Street and Edgemere Avenue - sorry! but I don't remember the name of the store. The trading cards were displayed on the "check-out" counter in a cardboard box - about 8 x 7.5 x 1.75. There were two dozen packets in each box -- and each packet was marked at a nickel. The cardboard box itself was considered "point-of-purchase advertising" - the box top folded over into itself and created a "backboard" showing what was for sale in the box.

Of course as soon as the boys discovered that the "current edition" baseball cards were available, there was a "mad rush" to the corner store and before very long, the cards were all sold out.

There was another candy store on the southwest corner of Beach 34th Street and Edgemere Avenue and often times, when I found one store was "out of cards" I would run down to the other store and buy my cards from them. Of course I never bought an entire box - the owner of the store would never have expected a child to come up with $1.20 to buy the entire box; I simply bought one or two packs at a time. Each packet was wrapped in a waxed-type cover sheet and inside you found five or six trading cards and a "slice" of pink (extremely sweet) bubble gum. The packs were unmarked as to the actual content (other than the fact that you were going to get 5 cards and some gum) which presented a problem - that "problem" addressed late into the year 1986; the government decided this was a form of "gambling." You really "had to know" what you were getting before you paid your money.

Shortly into 1952,1 saw something "new" had been added to the scene. Not only were baseball (and football) cards being sold in this fashion, but now they had a box of Presidents of the USA - same format, same number of cards, same slab of gum, and at the same price. Again, I bought my first "non-sports" cards from that same luncheonette on the southeast corner of Beach 35th Street and Edgemere Avenue. I discovered that some cards in the series were harder to find than others - and if I was to complete a set (get all the cards in that particular set) I would have to buy a lot of cards and from a variety of locations, I soon found that the WaveCrest Luncheonette in the WaveCrest Shopping Center was also selling those President cards so I began buying from that store as well.

 

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