Dan Tontz
Do you remember baseball cards? I sure do. I was a fanatic about baseball cards.
The cards were made out of cardboard paper on two sides. One side had a picture of a baseball player. The other side contained all the statistics for that player over past years.
Baseball cards served a useful educational purpose in various ways. For example, baseball cards showed the city and state in which the player was born. When you were nine years old, that helped you learn your geography, and where things and places were.
It was lots of fun to trade cards with your friends. Each kid made their own assessment of what the card was worth in terms of name, recognition, batting and pitching statistics, etc.
A very popular goal was to collect all of the baseball cards for your favorite players and favorite teams. In my case, my favorite team was the New York Yankees. That came about because my dad showed me a picture of Joe DiMaggio in the Book of Knowledge. That inspired me to become a Yankees fan. Plus, it really helped that KAKE radio in Wichita broadcast most of the Yankee 
games, so I could listen to the games on my crystal radio. Listening to games on the radio was so nice because you could let your mind imagine what the stadium and the players looked like. Besides that, the Yankees radio announcer was Mel Allen, who was an exciting radio personality himself.
Another goal was to collect a complete set of all the baseball cards for the entire year. Each card had a number on it, and you could keep trading until you got every numbered card in order.
I collected cards during the 1950, 51, 52 seasons.
There were two ways of getting your favorite baseball cards. One way was to buy more baseball cards. You could buy them at grocery stores and drug stores. I think a package cost a nickel. At that time, each card was wrapped in paper and came with a stick of gum and a card. So you chewed the gum while reading both sides of the card about the player.
The other way was to trade cards with other guys. This became a very enjoyable past time. First, there was the thrill of opening up the card to see who was on the card. Second, it was fun to use your negotiating skills in trading cards back-and-forth with other guys.
In my case, I was relentless in trading to get cards of my favorite players. This included my 1951 baseball card of Yogi Berra, famous catcher for the New York Yankees. I think I gave up three or four good cards to get Yogi.
After I went off to college, I came home and found that my mother had thrown away my baseball cards. That was horrible. However, I had cleverly hidden my favorite cards in a different location which she did not find. Ha!
I still have some of my favorite baseball cards, such as Bob Feller, Mickey Mantle, and the 1951 New York Yankee team. I love to show them to a nephew of mine, who is also a baseball card fan.
I am glad to know that the tradition of collecting baseball cards continues today. There are commercial card shops. There are card shops that buy and sell baseball cards in most cities. Some cards have become extremely valuable and are worth thousands of dollars. There are even books published that estimate the value of certain cards.
Baseball cards are still a lucrative business. Unbelievable! Some card fans attend estate sales to discover old baseball cards that have a high value, stuffed into shoeboxes.
Editor’s Note: Online browsing found vintage 1951 baseball cards for sale, ranging in price from $1.75 to $19,561.00.
Great story, Dan. You triggered memories for me. I had three sons, two of which were collectors. The oldest collected the entire set of Spiderman, baseball cards, and animal skulls from the vast under developed fields of Texas. He had a few cat skulls, but his prized piece was a javelina skull. When we lived in LaJolla, the boys played for hours in the canyons. Besides bones, the oldest, JT, collected rocks. He removed clothes from a drawer and put the lumps of rocks in that safe place. (We moved across country, and I had the packers wrap each rock in paper and box them for the move. The packer said, “Hey lady, these are not special. They are just old everyday rocks.” He went ahead and wrapped each rock. I always saved collections for the children. —In later years when they made their own homes I wrapped up collections and toys for their Christmas presents. The Javelina skull was beautifully wrapped in sparkling paper and a fancy silk bow—suggesting something valuable.. Christmas day, JT unwrapped the skull and explained his joy of searching for bones to his very engaged children. It is great to collect things, and equally fun to receive them from parents.