Stashing Stosh: Forced Into a Life of Crime

Although I have no recollection of buying or opening them, this is the first pack of cards I ever opened, at age 7:

Violent Beginnings: It looks like a Golden Seal has gone ham,
on the wrapper of my very first card-pack purchase.

[The first set of cards I ever loved was 1976 Topps baseball; I memorized the look of the players, positions, teams, even trivia from the card backs. The summer of 1976 is when I first began to fall in love with sports.]

Yet 1975-76 Topps Hockey had a prominent place in my collection. I don't know why I would have bought hockey cards, and at that age if I had a choice I would have purchased basketball cards to collect that winter (1975-76 Topps Basketball is my all-time favorite basketball card design, to be sure). But, Hockey it was.

Although I don't consider it a great all-around design, 1975-76 Topps Hockey remains a sentimental favorite. I didn't devour the cards as I did 1976 Baseball, but still I studied them closely (a hockey player named Yves? or Guy? or Carol? California Golden Seals?).

This introduction, explaining all the reasons why I shouldn't have had 1975-76 Topps Hockey as my very first card collection, spills into how desperate I was to keep at least one of those cards.

Stashing Stosh: The card that drove me to crime.

I was in 1st grade, and we were allowed to bring toys from home for free play time. Some of us kids, caught up in the spirit of card collecting, took a pass on kickball for a few days and brought in our card stacks.

I found myself pulled into some sort of speed trading game with a couple of other kids; we'd both lay down a card from our stacks, and the more wizened pair of kids trading against me would shout out "take it!" or "no!"

Well, I could tell pretty quickly I was sort of getting ripped off, but I was just a kid, intimidated by the whole process. The trading game ended, and in the process this dastardly pair made off with all of my "best" cards (by "best" I imagine that meant All-Stars and Stanley Cup cards, while I was busy accumulating all the Yves and Guys and Carols and Golden Seals I could), including my 1975-76 Stan Mikita (with just a vague notion of the Blackhawks, all I had to do was flip the card over and see he'd played 17 seasons by then, so I knew Mikita was a special card).

Later, I somehow went back to that kid's cards—thank goodness for frequent childhood naps or bathroom breaks!—and snatched back my Mikita. I couldn't keep it in my desk, of course, and in first grade, there were no substantive folders or books.

So I did what any panicked young trade victim would: I hid it in my shoe. Yes, Stosh got stashed under my foot, in my shoe, for the rest of the day.

I don't think it retained mint condition.