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.

The First Day of the Rest of My Life

First Love: Who was looking up at me in that shoebox?
This guy.

It was the summer of 1976.

I'd discovered sports cards the previous winter, buying my first packs—curiously for a kid who neither played nor watched the sport at the time—of 1975-76 Topps Hockey.

I had bought maybe 20 or 30 packs of 1976 Topps Baseball, and was busy memorizing every nook and cranny of those cards. Gary Carter slugging the camera with his bat, Mike Hegan and Steve Garvey stretching with those funny hockey gloves, Pete Rose wearing his special glasses, Joe Morgan with his baseball helmet redder than any cherry candy I'd tasted.

All of them, from Vic Albury to Rennie Stennett, from Bobby Valentine to Pat Kelly, from Thurman Munson to Reggie Jackson, were delicious. I was in love.

But that summer, I received a gift, as valuable and enriching to me as a full set of encyclopedias.

Not Necessarily the Box: This is the best facsimile I could find that simulated
my gift. Of course, there were no plastic card guards in those days.
But in quite a coincidence, note the 1975 Bench in the top right corner!

It was a shoebox from the older boy who lived across the street from me in the tiny burg of Highwood, Illinois. Joe Picchietti. He had reached an age where cards weren't important to him any more, so hundreds of cards, issues I'd never knew existed, were stacked inside.

And I remember it clearly to this day: The first card looking up at me was a 1975 Johnny Bench.

I only remember some 1975s from the box, although there had to be other years. My first basketball cards, the delightful 1974-75 and 1975-76 issues, were in there, too. Perhaps some 1975 Football.

Joe's younger sister was apparently upset that he had given his cards to me, as she was a collector, too. So with a strong arm from my father, I gave around half of the cards to her.

But I kept that Johnny Bench. It's not my favorite card of all time, but it's one I'll never forget.