Back In The Day

One of the kids I see at work is a huge baseball and basketball card collector. I lost a bet to him a few months back over the first Spurs/Timberwolves game of the year. As a result, instead of doing work, for two straight appointments he got to look at my baseball card collection.

I had to dig the cards out of the basement, but I found them. I have a couple Barry Bonds rookie cards and Mark McGwire's card from his first year on the A's (the 1988 US Olympic team card set is where to find McGwire's rookie card). What struck me was how much skinnier both Bonds and McGwire were back then. Make your own conclusions about steroids (I wouldn't be surprised either way), but both those guys are MUCH bigger now.

But I digress. I saw this same kid today and when I asked him what he did since I saw him last, he told me how he and his mom went to an antique show. Once there he found some unopened 1988 Topps packs for sale. What? Since when was 1988 considered an antique year? How freaking old am I getting? Over half those cards in the collection I showed this kid were from '88.

The kid then went on to tell me how these 1988 packs even had sticks of gum in them. Which leads to two thoughts:

1. That gum was nasty and hard back in 1988. Can you imagine it 16 years later?

2. The kid thought it was weird that each pack had gum in it. Well, it is weird now that I think about it, but when was a stick of nasty gum no longer standard in a pack of cards?