Senior Living

Parents and grandparents need to teach children to collect things the right way.

Growing up in the 1960s I had two collections: matchbox cars and baseball cards.

My 1st Matchbox car came when my dad returned home from a trip to England.

He gave me a red double-decker bus that came in a perfect little box.

From then on, my favorite presents were little cars, trucks and tractors in these neat little boxes.

Did I save any of those little boxes? Absolutely not.

I tore them open to get to the car.

I just saw a vintage Matchbox car with the box on Ebay for $81 and a bid of $25 for just a Matchbox box with no car.

Lesson #1: Save the boxes.

I have a GI Joe from about 1965 with the original box and a $2.65 price tag on it.

Then there were baseball cards. I really didn’t care about the cards that much, I just wanted the chewing gum.

I managed to keep about 100 baseball cards in a box and later realized I had Willie Mays, Frank Robinson, and Whitey Ford in my pile. But you can guess where most of my cards went –to my bicycle spokes with clothespins so I could make a racket when I rode.

Some of those cards in mint condition could have been worth thousands of dollars today.

But the worst tragedy of all was when I was living in Dayton, Ohio, at the age of 7 in 1963. My grandmother who lived in Sumter gave me a baseball signed by a pro-ball player who lived down the street.

I was just happy to have a baseball to play catch with.

To this day I wonder what happened to my Bobby Richardson autographed baseball.

Lesson #2: Learn how to think further ahead for your kids.

Job 9:25 says, “My days are swifter than a runner!” (Especially a 2nd baseman for the NY Yankees.)