When you were a kid, what was the oldest baseball card that you had ever seen? Not the oldest that you ever spotted in a book or a magazine, but the oldest you had held in your hands, whether it was card you owned or not? For me, it was a 1971 Topps Manny Mota. Not the one pictured here. This is a lovely updated model. The one that I saw was literally lying in the gutter. I was walking home from school one day and I saw it crumpled along the road side, trembling, injured badly. I picked it up gently. It was in terrible shape. Creases and folds everywhere. Parts torn off of it. I took it home, and bandaged it in Scotch tape, but I could do nothing for the gaping hole in Mota's midsection. So I just slapped some more tape on it and hoped for the best. That Mota card survived, and it lasted a long time in its shoebox home before I bought this new one. Back then, to me, the 1971 Topps set was the most ancient set I ever knew. It was so OLD. Only my friends' older (and meaner) brot...
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