Somewhere around 30 years ago, I went to my parents' house while on summer break from college. My dad and one of my brothers took a trip to nearby Owego where my grandmother lived. She was in her 80s at the time and we were there to do some house chores for her. One day we drove over to the small downtown area for some shopping and ducked into a second-hand bookstore, which was easily the highlight of the trip for me. There were some oversized discount books for sale and one of them was the 35-year picture history of Topps cards in which every Topps card issued between 1951 and 1985 was displayed. This book was fascinating since the day I heard about it (I imagine any collector would be fascinated). I always wanted to own it. The book was 15 or 20 dollars, a good deal even then. But either I didn't have the money or didn't want to spend the money and so I walked away without it, even though the book was destined for me. As the years went on, that book ...
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