A visit with my wife's grandparents.

This past weekend, my wife and I drove to Northern Virginia to visit her grandparents since we didn't see them at Christmas.  Getting to spend time with her grandfather is something I greatly look forward to because I never had a grandfather myself.   Their house is incredibly full of history, as they are both major travelers and collectors of seemingly everything.  He has already given me most of his antique tool collection, some which I will post on here, as I have with one Stanley level so far.  Well, this time, he bestowed another collection on me, though this one is not as old as the tool collection:













This is just a start.  He's got boxes and boxes of these.  There are a few notable issues in there, such as the 35th Anniversary Issue in the front, the Girls of the Big East Issue, the Barbi Twins Issue and the Bo Derek "10" Issue (this is very timely with Night Owl's recent post titled "10").  Most of these are from the '80s, so it's not exactly a valuable collection.  Since I was born in the '80s, some of these are just plain weird, such as the ones with Suzanne Sommers, who I will always see as Carol Lambert from Step by Step. The articles are interesting (yes, there are, in fact, articles) because of all the political, technological, etc. references from the '80s.  The interviews are pretty cool though, featuring some of the great '80s baseball, basketball, and football players.  The jokes section is a little hit or miss, though, seeing as how many of the common words used back then don't seem to exist anymore.  As weird as it sounds, if you have a particular issue you've been looking for all these years, and I have it...perhaps we could trade?  I don't really plan on keeping these very long. 

Anyway, enough about that.  I was looking around their house/museum and saw a closet door with a sweet pennant on it:

As with most things, I asked him where he got it.  Of course, he picked it up at a Milwaukee Braves game back in the '50s.  He asked if was interested in having it, to which I replied a big yes.  He said, "Well, I'm not dead yet, but I'll write it down that you get anything I have related to sports."  Now, he doesn't have a ton of sports memorabilia sitting around, so it wasn't like he was giving me this massive treasure trove of items, but the pennant is absolutely awesome, so I was stoked.  Then, this conversation happened:

Grandpa: "It's a shame I don't have any of those baseball cards I used to get in packs of gum back in the '30s, it's amazing what those are worth now.  We used to play with them and beat them up pretty well, and eventually they just got tossed, I guess."

Me: "Yeah, I'm always fascinated when I find people on the internet who are showing off their old cards. Some of them even have the old tobacco cards from 1909 and 1910 and older."

Grandpa: "Oh really? What brands?"

Me: "Well, like the old Allen and Ginter, American Tobacco, and all those brands."

Grandpa: "Oh, I have a whole box of those up in the attic."

...this is about the time that I need a change of underwear.

Me: "Really?!?! Are you serious?!?!"

Grandpa: "Yeah, I collected everything."

I don't want to get your hopes up, so I'll make this quick.  I spent the next 2-ish hours up in the attic digging through box after box, trunk after trunk of old stuff.  I came out empty handed.  But, we have made plans to return and help them completely empty the attic to help them see what all they have up there.  It was a very interesting trip into the attic nonetheless.  There were a couple of old trunks up there, including his father's trunk from WWI.  I opened, and there were a few dozen old wax cylinder records.  If you don't know what those are, read here.  There were tons of old maps, stamps, coins, photos, magazines, etc.  Everything you can imagine collecting, I'm pretty sure there was some of it up there.  I can't wait to go back.  I'm holding out hope that we will actually find the tobacco cards.  Who knows, maybe a T206 Honus Wagner is in my future?