Which player was your father a fan of?

[bn2cardz]

I know this won't be true for everyone, but I am sure there is a good number of us that got the hobby bug from our fathers.

So who was your father's collecting focus? My father stopped collecting years ago, but he collected Tony Gwynn.

He grew up in NE so he didn't really have a team. He had ball cards from prior to Tony's career, but when he was in the Navy he was stationed in San Diego. It was there he became a Padres fan. By the time I was 6 he had moved us to his home state of NE, but the fandom remained.

I remember when Gwynn came to a local signing at a supermarket in our town. My dad took all of us and it was a family outing to meet Gwynn and get his auto. My dad kept all of our (my siblings and mine) autos on display in his room and he provided them to me to hold in my late teens early 20s. I still have my siblings' items.

I never collected Gwynn purposely myself. Actually I had nearly no Gwynn items. That is because anything Gwynn I got I gave to my father for a birthday or Christmas gift. I did get into collecting Cal Ripken myself. I recall that I once took one of my "higher end" (higher end for me at that time meant it was worth $20) Ripken cards and traded it with a local dealer to get my dad a Gwynn card.

What was really great is that both of our collecting interests got inducted in the HOF together. So we took a road trip that year and visited Cooperstown for the only time in our lives that year (not actually induction weekend) and got to see all the tributes for both of our guys together.

I have most of his collection now. He does still have some in their basement, but he pretty much is done. I do see the joy of the hobby come back when I talk about my collection with him, but he doesn't do it anymore.