It was a dark and stormy night.
It was an ebony and tempestuous eve.
I first met Dr. James Beckett, of Beckett sportscard Guides fame, in the 70s, long before he became a publishing mogul, when my parents used to take me to sportscards conventions in the Texas Metroplex area. I'm not sure about this, but I believe he sold baseball cards to help pay for his college expenses - and what a collection of choice old baseball cards he had!
Jim and I spoke only little because I was too busy thumbing through his cards, but he seemed real nice and was, I'm sure, glad to have me as a steady baseball cards buyer.
Another encounter . . . Years later I was watching the Family Feud gameshow, and one of the competing families was the Beckett family from, I think, Detroit. As the emcee introduced the family, there was a "Jim" Beckett among them; I thought: "Could that be the Jim Beckett I knew in Texas and who must now have relocated to Detroit?" Sure enough, his family members egged on the emcee to ask Jim what his hobby was, and Jim said that he collected baseball cards.
It's a small world. Those were the good old days for a kid at a card show, with maybe twenty bucks to invest, and parents who encouraged his obsession.
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