WEEKEND COLLECTOR: My Beatles

For all of you Beatles lovers, My Beatles is a wonderful site where the owner Jesse features his vast collections of Beatles records and collectibles. I enjoyed browsing through his memorabilia pages, finding lots of things that I once owned or coveted.

When I was a teen, I was a huge Beatles fan. The Beatles hit the US when I was 13, which was prime age for the insanity that surrounded the Fab Four. Although there have certainly been teen idols before and since, (think Frank Sinatra and Justin Bieber), nothing to my recollection could match the craziness that was Beatlemania. Not just teen magazines and concert frenzy, but mainstream media (covers of Life, Look, Time),  popular culture, and most especially the mainstream musical acceptance of the Beatles' musical brilliance. For some of us deeply saddened by the assassination of JFK, the Beatles made us happy again. Life was good! (And the Beatles were cute and charming too, unlike some of their more surly contemporaries). I'll never forget how much I loved their movie "A Hard Day's Night", and how, even after seeing it at least a half dozen times, I still laughed all the way through. I saw it recently again, after nearly 50 years, and I was surprised that I still remembered many of the lines. I had not thought of them all this time, they just rolled off my tongue!

Here are a few items from My Beatles, maybe they will make you smile too!

For your viewing pleasure, my layout about my own love of the Beatles (click on the image if you want to read what I wrote!)

THE WEEKEND COLLECTOR: Baseball Card Blog

I had two collections as a young person, that if I had today, would be worth a gazillion bucks. The first one was my Beatles collection. As a young teen in the '60s, I was nuts for the Beatles. I collected records (many of which I still do have), magazines, buttons, cards, dolls, and other miscellaneous treasures. What took my collection from ordinary to extraordinary (in my eyes), was that I had a pen pal from Scotland in those days, and she occasionally sent me Beatles stuff from the UK that were not available in the US. I put all of my treasures into an old suitcase. It was a cool 40s suitcase with a handle that looked like plastic amber. Awesome! I stashed the suitcase in the storage room in my garage, and wouldn't you know it, sometime when I was away at college, my Dad saw fit to pitch my future wealth in the trash. He never liked the Beatles, anyway. If the collection had been Tommy Dorsey or Benny Goodman, I'd still have that awesome suitcase today.

My other collection was baseball cards. I was the only girl I knew who collected baseball cards back in the early '60s.  I loved baseball. Especially the Dodgers. I bought bubblegum by the boxful to get those cards. I kept them in a shoebox in my closet, just like every other would-be baseball card collector, and like most of them, my Mom pitched them when I wasn't looking. I can still see those cards in my mind: Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Sandy Koufax, Willie Mays, Orlando Cepeda, Ted Kluzewski, Ron Perranoski, Ernie Banks....

My Sandy Koufax autographed card, just to show what a great Dodger fan I was!

I know almost every kid who collected baseball cards, lost those cards. If we all had our cards, then those who collect valuable and rare cards today wouldn't have anything valuable or rare. That's just how it is!

I found a fun blog today about baseball cards. It's actually written by three guys: Ben Henry, Mike Kenny, and Travis Peterson. They share their various baseball cards. Ho hum. But what makes their blog awesome is not the various photos of cards (which are after my time,  and during that 30 year period when I didn't pay a bit of attention to baseball). What makes it awesome is their hilarious writing. It's not even worth my time to pick lots of interesting card images to post here. You just have to read the blog to catch the flavor of their wit.

So, please visit the Baseball Card blog, and see what I mean!

Please read the blog entry about this card...then you'll see why I put my Sandy Koufax photo in.

Why is there a Jim Henson card? You can find out here.