A few stories and shoutouts to hobby greats of the 1970s represented by old checks plus random ramblings

I am kind of amazed at how active I was so young. It’s easy to forget because so many years have gone by, but these old bank records and canceled checks are great reminders. In no particular order:

Mike Aronstein

What I’m doing wrong Mike Aronstein a check for in 1974…I have no idea! What can one get for $7 anyway? Well, in 1974, a lot by today’s standards! This could have been for a purchase of cards…a convention table…a lot in the Yankee Stadium auction (I’m not sure exactly when this was but several collectors including Mike had an auction of Yankee Stadium memorabilia, including all kinds of fascinating paper items, when the stadium was being refurbished around this time). Who knows. 
 
Mike Aronstein was one of the giants of the collecting world at this time (and for decades after). I was a 12 year old kid that had infinite enthusiasm for learning and collecting, infinite persistence, and, due to my young age, was still in the early stages of learning what was OK in the adult world and when I was just being a pain in the butt. (Yes, I know, I’m still learning! But back then I was really clueless!) 
 
When Mike’s son Andrew Aronstein joined the HIGHLY respected (and very much worthy of this respect) Love Of The Game Auctions full time, I sent him this business card his father gave me (see below) and this letter which I provide here as it really captures my longstanding admiration for his father. Mike…thanks for putting up with me even though I KNOW I really was a pain in the butt! 

Bruce Yeko

What can I say? Bruce Yeko’s mail order catalog was the greatest source of cards in the UNIVERSE that one could always count on. Especially for a young kid who with few exceptions could only deal with people by mail (12 year olds don’t drive). It seemed like Bruce Yeko's Wholesale Card Company had everything from the early 1950s up, plus some earlier cards including from the 1910s and 1930s (even though that was not the focus of the catalog and I did not get the impression that quantities of earlier cards were available), and perhaps most amazing, a smattering of extremely unusual sets and issues that it seemed like ONLY Bruce Yeko had.

Apparently, when certain issues came out, Bruce was the only one to get quantities. I remember asking him about a couple of issues. He said he contacted the card issuing companies and bought their entire leftover card stock. This made sense for everyone. These were the most exciting offerings to me. Sets of 1958 Hires Root Beer cards ($19.95 a set), seemingly endless quantities of 1954 Red Heart Dog Food cards (Mantles were a quarter as I recall, but were eventually raised to a $1. All were MINT. He had HUNDREDS), Bazooka sets in flattened unassembled box form, 1967 Topps "Roger Maris with the Yankees" unissued proof cards (these were $1 each and he would only let me buy one per order as he had so few; eventually I would call before sending orders to make sure he had one available and it was OK for me to include a Maris proof card with my order), 1960 Topps “Baseball Bucks” (I never saw anyone else with this unusual Topps issue and was fascinated with it! Apparently I was the only one at this time that was so enamored. Eventually he let me buy them all. I forget if they were 5 cents or 10 cents each. But they were something like that.), dozens of 1963 Topps insert sticker sets…And many other unusual 1950s to 1970s issues including and especially rare Topps test and insert issues.
 
Interesting note that anyone still around who ordered from Bruce Yeko will appreciate: when he didn’t have whatever you ordered, you did not actually get a refund. You got a little slip of paper that he filled out that could be sent in for a credit toward a future order. I would get these with every order: sometimes filled out for as little as 25 cents, sometimes $1. It was peanuts. I personally just never sent them in. But was always amused by his credit slip system. 

Ted Hake:

I don’t know what I bought from Ted for $28 in 1977 (it was probably a baseball auction lot) but this was far from our first deal. This is a random check. I have others earlier. The Hake catalog addressed to me above is from 1973.

After 50 years…I’m STILL buying items from Ted Hake regularly! For those who do not know Ted, because his primary areas of dealing for so many years were areas other than baseball (such as political memorabilia, character collectibles, radio premiums, pinback buttons, etc), Ted is well known as the "King of Pinback Buttons" and is one one the true Hall of Famers of Political Memorabilia collecting. He has also been involved in a big way in collectibles of many other types Basically…EVERYTHING! Everything Americana anyway. He has published many important collecting reference books and been an active dealer and auctioneer…longer than anyone. Really. Ted is on my Mount Rushmore of Americana Collectibles scholars and dealers. I have to say that my great interest in many areas of Americana has been greatly influenced by my exposure to Ted’s auctions dating back to the early 1970s. I was looking to bid on baseball items, of course, but Ted didn’t have a lot of baseball items in the early days (he has much more today). In the process, I was exposed to pinback collecting, political collecting, early comic characters, and, frankly, just about every area of Americana collecting that exists. It had a huge impact. Both on my future collecting and dealing interests, and my knowledge of (and interest in) American culture in general. Ted Hake’s catalogs were like a correspondence course in Popular Culture! A subscription was just a few dollars but I learned more about the world reading all his early catalogs than I did at school (I really mean that!)
 
There were several other auctions that were similarly eclectic and educational with which I was very active as a bidder. Most notably, off the top of my head, George Rinsland’s Historicana auctions and Bob Coup’s Americana auctions.

George Rinsland ran one of the earliest auctions of its type (starting in 1965 continuously through 1983) and influenced all similarly eclectic auctions that  followed. The 1969 catalog pictured above (addressed to a pioneer collector Ted Colzaretti) is before my time, but only by a few years, When I first saw George’s auction catalog, it was like looking through a window into a world I never knew existed. Overwhelming. Fascinating. So much to learn. Both by reading the text and looking at the pictures. Nothing was out of reach to buy or sell. Baseball cards were my specialty, but just being aware of other areas, what manufacturing processes were available when, and American history that gave context to cards and when they were issued had great value. George Rinsland’s auction catalogs were probably the first of this type I ever saw. 

Bob Coup was also a true LEGEND in the political, pinback. and all Americana collectibles fields. I don't have a check illustration handy but no discussion of important Americana auctions would be complete without Bob Coup. I always called Bob “my top rare button finder.” Bob Coup’s Americana auctions in the 1970s and 1980s were a gift to collectors and scholars. Bob was one of the pillars of the collecting world. He passed way in 2024 and his wife Jeannine still edits and publishes the Political Bandwagon for the APIC, the premier political memorabilia collectors organization. Bob’s memory looms large over the collectibles world he helped build. 

Collectors and dealers represented by the 1970s bank records I found are a “Who’s Who” of active hobbyists of the era.  Here are just a few checks that jumped out as I looked through batches of old checks. There's no rhyme or reason for their order or why I picked these. There are many more and I will add more in future posts.

Don Lepore
Don Lepore (“Looking For That Superstar, Try L & R”), one of the most influential and beloved dealers from the 1970s on, Don practically invented the superstar card market in the 1970s with his partner Herb Ross, went on to run the Card Collectors Company in its heyday as the hobby exploded in popularity, ran his own mail order catalog, ran shows and autograph signings, worked extensively on the famous Halper auction at Sothebys, worked at Mastro Auctions for a couple of years, and too much else to possibly list. He basically influenced everything that the hobby is today in some way or another. In fact, he’s still out there! A little older but as great and knowledgeable as ever, selling on eBay. With this particular check, I appear to be buying ten W560 strip cards of Ruth and Gehrig. 

George Lyons
George Lyons was crazy. I say that only in a kidding way. He had an incredibly fascinating and entertaining personality and was very outspoken. I was so young I didn’t really know how adults were expected to conduct themselves in all situations but even I realized right away that George was unusual. Not in a bad way. Just very different. Aggressive. Loud. Frequently joking but not everyone always knew he was joking. Writing articles in hobby papers. Feuding with people. Often criticizing some collectors and dealers. Being outrageous in a way that took people by surprise. Even joking about people’s weight problems, or really anything that one would think is off limits, when these just weren’t things that adults were supposed to do. I should add that he had great comedic timing and much of the time he was just trying to be funny. Which he was. He made some people laugh. He made some people mad. He was like an out-of-control baseball-card-dealing Groucho Marx with too much coffee that somehow had an office and a phone. He had strong opinions about everything and was not shy about sharing. Sometimes he was right. Sometimes he was wrong. But he was always stirring the pot.

As a dealer, he bought and sold everything that was not nailed down. In the 1970s through the 1980s he was a big fish in a small pond, specializing in everything rare and unusual. Everyone knew George Lyons. He was actually a stockbroker but I really don’t know how he had time to do anything with stocks. He was on the phone talking baseball collecting, buying and selling all the time. Seriously, his stock brokerage office at a prestigious firm was really a baseball card and memorabilia dealership. It was like he snuck in there and no one knew what he was doing. My guess is his clients did a lot of buying and holding. Which was not a bad strategy. And as far as the hobby went, George did seem to have a lot of fun. Interesting phone note: as I recall, his workplace had a “Watts line,” which was some type of phone service some businesses in the "old days" had whereby he could make unlimited long distance calls at work and not be charged. Eventually he somehow switched to dealing in rings and jerseys, areas having nothing to do with cards and ephemera, but for quite a few years George was one of the most prominent and influential high profile baseball dealers in the country.

Above: George and his family appeared on the cover of this prestigious magazine in 1978 (Mrs. Lyons was a saint by the way, and the kids were all extremely sharp and gifted. I'm sure all grew up to be great and very successful adults).  

Crazy phone footnote: George knew my basic school schedule and knew approximately when the bus let me off near home (because naturally there had to be some school bus schedule). At some point George started calling my home precisely when I entered the house, so as I stepped inside the phone would be ringing and I’d pick up (the phone was a just two steps from the back door where I entered), and there would be George, welcoming me home from school and wanting to know what I had to sell or sometimes offering me something. Of course, I thought this was nuts. And so did my family. But that was George (and really, who was I to tell anyone their calling at any time was crazy. I was the KING of calling people at crazy times, just not timing their arrival home. (Except maybe calling Charlie Burkhardt on Sundays; sometimes I just couldn’t wait for him to get home from the Renninger’s Antique Market and this required multiple phone calls until he arrived home, often with great new finds to sell).

Doug Palmeiri
One of many super knowledgeable advanced collectors of the era, Doug is also still out there somewhere collecting today! It was the sincere interest of hobbyists like Doug that created a community of advanced collectors interested in early baseball - everything from cabinet card photos to sheet musics to programs and advertising items - everything that was great but not necessarily cards. The entire area of baseball ephemera came into its own in the 1970s as collectors together learned what existed, what was interesting to collect, and what had historical merit, much of which was not really on the radar of collectors previously. Every early baseball item that surfaced was a learning experience in these early days, unlike today where most everything that exists has been documented. Those interested in turn-of-the century baseball or earlier, communicated among themselves not through auctions at this time, but by networking and at shows. No one knew what memorabilia was worth in these early days. Everyone was “driving blind!” Everything good that was available for sale tended to gravitate to Barry Halper (no one had deeper pockets and loved to buy everything more than Barry), but many true collectors like Doug and Franklin Steele (of Perez-Steele fame) and Jerry Smolin (THE connoisseur of early baseball programs, especially pre-1900) and Dr. Mark Cooper (the undisputed "King of Baseball Board Games") sold only extra material or enough to pay for new purchases. These were exciting times for collectors. With enthusiasm and with dedication one could “beat the bushes” and make new discoveries on a regular basis, buying, selling, and, for many, at the same time building a collection.

I have often mentioned how my phone bills calling collectors and looking for material were astronomical. The phone was my tool. It was my connection to the outside world and no one that could be reached by phone was out of reach to me. And remember, I couldn’t drive. I HAD to use the phone. Which in retrospect was a great advantage. Instead of only the surrounding driving area being accessible, the entire county (and Canada!) was “my neighborhood.” Back then, calling "Information" allowed you to find the telephone numbers of most people. When you called, you were put on the phone with a telephone company information operator who did their best to help me find the numbers of various old time collectors (or whoever I wanted to track down to speak to) armed with the information I had. It was expensive, but very successful. Callers were supposed to get three searches per call, but many times the operator really worked with me and provided the equivalent of many more. If I was looking for someone with an uncommon name, and there were 3, or 4, or 5 possible matches, they would give me all the numbers and count that inquiry as one search. (I would then call them all if need be and almost always be successful reaching the right number).  
 
 
Above is a check for a phone bill payment I found (reimbursing my Dad for that month’s typical astronomical phone bill): $277 for October 1975. That sounds like a lot for a phone bill even today (and this is just for long distance phone calls, not also paying for a phone), but imagine how much that was 50 years ago. It was crazy. To put this bill in proper perspective, a $277 bill in 1975 was the equivalent to $1684 in 2025 dollars, just adjusting for inflation. (The calculation is based on average annual inflation of 3.68% over this period). I don’t think anyone in the baseball collecting world racked up phone bills close to what I did (and did every month, year in, year out). The biggest bill I remember was $787 in the 8th grade. Even I was shocked. But that was the cost of doing business and it my only big monthly expense. Still…At times my parents were a little concerned. The phone was under their name and they weren’t going to pay my phone bills! But that was never an issue. The more calls I made, the better I did.    

More checks:

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Jay Barry
This $28 check to Jay Barry was for five WG1 1888 playing cards. In 1979, that’s all they were worth! 19th century cards were of very little interest to most collectors in this era, and those that were interested were not big spenders. This was great for me as I was happy to pay pretty much whatever anyone wanted for nineteenth century cards and items! So when people had things to sell, they often sought me out, not so much to help me out (though many were happy to do exactly that), but because I was always willing to pay a fair or even too high price.

Jay Barry had a permanent 5:00 shadow and, as George Lyons liked to say, the appearance of a sad clown. Not saying that’s really accurate but after an exhausting weekend of running a show he did sort of look like a little like the Brooklyn Dodgers clown Emmet Kelly. (In addition to being a HUGE collector, Jay was involved in promoting the greatest show of the Midwest in Detroit.It was sort of like the unofficial National Convention before there was a formal National Convention.) In the span of just a few years, Jay assembled one of the hobby’s most advanced card collections. It was a shock when out of the blue I learned he sold his entire collection in one transaction. Things like that just didn’t happen in the hobby. Jay Barry was a true and extremely dedicated collector with a ravenous appetite for cards. My understanding, what I overheard in hushed tones, was that he sold his collection for $25,000 to buy a house. 
 

Bert Sugar, the famous “Boxing Guy” 

Bert Sugar was really a great guy who could tell a story like no one else (and some of his stories were actually true!) I was lucky to know him well for over 35 years and count Bert as one of (maybe the) most colorful characters I have ever known. 
 
In the 1970s I served as one of the Senior Editors of the Sports Collectors Bible (which was just one of Bert’s countless book projects). This was very exciting to me to help with such an important project (after all, what was more important than baseball cards). Today with the Internet, we take so much for granted as far as checklists and values, but back then (in the mid-to-late 1970s) it was really hard to get a handle on what even existed, let alone what it was worth. Bert Sugar saw this void and created The Sports Collectors Bible, which really helped collectors, providing a much richer foundation of knowledge than had existed before, and promoted the entire field. 
  
Bert was a visionary. He was one of the most important figures of his day not only in the baseball collectibles field, but in many other fields as well. He was really one of the pioneers and great promoters of the entire nostalgia craze in America. 
 
Bert was was an advanced collector of pinback buttons, political campaign memorabilia, and autographs. This, of course, is in addition to... boxing memorabilia, Babe Ruth items, Yankee Stadium items (he famously bought all the "junk" from Yankee Stadium in the early 1970s), press pins, baseball cards, and really just about every kind of item that collectors have come to appreciate over the years as Americana. I had the privilege of having countless dealings with him over the years. I think more than anyone else. I was his “go-to guy” whenever he wanted to downsize his massive collection. Because I was always up for buying whatever he had. I had learned that everything he collected was special in some way, even if I didn’t know anything about the items when he offered them to me. He never steered me wrong and buying from him always came with an added bonus: an education. 
 
Bert had a great sense of humor about himself, and when I’d point out how he knew everything, he would always respond that he made up what he didn’t know. But the scope of his knowledge and experience was truly remarkable, and hearing him speak was mesmerizing. He had a way with words. He could write a book faster than I could read one. Just being around him one could not help but learn about the world of collectibles and American culture. He was a genius. And endlessly entertaining. Everyone that ever dealt with Bert got more than a deal. They got stories. They got jokes. They learned ideas. They even learned words!
  
In addition to all our baseball dealings, which were many and always fun (everything was fun with Bert), he personally got me started with collecting pinbacks and political campaign items as he decided to downsize in those areas. I am active in both of these areas to this day. As I told Bert often, I have him to thank for expanding my interests. He had the same enormous impact on thousands of others. 
 
 

Goodie Goldfadden
 
If you look up the word “Curmudgeon” in the dictionary, you will find a picture of legendary early dealer Goodwin “Goodie” Goldfadden pictured. This guy was a piece of work. Hated kids! Ok…he didn’t really hate kids….but he pretty much made everyone feel like they were bothering the heck out of him. W.C. Fields had nothing on Goodie Goldfadden!

I almost felt sorry for the local collectors who actually went to his store in person and got shooed away…or worse, stayed and felt like they were overstaying their welcome before both feet were even in the store. This was all part of his glorious charm…but did make dealing with him extra challenging. He did, at one time or another, apparently have just about everything. I was dealing with him just on the phone and while that gave me some disadvantages of course (the shop was 3000 miles away in California), I was able to get his undivided attention on the phone and managed to have a number of successful dealings. I considered every deal practically a miracle. He definitely preferred to deal with adults. But if he wasn't busy he was willing to let me spend what I could on whatever it was he described on the phone. Remember, there’s no Internet back in the 1970s. I had to buy items basically sight unseen! Sure, I could have returned something if I didn’t like it, I guess, but that’s not how things really worked and that would have probably been my last deal with him. He wasn’t exactly thrilled to even pack up items to send to a kid in the first place! 

One interesting group of items he offered me that I did NOT buy has never been mentioned in print anywhere and deserves documenting somewhere. This seems like as good a place as any. On the phone Goodie Goldfadden offered me the complete file of 1910 era contracts signed by boxers giving their permission to appear on boxing cards issued by The American Tobacco Company. I think there were sixty or seventy contracts (I cant remember the exact number) and they were for the T218 and related sets. Incredibly, I had absolutely no interest in them because I didn't deal in boxing and boxing just wasn't worth anything at this time. Well, almost nothing. I remember being excited about the prospect of getting tobacco card contracts for baseball players (where there's one file of contracts from the tobacco company, I naturally thought, maybe there are more). But Goodie made clear that NO, this was all he had. I never forgot about him offering me these contracts, all of which he said were signed. As years rolled by I thought "wow, they weren't baseball, but they sure did sound neat." And as more years went by, they got better and better. I always thought they would turn up somewhere and I would say "There they are! Those are the boxing tobacco card contracts Goodie Goldfadden offered me!" But they never did show up. I am certain that he had them. If he offered me anything that he said he was holding in his hands, of course he had it. They are out there somewhere. 

Frank Stallone (sticking with the boxing theme here a little...)

Here’s a check with a story that spans from 1977 to 2025! I met Frank Stallone at a convention in New Jersey in 1977 and sold him a stack of boxing cards (Frank loves boxing) and he gave me a check. The check bounced - and I should add that it was probably my fault in that I didn’t deposit the check right away. Looking at the date stamps on the check, for whatever reason (probably I misplaced it), I didn’t get around to depositing it for months. It was only $8 and just no big deal, but when I recently found the returned check in the pile of old bank records I am using here, of course I remembered it. So just for fun, I looked up how to email Frank and sent him a letter good-naturedly complaining and a copy of his old check. He wrote back within hours and was extremely amused (as intended). He literally said that this made his day! A week later a replacement check and beautifully inscribed photo arrived in the mail. I don’t know if there’s any Guinness world record to submit here, but I thought this was a fun story to share. So here is the replacement check and photo that arrived, which combined with his original 1977 check tell a great story. Thank you Frank Stallone! You are (as my Dad would say) a gentleman and a scholar! 

Advertising in magazines and newspapers for cards:

 In addition to phone calls and the mails and any time I could rope my mom or dad (or even my grandmother - I had no shame!) into driving me somewhere, I placed ads in newspapers and magazines all over the country seeking to buy old baseball cards. What better way to have people contact me with cards to sell? Some ads did great, some got no response. I tried to use reason to decide where to advertise as the options were endless and it was just such a pain to jump through all the hoops to place ads. Also, I was impatient. Once I placed  an ad, if it was a magazine, it could be  two or three months between when I sent the ad in, and when readers saw it. I placed ads in Canada to get 1952 Topps high numbers because I realized they were sold in quantities there. I advertised in local papers of cities where certain regional sets were issued. If I found a reasonably priced national publication, I’d try that. There were quite a few. I looked at circulations and cost and geography and make the best decisions I could. This was enormously successful. People actually read ads in newspapers and magazines back then, cards were worth enough that I could pay real money that made selling very interesting to many, and I was the only one advertising to buy old cards in these publications. Though any specific ad was hit or miss. I even advertised in the famous “Yellow Pages” telephone book. The delay for the Yellow Pages was incredibly long because they only published once a year. They were very expensive but I thought it would be worth it as Yellow Pages books were in every household and had a very long lifespan. In our house, we kept the same old Yellow Pages books for countless years. Most numbers didn’t change and most businesses remained in business. Unfortunately, the Yellow Pages turned out to be a terrible mistake. For whatever reason, every single call from this ad was worthless. And there were a lot of them. I didn’t advertise there again and couldn’t wait for the ad to become obsolete and stop generating junk calls. But…this took years! The calls eventually petered off but the Yellow Pages really did have a long lifespan. I would get calls for years. None of them with interesting cards to sell. Not even close. Ever. But, like with Thomas Edison and his lightbulb filament research, I still considered it a success. I learned what did not work! And concentrated my advertising efforts on what did work. 

This last story for this post does have a check to represent it. But this check above made me think of it. 
 
By the late 1970s, The Sports Collectors Digest was THE publication for buying and selling. This publication was the lifeblood of the hobby. It allowed collectors to network, gave dealers a timely publication in which to advertise, and was teeming with offers to buy and sell vintage material. It came out every two weeks, and there were so many ads that eventually it had to go to a weekly schedule. The hobby was on fire! And SCD was huge part of this explosive growth. The day SCD arrived in the mail was a big deal for anyone interested in vintage cards. Both dealers and collectors. Competition was fierce as most subscribers received their issue on the same day, or within a day or so, depending on the quirks of the mail system and how far they lived from Iola, Wisconsin where SCD was located. Every time there was a special deal to be had - which was often - collectors and dealers knew there was 50/50 they were going to be too late. 
 
I had been advertising in newspapers all over the place to unearth cards so it was a natural extension that I came up with the idea of advertising in Iola to find someone who, in exchange for compensation, would pick up a copy of SCD for me on the very day it was published (copies were available if you were right there, and all the more easily if you worked at SCD) and overnight the just-published issue to me so that I would have it days before anyone else. Someone from the area called in response to the ad and said they could absolutely do this but I would have to send them payment - in cash - in advance. And they wouldn’t even give me their name. Apparently (I'm just guessing) they worked at SCD, or at the printer in Iola, and while they always had the issue right away, they didn’t want anyone to know they were doing this out of concern it could somehow cause them problems. I don’t remember what I paid for each issue, but i think it was probably something like $20 or $25 over the postage cost for overnight delivery.

I sent the money as requested for numerous issues in advance - to a PO Box, and before I knew it, I was getting SCD like lightning, receiving it literally the very day after it was printed, waaaay before anyone else. I immediately “devoured” all the pages and called on every great deal or super important item that was advertised, easily beating all competitors to any ad where time was a factor. This went on week after week for months. Every advanced collector and dealer who received their SCD and made a call to buy a great deal or a pursue a sensational item was too late. Over and over again they heard the words “I’m sorry that’s gone. I sold (or traded) it to Rob Lifson two days ago.”  No one knew what the heck was going on or how I was doing it. Eventually SCD started getting complaints. It was bad enough that people closer to Iola often got their issues a day or so earlier than subscribers on the coasts. That all alone sometimes caused general complaints. But this was next level.  I can only imagine the discussions they had trying to address the delivery issues. They finally figured it out of course . It’s not like there were a million explanations. I have no idea if they knew who was my overnight mailing contact. I know I didn’t! To this day I have no idea who this person was. Because issues were readily available in town, there was no way to close this overnight delivery loophole. It was all perfectly legal, just a little crazy. The solution they finally came up with was to formally introduce the option of overnight delivery for all subscribers if they wanted to pay for it. The purpose was to level the playing field which it absolutely did (overnight!) and it ended the ridiculous advantage I had for a few months over everybody else in the county. That was fine by me. All in a day’s “work.” I had a good run! 
 
So that’s how SCD came to offer overnight delivery, which became a VERY popular option among extremely active collectors and dealers. I remember speaking with one of the most high ranking SCD employees about this after the change was instituted. I was fascinated by the developments. He indicated it was a real problem for a while because SCD  always wanted to be over-and-above fair to all and make everyone happy, and the complaints about unfairness had merit. But that they appreciated my industriousness. 
 
That’s it for this post. More in the future. I hope you have enjoyed these admittedly pretty random early hobby stories as much as I have enjoyed writing them! 
 
Robert Lifson