30 Day Baseball Card Challenge

Sunday, May 12, 2013

Mama Fuji Supported My Addiction

Mama Fuji is awesome!  She isn't perfect, but she's always tried her best to provide and support her children, husband, and grandchildren.

In terms of my cardboard addiction, she's has supported me since I was a kid and has never stopped.


In 1977, every time we'd shop at Dobashi's (a local Japanese grocery store), she would let me pick up a few packs of Topps Star Wars trading cards.


When we took a trip to Seattle in 1981, she bought me my first set of baseball cards:  1981 Fleer.


From 1982 to 1986, she would buy me packs of Topps, Fleer, and Donruss baseball cards after my little league games or whenever we'd go to Long's Drugs or the local pharmacy.


When I entered high school, she stopped buying me packs of cards on a regular basis.  But she never stopped encouraging me to collect.  My freshman year, she loaned me money as I made the transition from collector to investor.  I used that money to bust boxes and boxes of 1987 Topps in search of Mike Greenwell, Jose Canseco, and Will Clark.


To this day, she still supports me and my hobby by allowing me to store part of my collection at their home in Las Vegas.  And whenever I go down to visit, she makes sure to set aside at least a few hours to go with me to the local card shops... just like she did when I was a kid.

Seriously... I couldn't have asked for a better mother.

Happy Mother's Day and sayonara!

10 comments:

Greg Zakwin said...

always nice to have family support your hobby/passion!

Anonymous said...

that's pretty awesome to have your mom support your hobby like that. my mom was supportive for a long time as well, but was more than happy to ship my cards from San Antonio to Portland a few years ago. :) gotta love moms!

Jafronius said...

Yes, that's a great story showing support for your hobby. However, what does she do nowadays when you take her to the Vegas card stores? Or is the card store run just part of an overall day together?

Unknown said...

your mom sounds awesome

Fuji said...

It's one of the first things she'll ask me when I arrive. When do you want to go to the card shops? And when we go, she just looks around the shops (she doesn't collect herself). Sometimes if I'm taking too long, she'll go to the other shops in the area to kill time. Usually we're done in a couple of hours.

Fuji said...

She is!

Robert said...

That's great that you and your mom have such a fantastic relationship when it comes to the hobby!

Great post and thank you for sharing!

jamicfin said...

Our moms sound very similar!

My mom has always been supportive of my hobbies as well, she always gave me opportunities to earn the money for cards when I was younger; and she still picks me up a pack or two from time to time!

Possibly my favorite memory of my mother (when it comes to hobbies) was when I was away at college, and the comic shop back home was going out of business.
I actually didn't know the shop was closing until my mom called me and said "I'm at the shop, everything is 50% off. Tell me which titles to look for."
She also got me one of those drug-store spinner racks to keep them in! Of course, this raised my status among my fellow nerds to an epic level :)

Great post Fuji!

Fuji said...

Now if only I could get her to collect some cardboard. I came close, when I got her hooked on Beanie Babies ;-)

Fuji said...

Wow... that was pretty cool of your mom to grab you those comics.