The hobby was just crawling out of the woodwork in the mid-1970s. It wasn’t quite mainstream, but it was creeping in that direction. Hostess panels were an obsession for collectors in an era when beyond Topps and the odd oddball set, there just wasn’t anything else.
The company’s imminent demise is dredging up waves of nostalgia for those 1975-79 Hostess sets and how we completed them–or tried to. Some of us hit up the Wonder Bread/Hostess thrift store to buy the Twinkies, HoHos, Cupcakes and DingDongs at discounted rates. We really didn’t care that much about the product itself. A few boxes and we had all we’d need for a month or two.
Keith Olbermann and Brian Kenny were chatting about cards Wednesday on MLB Network when they each pulled out a nice vintage card and Keith–one of the hobby’s most advanced collectors–comforted us all by recalling his own teenage years when a trip to the thrift store resulted in the mother lode of Hostess goodies.
Click here to watch the video.
Click here for Hostess panels.
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