As a kid, I used to live for new editions of Beckett Baseball Card Monthly. Apparently, I wasn’t alone:

American boys growing up in the 1980s approached Beckett Baseball Card Monthly with something like religious reverence. For many of us, it was the first magazine we bought and the only one we leafed through regularly. The magazine’s circulation eventually reached about 1 million, with many of those issues no doubt destined for the book bags of young boys. We walked the school hallways in the ’80s with our Becketts sandwiched between our textbooks, and we followed the price fluctuations of our favorite players with slavish devotion. Beckett’s valuations served as the foundation for all card trades.

And just so everyone realizes how serious/geeky I was about baseball cards: I worked at The Baseball Shop in Orleans, Ma. through most of high school. I loved this stuff.