Every story has a beginning and that’s the same for my business card collecting. It actually started when I was 9 or 10 years old in Cape Hatteras NC, one of the places I mentioned in my road trip blog post earlier this year and we had to sit in the Hatteras Realty rental office for a property my godfather & his wife rented. I remember being bored (as any kid would be just sitting somewhere) and I decided to grab the business cards.
From there, I would grab the other business cards I would see throughout the trip. After that week, I had a nice little collection. I’m sure at that age, it was a cute thing and perhaps a phase. A phase it was not, as I still go around collecting cards to this day as a much-less-cute man.
I don’t know why this hobby stuck with me and others didn’t. Then again, my other hobbies were baseball (which I always batted 9th in and got thrown into right field), pogs (which stopped being a thing), Magic the Gathering (which I was conned out of my original Jester’s Cap) and playing action figures (which might be weird for a 33-year-old man to do).
People are fascinated by this hobby asking me how long I’ve collected and how many I have, which is why I started counting my cards weekly once I hit the 30,000 milestone back in 2015. Since that photo was taken, I’ve had to expand to more bins and that same gift box holds more oversized business cards.
It’s been almost 25 years, so I decided to look up each of these individuals. Vicky Grist is the easiest since she has the most unique name and shockingly, she still works at Hatteras Realty as a broker associate under her (what I assume to be) married name Vicky Barris. Her hair is a lot different, but it was the 90s and female hairstyles have changed a lot since then. She also had 29 years of experience, so I guess she just began her career when I got her card.
Though he has less hair than his photo from almost 25 years ago, but rental manager Dick Davis is also still in real estate as an agent down in the Vero Beach FL area (which happens to be another destination I’ve road tripped to). Finding info for facilities manager John Hunter was a bit more of a struggle because of the common name, but LinkedIn is a beautiful thing. It turns out his career took him out of Hatteras Realty in 1999 and he now works close-ish to me at Princeton University and has been a Sr. Tech. for their SoA Laboratory Systems divisions for the past 20 years.
I look different than I did 25 years ago also. If I could have grown my hair longer and had a beard at 9 or 10, I surely would have.
I’ve donated quite a few to that collection and have some waiting for you that I just accumulated recently. I think it’s a cool hobby!
Yes you have and I’m very grateful for that… love you lots!