There’s many a Boomer who can still sing the chorus of the television theme song for Davy Crockett, “king of the wild frontier…killed him a b’ar when he was only three.” The program, which aired on ABC from 1954–1955 in one-hour episodes, starred Fess Parker as real-life frontiersman Davy Crockett and Buddy Ebsen as his friend, George Russell.
And according to historians Randy Roberts and James Olson, “By the end of the shows, Fess Parker was very well known, the power of television was fully recognized, and Davy Crockett was the most famous frontiersman in American history.”
Americans purchased more than $300 million worth of Davy Crockett merchandise including coonskin caps, clothing, toys, records, bubble gum cards, and more. Athens retiree Randy Cox, who was one of those kids, says he went “nuts” for Davy Crocket gear. That childhood excitement stayed with Cox as he matured, inspiring him to collect all manner of items ranging from his favorites – comic books and sports programs – to 1996 Olympics memorabilia, old TV Guides, board games and John Wayne merchandise.
“I just collect a lot of stuff,” Cox says. “I tell people I would be on that Hoarders (television) show if I wasn’t a neat freak.” In fact, psychologists differentiate between collecting behavior, which is considered normative, and extreme hoarding, which is a pathology. Collectors are systematic, seeking to order, catalogue, display or document their collection, as well as collect information around individual items. Experts estimate that one-third of the American population collects one thing or another, and that there is almost nothing that someone somewhere does not collect.
Keeping his collections organized was an inspiration for Cox to write three books on the topic of collecting: It All Started with Davy Crockett, A Baby Boomer’s Guide to Collecting Comic Books and Baseball Cards, and one now out of print, Buying Back My Childhood.
The books cover a full range of collectibles including dolls, toys, action figures, models, and board games, “kind of the standard things that were popular during the childhood years of the Boomer generation from 1946 to 1964,” Cox says. Over the years, he would add movie and television collectibles, records, books, historical and political items, and autographs.
Collecting advice
As someone who estimates he’s collected more than 20,000 items since about 1980, Cox has always followed a simple formula: Collect what you know, collect what you like, and collect what makes you happy.
Sports memorabilia is the thing that checks those boxes for Cox. It’s an interest that takes him back to his youth when his father would take him to the minor league baseball Atlanta Crackers’ games prior to the Braves arrival in 1966.
“I started to collect souvenir programs, old Crackers’ programs and continued with Braves’ programs,” he says. The old programs connect him to his personal story. “Dad and I went to the first playoff games in 1969 when the Braves played the Mets in that first National League Championship Series. We got to sit in right field.”
His second-biggest passion is comic books, which he saw begin to rise in value in the early 1980s. “They can be worth a lot of money in mint condition.” At one point he was buying other people’s comic book collections and selling them at shows such as DragonCon, the Atlanta Fantasy Fair and various antique shows.
The books he’s written include information on the market for collectibles although he cautions collectors to do extensive research because “demand changes from time to time. One year something might be really popular but the next year, nobody’s interested in it.”
“I really have enjoyed collecting through the years,” he muses. “It’s a great hobby. Sometimes it gets a little complicated with trying to find a certain thing, but I think that’s part of the fun, trying to find something you really want.”
Now, however, at age 75, Cox is facing that thing with which all collectors must wrestle: What to do with their collections as they move into the twilight of their lives.
“Sometimes I’ll sell to a friend of mine who does shows,” he explains, but not without mixed feelings. “I’ll think, ‘Do I want to sell that or not?’ But hey, I’m 75. I do try to sell a few things, but I enjoy keeping some for display.”
Ultimately, he knows his family will be left to deal with it all. “They’re going to have a time going through some of this stuff.”
His favorite memory
Whether or not we, like Randy Cox, choose to collect physical reminders of our lives and interests, each of us has a collection of memories. And if you ask Cox to share his favorite memory, you’ll hear about how he was at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium on April 8, 1974, the night Braves slugger Hank Aaron hit his 715th career home run, eclipsing Babe Ruth’s longstanding record of 714.
In fact, Cox was motivated enough to write a book about it, 715 at 50: The Night Henry Aaron Changed Baseball and the World Forever. Complete with photos– many taken by Cox himself, who at the time was sports editor for an Alabama newspaper – the book is a comprehensive chronicle of Aaron’s feat.
“A lot of people — a lot of historians and baseball fans — consider this to be the greatest moment in sports and baseball history,” Cox said recently in recalling Aaron getting the home run off a fourth-inning pitch from the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Al Downing. “I can’t think of anything even close to that,” Cox added.
Of course, being on hand for a huge event in baseball history is a great memory, but Cox has an even more personal connection to that night, and to Hank Aaron.
He remembers that, during the on-field celebration and ceremony, there was a bit of a lull and Aaron walked away from the crowd on the field.
“I’m thinking, ‘OK, he’s sitting there, I’m standing here. I’m going to go over and talk to him’,” Cox recalled. “I went over there and congratulated him and told him what a wonderful feat that was. He thanked me, and I got to shake his hand. That was one of the biggest thrills of my life.”
Being there was a bit of a calculated risk for Cox. Aaron had ended the 1973 season with 713 home runs, and tied Ruth’s record in an April 5, 1974, game against the Cincinnati Reds.
On April 8, the first game of the season at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, Aaron was “sitting on 714,” Cox recalled. “He might have hit (715) that night, or he could have hit it in 10 days.
“I had the opportunity, as sports editor, to send myself to the game,” Cox continued. “Being an Atlanta fan, and a Hank Aaron fan, I was not going to miss this first game. If he had not hit it that night, I probably wouldn’t have been there the next night. I was lucky.”
715 at 50 was published in 2024 by Cox and Summer Game Books, a New Jersey publisher that specializes in books on baseball. “I’ve got my eyewitness account, so I kind of did it, more or less, in first person,” Cox says. He has publicized the book on podcasts, through newspaper interviews, and at Baseballism clothing and accessories stores at ballparks around the country. And on April 8—51 years after Aaron’s historic homer–he will again sign the book at Truist Park in Atlanta from 10:30 a.m.-5 p.m.
Jim Thompson is a freelance journalist living in Athens. He worked for more than 30 years as a newspaper reporter and editor at publications in Georgia and Florida.
