(This story originally appeared on www.sportscollectorsdaily.com)

A nice surprise showed up in our email Thursday morning.  A reader in the southeast had found one of our stories on 1970s baseball cards in which a reference was made to nickel sports card vending machines that you used to see in places like K-Mart.

He dropped us a note.

“I was delightebaseball card vending machined to know somebody else knew what I have, or at least remembers buying cards while your Mom was paying for her stuff at the check outs,” Chris wrote.

He sent along these photos–and even showed off a “letter of provenance”.

Hop in the time machine and take a trip back to 1976 for the story.

“You may be interested in knowing my machine came out of a K-mart store, and I even have the letter to authorize its destruction from 1976,” he wrote.  “My father worked for K-mart over 25 years, and when the company discontinued that program, he could not throw it away- as I was a card collector, and it would serve as a “cool” place to store my cards.  He always told me to keep that letter- to prove it wasn’t stolen, of course.”

For more, go to www.sportscollectorsdaily.com