Grandpa’s flirty 'pick-up' card from 1976 is going viral — and Gen Z's pick-up lines got nothing on him

A Reddit post by u/Electrical_Point8930 is charming the internet with a decades-old piece of smooth-talking genius: a vintage "Hello" calling card their grandfather kept neatly tucked away in his wallet since 1976. The post included the photo of the rather NSFW card, designed for picking up women, and it's going viral online. The card read: "Hi, I'm kind of the ‘shy type’ and this is really embarrassing for me. Would it be too forward for me to invite you for a kind of 'get acquainted' cocktail? It would be just swell talking to you about where you are from, and discussing the weather and everything, then we could f***."

In the comments, the user explained that this card was the reason their grandpa met their grandma. While dating apps these days claim to bring people together with swipes and prompts, this card appears to have done the job better, and research also backs it up. Studies show that in-person, intentional romantic gestures like this still resonate in the age of dating apps. A 2024 study published in Social Sciences found that couples who met face-to-face had relationship satisfaction levels equal to or greater than those who met through apps.

u/AshMendoza1 wrote, "Grandpa caught the fish and kept the bait, too! Jokes aside, that has got to be one of the most cherished pickup line business cards out there. Imagine handing someone a sticky note, not knowing it would change the entire course of your life, and then having the good luck to get it back before it gets lost to time." u/AppropriateScience71 joked, "Plot twist — Grandpa had zero game, so it was Grandma that gave him the card. And that's why he's cherished it all these years." u/DeadHuron added, "Gotta figure even if there were a few failures, being with grandma now means his pitch to her was a walk-off homer!"

Some recalled a similar wave of charm but different flirting techniques. u/Surround8600 shared, "I own a printing company, and around the time that song 'Call Me Maybe' came out, so many dudes were printing business cards with lyrics and their number. 'Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy, but here's my number…' You get the idea." u/PisceanTreasures

explained, "Quite similar to the ready-made 'adult' themed pocket cards Spencer's sold in bulk (was it $5 for 10 cards, mix-n-match?) back in the 1980s, 1990s, all of them lined up on a lucite partitioned wall display towards the back -- REMEMBER ?!?!? Some encouraged single readers to take notes. u/Skirnirshaden suggested, "To the single guys: Now you have to be fast with this one. Get a card like this, make your move. But you have to do it before the girls get aware that this is a thing going on worldwide."

While this user found a cheeky "Hello" card, another discovered something far deeper: a 57-year log of every memory her grandpa shared with his wife. TikTok user @kaylastipsits1 stumbled upon the journal while helping clean out her grandparents’ home. Hidden in a filing cabinet, the log, titled "Kay memories and dates," chronicled decades of shared moments, from homemade dinners to casual nights in. Every entry was typed out, some even written by hand before being organized, spanning nearly six decades of love, family, and tradition. "When girls can barely get a good morning text," Kayla wrote in her TikTok post, "my grandpa documented every memory and date he ever had with my grandma for 60 years."