View Full Version : Really good documentary on Baseball Card Collecting today
I got this in my email and was told I could post it. Nothing earth shaking but a really good documentary on baseball card collecting today. Mr. Mint actually makes a lot of sense. It's a little long but a very good watch....
http://www.ethanedelson.com/gallery/The_Last_American_Hobby.html
Cool video. Thanks for posting the link.
tschock
08-14-2013, 02:34 PM
Mr. Mint actually makes a lot of sense
Especially with his somewhat crass but none the less accurate comparison to stamp collecting as a (dying) hobby. Lots of other insightful comments as well from the other interviewees.
Thanks for sharing!
conor912
08-14-2013, 02:42 PM
I actually forgot stamp collecting was a thing. If you think the future of the CARD business is bleek.....
A fun watch, though. My 4 yr old daughter liked the "kid parts" but sighed and walked away every time an "old guy" came on.
Jason
08-14-2013, 03:03 PM
Nicely done documentary.Thanks Leon for sharing.
bender07
08-14-2013, 03:09 PM
Great watch. I love how the shop owners lament the post Internet world. Their monopoly was taken away from them.
Exhibitman
08-14-2013, 03:28 PM
Interesting video, well worth the watch.
The "demise" of the hobby is less a death than an evolution. What is dying for sure is the old-school way of doing the hobby, especially nasty old men in brick and mortar stores reluctantly selling stuff to those pesky kids. The stores that have moved with the market and add value that cannot be replaced on Ebay--like box breaks and contests--are doing OK.
If anything, the technological changes have made it easier to collect than ever before, and easier to be a dealer too. Just the other day when I returned from my vacation I had packages come in from Argentina, Australia, Canada and several states, all with cards. I am way more active now than I was 30 years ago simply because I can buy, sell, trade and talk cards 24/7/365.
Rosen and the others are absolutely right about the modern card makers shooting themselves in the foot. Their business model has taken a major hit for many good reasons that are articulated in the video. It did remind me of something I thought when I was walking around the show floor at the National and seeing all of those essentially interchangeable booths filled with shiny stuff: what is their business model and how do they make real money?
As for shows, well, I think there is a collector base out there that will support local shows because the one thing you cannot get online is the fun of hanging out talkin' cards with your fellow collectors. The National has become more about renewing connections with my friends and fellow collectors than about the stuff I find. I can't even recall the last National I went to where I left for home broke, and my bankroll the last few years has been 1/3 of what it was in 2006. I wish all collectors could attend the National but given the logistics and expense, it isn't realistic for more than a fraction of the collecting community to be there, which is a shame. Again, I think local and regional shows have to evolve or die. When the shows are expensive to attend and hard to be involved with, they will die because the stuff is available online--people are going to say the heck with it and stay home. I hope that the shows Anthony, Jason and I are promoting reflect our thinking on the evolution of the hobby. Believe it or not, before we undertook the first show we did a great deal of brainstorming about what was right and wrong with the hobby and what we thought we could do to improve on the show model. Our 2nd Culver City, California, show is October 5th and we are following the same formula as for the first one: one day, no expensive autograph guests, free admission and parking, $95 vendor tables so a weekend warrior can come down, set up, and go home with minimal time and expense commitment.
Great watch. I love how the shop owners lament the post Internet world. Their monopoly was taken away from them.
I've always wondered why the guys with the "brick and mortar" card shops don't embrace the Internet and use that as an avenue for additional sales as opposed to sitting around complaining about it.
ReefBlue
08-14-2013, 05:01 PM
Great watch. I love how the shop owners lament the post Internet world. Their monopoly was taken away from them.
I had this exact discussion a couple weeks ago.
Speaking of new inventory that gets the new collectors into the hobby:
I got into this in 1988, probably the worst time to ever look at a baseball card that humanity will ever see.
Every dealer had stacks of the same inventory, they'd all charge the same prices (which were high) and no one would budge on anything. You'd have 10 dealers at a show lined up next to each other just like I described.
I wonder what all these dealers did with their 1988, 89, 90, etc Topps factory set cases they were asking hundreds for . . . I guess they could make a good step stool? Backstop for a shooting range?
"Ebay killed the card market!!"
Ebay didn't kill the card market, you dealers did.
I don't know what a cord of wood costs, but pound for pound couldn't be much more than cases of junk wax.
I got this in my email and was told I could post it. Nothing earth shaking but a really good documentary on baseball card collecting today. Mr. Mint actually makes a lot of sense. It's a little long but a very good watch....
http://www.ethanedelson.com/gallery/The_Last_American_Hobby.html
Very cool, thanks for posting.
Our 2nd Culver City, California, show is October 5th and we are following the same formula as for the first one: one day, no expensive autograph guests, free admission and parking, $95 vendor tables so a weekend warrior can come down, set up, and go home with minimal time and expense commitment.
Genius, imo!
oddball
08-14-2013, 07:02 PM
Thanks for posting!
Here is a facebook page about it
https://www.facebook.com/TheLastAmericanHobby
queencitysportscards
08-14-2013, 09:05 PM
Nice documentary. I liked the comment of the customer who said that visiting the card shop is an experience and not just a retail place to buy something...very true.
Thanks for posting.
MVSNYC
08-14-2013, 09:21 PM
Nicely done, thanks for posting.
thehoodedcoder
08-14-2013, 10:23 PM
it was very insightful. i enjoyed it. i grew up in an area where there was one card shop for a little while...and then it was gone. we used to pick up cards at local stores, not card shops.
just recently got back into it for the t206 cards i always wanted to collect now that i have a good job and some extra cash.
kevin
25801wv
08-15-2013, 06:51 PM
Thanks for the link Leon. It was a good doc.
wonkaticket
08-16-2013, 12:22 AM
That was fun to watch, and a bit sad at the same time.
Comiskey
08-16-2013, 11:43 AM
That was a great documentary, so true that the companies diluted the market with set after set, special cards, super expensive packs, etc.
Still love it though!
Jeff W.
Bosox Blair
08-16-2013, 05:58 PM
I don't really find it to have been a good documentary.
Let me explain. I'm bored and sick to death of the current "media" slant on card collecting as a dead or dying hobby/business. The guy who wrote "Mint Condition" - can't remember his name and don't care - is one of the leading offenders.
In other collecting pursuits, there is a focus on the highs - people go to great lengths to point out the large sums being exchanged, competitive auctions, etc. Think about the art market. I watch many documentaries about it. Almost uniformly they are of two types: (1) the ones that show masterpieces and astounding auctions prices realized, and (2) the titillating ones about forgers, frauds, and thieves.
Nobody (it seems) makes boring documentaries about the hundreds of thousands of overpriced artworks hanging on the walls of dead bricks-and-mortar galleries by artists with middling talent.
Yet the equivalent of that is all I seem to ever see about sports card collecting. You get some idiot regurgitating the old chestnut that the sports card market is dead - and this has happened within weeks of REA auctioning over $10 million. Pure laziness and ignorance.
All I ask for is that someone with a modicum of work ethic would publish a column/book, or make a documentary about the real and very much alive market that we all see and participate in daily.
Anyone???
(To be clear, I know there are lots of drum-beaters within the hobby - SMR, Old Cardboard, SCD and the like, but I'd love to have someone make an effort to convey to the public masses a message other than "card collecting died in the 1990s".)
Cheers,
Blair
travrosty
08-17-2013, 12:49 AM
It just switched from average joe who collected players and sets, to the people with money, they said that in the documentary. The rea buyers are the guys with the cash because the rare, high condition cards are in the big auctions. They went over that. the average guy collecting and kids collecting CURRENT cards from 50 cents packs and putting together sets is dead. They are looking for chase cards and THROWING away the rest of the cards. that's true.
Bosox Blair
08-17-2013, 11:31 AM
It just switched from average joe who collected players and sets, to the people with money, they said that in the documentary. The rea buyers are the guys with the cash because the rare, high condition cards are in the big auctions. They went over that. the average guy collecting and kids collecting CURRENT cards from 50 cents packs and putting together sets is dead. They are looking for chase cards and THROWING away the rest of the cards. that's true.
Yes, guys with cash are mentioned. In the same light (IMO) as eBay is mentioned...as a negative, instead of a positive. It is the slant everyone seems to want to convey.
No sign of an interview with a eBay dealer, who could attest that eBay has revolutionized the way cards are sold...how a kid in a tiny town now can get any card on earth delivered to his door...how all collectors can now assemble collections they never could through local shows/dealers...how the price gouging decreased by a huge degree...how fallacies of "scarcity/rarity" were very quickly destroyed once the marketplace became truly national and even international.
No interview with a collector - even a kid - to say how modern collecting has evolved through using the internet.
Anyways, it seems nobody is interesting in anything but the party line the lazy "media" has taken with this hobby.
One other note - the "positive" part of this documentary was how store owners are trying to connect with kids. I liked the cub scouts thing, but I have my own reservations about how certain card stores are essentially getting kids excited about what I view as gambling, rather than collecting.
Cheers,
Blair
conor912
08-17-2013, 12:07 PM
I liked the cub scouts thing, but I have my own reservations about how certain card stores are essentially getting kids excited about what I view as gambling, rather than collecting.
Cheers,
Blair
Yeah, I was pretty put off by the whole "make it so that a kid can get a $200 card every once in a while" comment. Um...yeah....you mean like a scratch ticket? Sending this messege to kids is absurd. I suppose it's telling of a larger societal problem teaching kids that something's not worth doing unless there's a (potential) payoff.
We live in a "if i do [blank], then I get [blank] society".
mattsey9
08-17-2013, 01:21 PM
Yeah, I was pretty put off by the whole "make it so that a kid can get a $200 card every once in a while" comment. Um...yeah....you mean like a scratch ticket? Sending this messege to kids is absurd. I suppose it's telling of a larger societal problem teaching kids that something's not worth doing unless there's a (potential) payoff.
We live in a "if i do [blank], then I get [blank] society".
But that's not a new phenomenon. In my (our?) day, we were looking for the Gooden RC out of our Topps packs just like kids today are looking for Machado/Harper/Trout.
The big difference is that in the 70's-80's when I started, there was one and later three sets that everyone had access to. They were the best cards available, and the cost kept everyone priced in. Now the best cards aren't available on store shelves and you have the be somewhat of an insider to know what's valuable and what isn't.
ReefBlue
08-17-2013, 01:46 PM
Should Alan Rosen really be lamenting about how this has become a business all about money?
conor912
08-17-2013, 02:05 PM
But that's not a new phenomenon. In my (our?) day, we were looking for the Gooden RC out of our Topps packs just like kids today are looking for Machado/Harper/Trout.
The big difference is that in the 70's-80's when I started, there was one and later three sets that everyone had access to. They were the best cards available, and the cost kept everyone priced in. Now the best cards aren't available on store shelves and you have the be somewhat of an insider to know what's valuable and what isn't.
I agree to a point. Kids in 1933 were all looking for Ruth cards in their Goudey packs, too. Looking for the stars is certainly nothing new. But now it's all about the value, regardless of who the player is, so that they can presumably sell it. Selling my cards never even once crossed my mind when I collecting as a kid and I'm sure I'm not alone on this one.
Bosox Blair
08-17-2013, 04:42 PM
I agree with some of Conor's thoughts, but I was more referring to what I thought was stores conducting raffles or lottery draws to get kids interested. I guess I don't know exactly how this works, but if you have to pay for a ticket for a chance to win a big card, I don't like that idea for kids.
I am a bit isolated from this aspect of the hobby, but I think this kind of thing is going on. Plus so-called "box breaks" where kids pitch in part of the money, but may walk away with pretty much nothing to show?
I might be misunderstanding how some of this works, but my point is that I think kids should be drawn in for collecting (accumulating things with some value), rather than true gambling (more often than not losing your money).
If, on the other hand, it was more like a customer appreciation draw (ie. spend $10 or more here today on whatever you want, and get a free ticket for a draw on an autograph card at 4PM), then I'm OK with that.
Cheers,
Blair
No sign of an interview with a eBay dealer, who could attest that eBay has revolutionized the way cards are sold...how a kid in a tiny town now can get any card on earth delivered to his door...how all collectors can now assemble collections they never could through local shows/dealers...how the price gouging decreased by a huge degree...how fallacies of "scarcity/rarity" were very quickly destroyed once the marketplace became truly national and even international.
Cheers,
Blair
Amen! Could not have said it better.
johnmh71
08-18-2013, 06:44 PM
Nice video Leon. Thanks for sharing.
I do agree with many of the comments left so far. Many of the old time shop owners were shady to a certain degree and now are paying the price, if they are still around to do so. To not include ebay on this video is crazy. There are many ebay only dealers that they could have contacted to get there side of this. I doubt any members on this site would have anything near the collections they have without it.
insidethewrapper
08-19-2013, 12:06 PM
It was a joke seeing Mr.Mint on here ( the film). He never helped the hobby. I saw him be rude to young and old collectors alike and turned off many to the hobby. Talk about the money and investment vs just enjoying collecting. At shows with him it was all about the money . He always tried to intimidate others . He usually never had time for young collectors.
bbcard1
08-19-2013, 01:12 PM
Kids have more money than they ever have before. They choose to spend their time and money on video games, phones and electronics and the business/hobby has no one to blame but themselves.
ls7plus
08-20-2013, 06:28 PM
I wonder what all these dealers did with their 1988, 89, 90, etc Topps factory set cases they were asking hundreds for . . . I guess they could make a good step stool? Backstop for a shooting range?
I don't know what a cord of wood costs, but pound for pound couldn't be much more than cases of junk wax.
Priceless!!!
I guess it's called evolution.
Regards to all,
Larry