Slightly OT: Why We Collect

[shernan30]

Good morning Net54,

Tomorrow, Friday the 6th, I will be showing my collection to my vintage base ball team, The Ohio Village Muffins, at our end of the year banquet. I get to spend a little time talking about it and want to get some stories about why you collect to add.

I have a passion for the sport and the history. My goal is to be able to preserve some history of Columbus base ball and tell the stories of the players. My collection cover players from the 1877 team through 1950 with a lot of focus on the 1889 Columbus Solons presented in the OJ set.

So why do you collect?

Is there a family member that played in the deadball era?

Is it just an investment?

What got you started?

I'd like to tell a few different stories to maybe influence one or two teammates to start collecting.

Thanks,

Steven

[rjackson44]

Because we have too💚

[lhardem]

Steven,

First, the answer to your questions:

So why do you collect?
I am a collector by nature; my wife claims I never throw anything out! I like collecting type cards to help illustrate the history of baseball card collecting. We also need examples to help illustrate articles in Old Cardboard magazine, the website and eNewsletters.

Is there a family member that played in the deadball era?
No

Is it just an investment?
No, but I believe cards do make good investments.

What got you started?
Brett made me do it. :)

*****

Below is a cabinet card from my collection that I thought you would enjoy seeing. It features the 1884 Columbus Buckeyes. As you know, the Buckeyes were a Major League team in the American Association at the time. All of the players are identified on the back of the card. Fully half of them (7 of the 13) are also represented in the Old Judge set.

http://www.oldcardboard.com/o/photographs/cabinets/1880s-Columbus/columbus-team.jpg

Good luck with your presentation on Friday,
Lyman

[PolarBear]

My answer is a bit OT, but I've have had many collections of different things over the years and have been a member of many different hobby forums.

It's amazing to see the exact same language being used across different hobbies as diverse as pipes/tobacco, cars, coins, guns, cards, etc.

In a word, it comes down to this - OCD. Collectors are compulsive by nature. Collecting is of itself a compulsive act. They may collect different things and have different interests but the driving factor is the same.

Also, I've noticed an offshoot of the OCD types in the collecting world - the hoarders. Every hobby has that minority as well, probably somewhere in the 10-15% range. It's amazing to see the similarities in those types of people across different hobbies. The guy with 200 pipes he'll never smoke, the guy with 80 guns he'll never shoot, the guy with a closet full of cards he'll never look at.

The underlying similarities are amazingly consistent.

[Leon]

We are what we are. Some of us collect for the girls!! I would guess most of us played baseball growing up. I had no ancestors who played MLB. Mid life crisis got me started again.

My answer is a bit OT, but I've have had many collections of different things over the years and have been a member of many different hobby forums.

It's amazing to see the exact same language being used across different hobbies as diverse as pipes/tobacco, cars, coins, guns, cards, etc.

In a word, it comes down to this - OCD. Collectors are compulsive by nature. Collecting is of itself a compulsive act. They may collect different things and have different interests but the driving factor is the same.

Also, I've noticed an offshoot of the OCD types in the collecting world - the hoarders. Every hobby has that minority as well, probably somewhere in the 10-15% range. It's amazing to see the similarities in those types of people across different hobbies. The guy with 200 pipes he'll never smoke, the guy with 80 guns he'll never shoot, the guy with a closet full of cards he'll never look at.

The underlying similarities are amazingly consistent.

[kmac32]

Good morning Net54,

Tomorrow, Friday the 6th, I will be showing my collection to my vintage base ball team, The Ohio Village Muffins, at our end of the year banquet. I get to spend a little time talking about it and want to get some stories about why you collect to add.

I have a passion for the sport and the history. My goal is to be able to preserve some history of Columbus base ball and tell the stories of the players. My collection cover players from the 1877 team through 1950 with a lot of focus on the 1889 Columbus Solons presented in the OJ set.

So why do you collect?

Is there a family member that played in the deadball era?

Is it just an investment?

What got you started?

I'd like to tell a few different stories to maybe influence one or two teammates to start collecting.

Thanks,

Steven

I collect because I enjoy baseball and the history in it preserved in baseball cards. Started as a kid collecting all the topps Cubs cards and expanded backward to have allerrors and variations of the Cubs base set and the came forward to include topps updates. I draw the line at insert cards as there are way too many of them.

My great great uncle played for the Yankees in 1921 and 1922 and played in the 1921 World Series.

Not just an investment but it became an investment

Got involved with prewar by collecting cards of my Great Great uncle Elmer Miller

[sbfinley]

Going to the bar was not a viable hobby once I got married. Bought a t206 on eBay and found this site (the former site.) Blew every available dollar for about 5 years on cardboard. Sold it all and went to back school. Had a kid. Number two on the way now. Still finding dollars to blow on cardboard. Don't drink as much.

[nebboy]

I love baseball and the history of it. How baseball was and still is part of the fabric of what we are as a country. So collecting helps me find so many new things about the all aspects of the game. I do have an addition to the search, it's in the searching I get the thrill of the hunt for new cards/memorabilia and the bits and pieces of a great game that is associated with it.

[Exhibitman]

Collecting is in the collectors DNA. If it wasn't cards it would be something else. I've been at it nearly all my life.

I was fortunate to be there as a kid in the card club and card show era. It was my intro to business. I ran a table at a card club show when I was 12 years old. I still operate as a secondary business and hope that once I stop the law practice I will be able to make cards my prime business. So yes it is an investment, one that I happen to enjoy.

No family in baseball but two boxer cousins. Ray Miller (my avatar) was #1 ranked as a lightweight and was the only man to KO HOFer Jimmy McLarnin. He is in the 1951 Topps Ringside set as a referee. Also in E211 York Caramel and the 1928 Exhibit set. I didn't find out about him until I was college age.

[egri]

So why do you collect?

Is there a family member that played in the deadball era?

Is it just an investment?

What got you started?



I collect because deep down, I'm a history nerd. In the project in my signature, almost every guy in the set was in either World War II or Korea, and even the ones who weren't still grew up during the Depression and lived through wartime. When I look at the painting on one side of the guy smiling, then see on the other "Twig had an impressive war record, serving with the Marines on Saipan, Tinian and Iwo Jima" or "He is now in the Armed Forces" or even where, in place of the previous years stats it just says "In Military Service", it just sends shivers down my spine. Especially considering that at the time, admitting PTSD was a sign of weakness, so these guys went through the seventh level of Hell and couldn't admit to being affected by it without being stigmatized.

I don't have family who played in the Deadball Era, but Nap Lajoie lived near my great-grandfather's pharmacy and was a frequent customer.

I'm not collecting as an investment, because I'm in this for the long haul, and I'm such a completionist that I probably won't care how much money I end up sinking in to this project by the time it's done.

My mom used to help organize a fundraiser every year for a local charity, and part of the fundraiser included a silent auction. One year, when I was about 10 or so, one of the pieces was a matted picture of the 2004 Red Sox, surrounded by the 2005 Topps card of each player. Seeing that got me started into cards, and shortly thereafter another collector got me in to autographs.