Who is the biggest culprit?
 

For the decline of bb card collecting?

1) Price Guides (Namely Beckett) for assigning monetary value to cards
2) Grading Companies (Looking your way PSA) for overemphasizing condition
3) MLB for turning baseball's pastimes into 2 leagues of haves and have-nots
4) Technology (ex: video games) for making card collecting obsolete and/or less relevant
5) Various card companies for flooding the market during the 80s-modern era/overpricing
6) Other

In my opinion, price guides, turning the hobby into a business. Your thoughts?

4) and 6), 6) being the cratering of the economy

IMO, it is the card companies for pricing the modern packs to where kids can't afford them.

Whoops, my response was more about the decline of baseball in general. I think the decline in card collecting is partly cost and partly the overwhelming amount of cards that are available.

I don't know much about the other sports. Is there an equal decline in football/basketball/hockey collecting?

For me personally, there is way too many new sets and subsets being created. I lost alot of interest in cards around 1992 and shifted back into my first love, coin collecting. It just got too hard to collect everything and then all the limited subsets like the copper, bronze, chrome, autos, it just got too crazy. Also the fact that all the new shiny stuff cost more to produce, so the cost to us went up also. At 3 dollars a pack of cards, gas stations, 7-elevens, and other places stopped carrying them. I miss the good ole wax packs and the days of only 3 different sets to collect.

Other-In both the current and vintage markets, the seller has priced himself out of his own market. Auctions, in part, have ben popular simply because of the chance of pitting two bidders against one another. If it is a dishonest/rigged market, you are bidding against a phantom.

Now, a lousy economy can help neutralize the seller causing him to drop his price. If he considers an auction as his backup, the risk is whether the percentage to auction his goods wipes out his incentive to part with the card.

nah, there still are plenty of packs that can be bought for a buck or two. Kids just don't care about cards, nothing exciting about them for kids nowadays with the internet, i-pads, video games, portable video games, smart phones, etc.


technology has killed kids collecting cards

Agree with Bilko

Ill go with a disagree here. I started collecting in 1984, NES was introduced in 1986 and I had time for both. Eventually the video games won, but it sounds like most of us put the cards down around 14-16 for a few years anyway.
Packs should be 50 cents each with 15-20 cards in them and MLB should subsidize the cost if necessary. The future to ANYTHING is children, not middle-aged men. Cards introduce the sport unlike anything else. The other big thing is 9pm playoff games? They need to be earlier so kids can watch and see them end!

It is inaccurate IMO to think of the card collecting public as one market. I see three: vintage [pre WWII], boomer [1945-1980] and modern, and each reacts very differently to various things.

For me, two things have greatly diminished my interest in vintage and boomer era cards: prices and grading. I am unable to purchase many of the vintage cards I want--simply cannot afford them. That kills my interest in collecting many of the mainstay issues. On boomer era cards, I am so turned off by the TPG thing and resulting astronomical prices for minute and usually undetectable differences between cards that my interest has fallen off dramatically.

Every year a card company tries to "go back to the roots" and issues a low-end 50 cents-$1 product with multiple cards and every year it fails. Kids aren't dumb. If they are one of the very few who are inclined toward cardboard, they certainly will want to buy something with possibilities. Baseball has lost its luster (thanks Selig). Those who still collect are more apt for something that is the new national pastime (the NFL). Upper Deck is starting to produce college football cards which I think could be a brilliant idea if done right. Kids are just done with MLB and I don't blame them.

While the price guides...and the card companies can be blamed for setting values...and for overproducing and creating rarities and chase cards...the real culprits are those who deceive, cheat, steal and take advantage of unsuspecting collectors/"investors" for financial gain...these are the hoodlums who have helped to wreck this hobby!

Collectors

As a father of (now grown) sons, I can say that sports, cards and the concept of enjoying a collecting hobby was a part of their lives growing up...but it took a back seat very quickly to many of the other activities that have been mentioned(internet, handheld devices, etc...). They grew up watching Ken Griffey Jr but today they could probably not tell you who he played for unless they used their phone or Ipod to look up the answer! :(

[QUOTE=Exhibitman;957763]It is inaccurate IMO to think of the card collecting public as one market. I see three: vintage [pre WWII], boomer [1945-1980] and modern, and each reacts very differently to various things.



I agree that there really is a few different markets. Modern card collecting is like playing the lottery with the marketing geared toward finding that great pull from a pack. I find that locally a lot of post war collectors are still out there and really seem to enjoy the hobby which is nice to see even though these cards do not appeal to me for the most part.

I think technology. When I was growing up, you got your info on players from the backs of cards. That's how you learned about them. Now it is the internet.

Plus back then, there was a lot less things to do. You had to be creative. Now with technology, people are creative for you.

I would say technology in the sense that when I was growing up in the late 60's the only way you could really get cards was by opening a pack or trading for them.

Today, with ebay and the auction houses, just about any card is available if you have enough money... the point being, cards are available like any other consumer good, you just have to have enough money to pay for them.

This is a good question and a complicated one, and it's not possible to isolate a single event or two as the cause for the hobby's decline.

I certainly wouldn't blame the price guides, because it's a fluid hobby and the marketplace ultimately determines prices . Rare cards always sell for more than common ones, Babe Ruth always sells for more than Joe Schmo, pristine cards always sell for more than beat up ones. Over time, given enough transactions, the more desirable cards will always rise to the top.

Third party grading is somewhat of a factor. With the goal of helping the collector solve problems, it at the same time created a host of new problems. Certainly it caused a huge spike in the price of high grade cards, putting them out of reach of most collectors. But TPG is not the reason for the hobby's decline.

If I wanted to simplify the answer and pick a couple of causes, I would say it's a combination of a very poor economy, and the maturing of baseball card collecting. In the 1970's, baseball cards were a well kept secret that only a small group knew about. As publicity brought droves of new collectors into the hobby, it grew in leaps and bounds. But no industry can grow forever, and ours eventually reached its saturation point. While there are always new collectors coming in, we've now reached the point where alot of collectors are getting older, or losing interest, and dropping out. The net result is there really isn't enough growth anymore.

And while the economy may get better one day (I'm not holding my breath), the rapid growth that we experienced from roughly the 1970's to the 1990's is over forever. We are likely to see prices more stable, without huge increases, and there is a distinct possibility we will even see the industry get smaller. I guess we'll have to stick around to find out.

the widespread fraud hasn't helped!

I blame shill bidding.

Hmmm,
 

All the new technology to interest kids today is a big reason kids don't collect cards anymore. With the ipods, itouch, ixxx, computer games, kids don't gravitate toward "boring" cards anymore.

The overwhelming variety of cards is just too much these days - tough to stay focused on one set of afforadable cards. The market is flooded with current collectible cards

However, without technology, ie ebay, the hobby may be just about dead. Imagine this hobby without ebay - dreadful scary. And like it or not, third party grading has helped prop up the hobby.

Market flooding
 

FWIW, I think a great deal of blame is placed at the feet of the card companies and the major league sports and unions that licensed too many products. They killed the golden goose by overfeeding it.

When sports card collecting boomed (about when Topps stopped being the only legit choice, in the early 1980s), cards became innovative and interesting and visually appealing. Buyers (still mostly kids) appreciated the competitive look of the new manufacturers' products. When one or two experimented with short-subsets, insert cards, redemption cards, etc., collecting became a lottery (I don't care what that idiot judge in the midwest (?) said -- kids ripped open packs looking for the valuable insert cards, not to find the #377 card they need to finish their sets; it was gambling, pure and simple).

Once buying and searching packs, boxes, cases, became a money-making proposition, kids got squeezed out physically and monetarily. And then there were just too many cards to collect. I heard a stat a while back that I think is illustrative: in 1955 There was one mainstream Mickey Mantle card. In 1997 there were 135 Mantle cards issued by various manufacturers, all in subsets, chase cards, etc. The packs became valuable, and then were priced accordingly, even if value was generated by way of a manufactured scarcity (such as the new Sport Kings cards).

The market got overheated, flooded, and expensive, and kids could no longer keep up with the dealers who would buy up and break cases to find chase cards, then sell them for more than the cases were sold for. Point in illustration: I remember very clearly a dealer friend breaking cases of some basketball card to find the "insert" Shaq & Jabbar card (and he knew how to count the boxes down from the top to find the right box). The rest of the case was, essentially, trash, so he pretty much handed it out like candy. The Shaq card sold for more than he spent on the case. I know there are many more examples of this.

So I say #5, FWIW.

Of course, as Jeff and Peter said, fraud in this hobby is through the roof. That's going to cause a lot of collectors to take up a new hobby.

Re: market flooding
 

And not just kids ripping packs open looking for inserts. I stopped going to our local card shop as I got tired of listening to blowhard adults talking about some 1/1 auto card they pulled out of a $100 pack and then flipped on ebay to make some cash.

Also pretty depressing to watch people come into the shop with what looked like their paycheck and buy tons of pack. They'd rip them open, find nothing of great value, and then sit there with their head in their hands wondering how they were going to explain what happened to their wife. If you don't think that's a gambling habit, you haven't watched people at 7-eleven play scratch-off lottery games.

jeff

I remember back in 1990 when the Thomas Leaf (my favorite player) was at a local card shop and they were asking full book $80 for it. My bro and I both wanted a new bike for our b-days and I assured my dad I would get a Giant impactor ( $100 bike + Thomas) while my bro would get the higher valued bike (diamondback tailwhip, $250). Those were the days when the only chance you had at finding a Brett rookie was one with 12 creases and a corner missing for $20 and you still debated getting it. Once the packs hit $4+ everyone started getting out it appears. Every now and then I'll buy a couple packs at target, but after getting 3-4 cards for $5 it's depressing. I kinda of blame the downfall of the hobby on card companies that need that 1 of 1 item to compete with the other 25 companies. I remember back in 1990 when Donruss Elite came out and they were numbered out of 10,000 and you were the man if you owned one. Now every other card is numbered out of 100 and nobody cares.

Wait a minute--
 

Some very interesting answers and good points,
but I'm sort of stunned that everyone seems to accept the premiss:

Baseball card collecting is on the decline?

Funny, my guess would be that there is more money, far more money, being spent on baseball cards every year now than ever before, and that there are probably more collectors as well.
Not that there's not plenty wrong with the hobby.
Nor that kids and modern baseball card collecting are much different than they used to be.
Nor that, ironically, a lot of the reasons given for a decline are also reasons for an increase in the business end of the hobby, as several post-ers pointed out [Ebay being the best example of technology].

I also see prices stabilizing and much greater expertise on behalf of the average collector [because of forums like Net54, for example].
These are positive developments.
And the competition for cards is greater than ever [why it's so tough to get a steal on ebay anymore, for instance].

Hope I'm not spoiling this thread [as I'm enjoying it], but I'm just not sure if I agree that the hobby is on the decline.
I do think kids' foci have changed, though, and this could lead to big trouble for the long-term future of the hobby [especially once there are fewer dads who enjoyed collecting to do it with them].
Personally, I have little interest in modern cards [partially because they seem so overproduced], but even that overproduction points out that there's an awful lot of money still being spent on them at this point.

Enough,

Doug

I've said it before and I will say it again..........I have the solution, topps should buy out Upper Deck, Fleer, Donruss, Score, Prism, whoever, and go to one set WITH wax wrappers and bubble gum inside like the old days, print the sets in series with NO traded sets, and make the 7th series your rookie class and SPs with 40 man guys. 1 SET. No Heritage, jersey cards, etc........if they want to insert a subset of autos, or auto jerseys of modern players (actives) only I am 100% for that. Take away the competition and make it fun and affordable and ATTAINABLE for all kids and adults alike. Cut unneeded employees, downsize and be more profitable.

Jason

Doug

The only reason more money may be spent now is because it is an adult hobby and generally older adults with extra money plus the fact the cost of everything is exponentially higher. I would guess the number of collectors are not growing.

Jason

I've been thinking about this for a while because there are always threads about the hobby in decline popping up regularly. I'm also starting to come around to the theory that the hobby is very healthy as it currently is and don't worry about the kids.

Everybody is worried since kids don't collect cards like they did when they were young. However, do we hear about card companies going out of business because they lose too much money printing cards? Nope (they only go out when they don't get licenses from MLB). So then the card companies must still be selling enough to do just fine even if they're selling to more adults these days then kids. Face it, as others have mentioned, kids have a lot of other entertainment options these days. That's just how it is.

Secondly, I read things such as Link postings from Heritage telling about record revenue in Sports Memorabilia and other collectibles like coins. Let's talk coins. According to that article Heritage had nearly 200 million in revenue last year in colin auctions (compared to 16+ million in Sports Collectibles). Those are huge numbers. Now how many kids these days do you know that collect coins? Heck, probably fewer than collect baseball cards! (Granted it is a lot cheaper to start a coin collection, like if you wanted to start w/ the 50 states quarter collection.) I'm not a coin collector, but I don't think those collectors are too worried about their hobby dying out.

Lastly, why do people really care about the hobby on the decline? Sure, it's boring if there are fewer and fewer people in the hobby to chat with and the fact that you are constantly losing an enormous wealth of knowledge in the hobby. However, if you are concerned about pricing dropping, that just means that there are more cards that you can afford to buy and put into your own collection. If you are worried about your own value of your collection going down because of resale value in the future, then go back to the article from Heritage and others which show that sales in the hobby are going up. No doubt that there are particular areas that are going down in value, but that's more reflective of collecting tastes changing which may be cyclical. You still have to be smart about buying cards (like not overpaying) for financial reasons, but the decline of the hobby will not be the reason why your collection has gone down in value.

I totally agree with this. I love the hobby. I was out of it for a while and I am having a blast now with the availability of information and cards via the internet and at shows. My little kids love it too. They love opening packs and seeing their favorite teams and players. They also enjoy my vintage cards because they enjoy learning from me.

There are certainly issues with the hobby, as you have all pointed out but my own opinion is that the hobby as a whole is OK and definitely better than the past few years where there was a bit of an adjustment.

Very interesting thread indeed and I look forward to more discussion!

And Topps would shortly go out of business afterwards. For better or worse, the vast majority of modern collectors want multiple products per year. On Freedom Cardboard (the much, much bigger shiny version of Net54), there are several threads asking for Topps to not be the only licensed company anymore. It is "boring" that there were "only" 20ish baseball sets produced last year. Set collecting is dead. Why do we constantly feel the need to make sets attainable for kids when it's obvious that low-end products don't appeal to them.

6) Joey Farino

Sorry!!! Anyways, I'd say it's obviously a combination of everything listed, BUT I think one of the biggest contributing factors lies with the ballplayers. It comes from today's game having a great number of players that we either can't relate to, that are unapproachable and often times very unappreciative of the opportunity that they've been given by the game..

Also, the current dirt-digging state of the media would get some of the blame in my book as well. You rarely ever hear good stories about athletes nowadays. Mostly what you get is stories about drugs, spousal abuse, infidelity, latin ballplayers lying about their names and ages, and other assorted acts of general assholishness. But then again is it really the media's fault, or are modern athletes exactly what they've been exposed as?

I was gonna quote an earlier post of yours, but this one is just as good. Your earlier post stated that "Kids aren't dumb, they want the good cards and not the low end $1 packs". This is exactly the truth, kids aren't "dumb". There are still some kids into collecting, but like Orioles1954 says (James?) they aren't "dumb" they want the really good modern cards. Case in point, about a month ago, me and one of my local collecting buddies went to a local shop and we took along his 11 year old son, who seems pretty interested in collecting. His dad gave him $100 to spend at the card shop (I know, lucky kid). What did he want to buy? He wanted the $90 a pack Ultimate Collection Hockey, where you only get 4 or 5 cards in one pack. I even asked him, i said "Wouldn't you rather get 100 packs of the Upper Deck Victory, which sell for $1 a pack?". His reply was "Why? so i have a big pile of junk at the end?". The UD Ultimate packs were $90 each but they guaranteed 1 autograph, 1 jersey or patch card and one serial numbered rookie card per pack and thats what he told me he wanted. He even told me he'd have a lot more fun looking at the autograph and jersey card, then he would looking at the other 1200 "common cards" (as he said) combined.

As for the question, as i answered earlier its technology that has taken a lot of the younger kids out of card collecting, but as a whole i think the hobby is in pretty decent shape, it has just changed and evolved with the times. When we were kids we got involved in collecting at a very young age. Nowadays, i notice people are getting involved or re-involved in collecting at an older age, in their late teen years, 20's, 30's and older. A lot of people who are getting into collecting in their 20's/30's are getting interested from the flashy autograph/patch/refractor cards, but then after a few years of the modern stuff, many are then getting into the vintage and pre-war.

The hobby will never be as big as it was in the 80's and early 90s, but the hobby will survive and it is doing just fine (you only have to look on ebay and see how many people are buying and selling all the time. Or look on Freedom Card Board and this site at how many collectors are posting and lurking), it has just evolved into what it is today and it is what it is.

The market has evolved (as it always does). Sometimes I think people long for the "good old days" that maybe never were. The Internet, eBay and TPG (for all of their problems) brought a greater interest, lots more money, and with it, a boatload of cards that many of us had never seen. We may not like what the little pieces of cardboard cost now, but who really wants to go back to the days of waiting for your monthly card newspaper to arrive in the mail with the same few overgraded and overpriced cards? And then when you finally found the card you wanted in an ad and made the overpriced long distance call to say that you'd take it, found out that it had been sold the week before? To each their own, I suppose.

decline
 

I'm definitely not saying anything new here, but it's simple evolution that is occurring in the hobby. Sports cards started out just as a collecting hobby and also as a 'bonus' and a catch for people to buy other products (tobacco products). Over time the industry has changed quite a bit and eventually money has had a great deal to do with it. As said before, technology has most kids attention and since everything seems to be about money...Card companies do what they have to do to make more money...and that means make sports cards more interesting and valuable. No wonder people 'invest' in cards...it only makes sense.

Overall, I think it's pretty simple...evolution in the industry is where our issue lies :D

Are there?

As a kid the price of a pack of cards mimic'd a price of a candy bar 5 cents and then 10 cents (starting in 69 I think).

I think a candy bar is now around $1, the few times I see Cards at a convenience store of five and dime, they seem to be in the $4 range. Too much, I think for a little kid.

I believe there are a good amount of low dollar packs that are still out there. Problem is, who wants them? Like stated before, even the kids want the big dollar packs because that is where the hits are.

To me, that hit the nail on the head. Cards just arent exciting to a lot of the young people nowadays.

What decline? Not only is the hobby way bigger than it was when I started in the early 70s, but I'm having more fun than ever ...

Imo the decline of bb card hobby was when people started collecting cardboard instead of players.

In the overall scheme of things, has there really been a decline in the hobby? Or does it just seem that way because of the boom in the late 80's-early-90's? And honestly, was that a boom of collectors, or investors?

I'm leaning towards investors, which really means as far as us collector's go, nothing has changed. This industry has always been for the collectors. Now why constantly compare the current state of things to a time when everything was inflated due the amount of people who viewed the hobby as just another gimmicky get rich scheme, as opposed to seeing it for what it really is, just hobby?

We have cable TV, many video games, and the internet...with various ways to access all of them. That is baseball's competition, and card collecting's competition.

My kid spends his free time posting videos on YouTube, playing Xbox live with his friends(if you don't know what this is, it is a way to play video games with your friends while each is in their own house); and watching movies like Hall Pass on cable! He also plays travel baseball, but doesn't even watch baseball.

Back in the day, cards only had to compete with Andy Griffith, reading books, or playing board games.

If I were a 13 year old kid and was in my family room and choosing between reading a book, watching Andy Griffith, or collecting cards of my favorite sport...cards has a great shot of winning that battle.

If collecting and looking at cards is put up against seeing a great pair boobs on TV, or put up against getting to shoot people with scoped rifles on your TV while bantering with your friends on a headset....cards lose all the time.

This is a great thread with too many great posts to quote, and I agree with many of you, but I don't look at it as the hobby is in decline. I probably live in a small world :o but IMO it seems that there is always an increasing amount of people getting into collecting- you see it here on Net54 even.

Anyhow, this is a great conversation- I love all of the different points of view, thanks !!

Sincerely, Clayton

If anybody doesn't believe that the hobby is in decline, then I invite them down to Houston for the weekend. We'll head over to the TriStar show and I won't say a word. The adult to kid ratio will tell you everything you need to know.

With fewer and fewer kids getting into the hobby, YES it's in decline.

Demographic change
 

I tend to agree - yes - kids into this hobby are on the decline. And kids are more likely to pursue current modern cards.

However, adults that are into this hobby may be on the upswing. Adults have more money to spend, and adults are more likely to go after vintage cards. Vintage card sales are very healthy.

Decades ago, it was a kid driven hobby, and adults more or less scoffed at collecting. Now, the demographics have changed.

Look at coin collecting. Kids play virtually no factor in the hobby. Yet it is the biggest hobby industry in this country - adult driven.

Conclusion - go after quality vintage cards, preferrably upper tier HOFers, and don't worry - great investment - and very healthy segment of our hobby.

I understand what you're saying and agree that it has become an adult driven hobby. However, w/o kids coming into the hobby, it is a declining hobby as there will nobody to take our place when us adults quit collecting. Most of us adults in the hobby collected when we were kids and something sparked our interests again as an adult (or if you're like me you just never stopped collecting in the first place). In other words, if one doesn't collect as a kid, it's very unlikely they're going to collect as an adult.

I don't agree. There will always be people filtering in and out of the hobby and the majority I know start in their late teens. Heck, many on this board started in their 30s once they got some disposable income.

I think the reason people are worrying about the kids is that's how most of us started. I started collecting in middle school and the beginning of high school, and I was really into it during that time when I was trying cards like crazy with my friends and buying cheap packs from the corner drugstore. Kids didn't care about bent corners then. Then the prices of cards started exploding, and it was the Rookie card boom. I only had one card ever that I put into a top loader at that time, which was a real luxury then. It was a 84 Donruss Mattingly which was the crown of my collection. I didn't pull it from a pack, but actually saved up my allowance and got it from a card shop. I'm thinking I spent ~$40 on it, but my memory is pretty foggy on this. I had it graded last year and it came back a PSA 7, probably not worth the plastic around it, but still with a lot of sentimental value.

So even now when I got back into the hobby in my 30s like a lot of others, I had this memory of collecting as a kid to drive me. I think many others have had similar experiences. Their concern is that sure, I got back into this hobby in my 30s, but that's because I always had a latent interest in cards that I developed when I was a kid. However, I think it's simply a different time now, and we can't compare how things were when we grew up to how kids are now. People will get into collecting at different points of their lives now than how it happened in the past. There's always an inherent interest in many of us to collect (or hoard for others). The long history of cards and the story behind them will always drive people to be interested in them and eventually collect them.

for me
 

Great conversations and everyone makes good points.

Just as a point of reference, I collected as a kid in the late 1960s. I wasn't passionate it was just something to do with my friends, sort of like riding bicycles. Then, when I was around 33-34 yrs old I got hooked on vintage cards and have loved it since then. Maybe we are looking at it mostly the wrong way. Maybe the kids aren't the absolute answer for longevity of the hobby but more the 20 somethings through 30 somethings that get back into it, along with the old timers like Dan McKee, who never stopped doing it from when they were young tykes and are now in their later 40s. Maybe it has changed from mostly a hobby for kids to a hobby for adults? That is certainly the case for the pre-war stuff. No doubt due to the cost of some of the cards. Great thread and not one major argument.............yet :).

Cool Thread
 

Couple of things:

I think I have written about this in one of my hobby columns but as a reminder, when I used to go to my favorite card shop in the 1980's (H&H Hobbiies in Garfield, NJ) the kids and yes there were plenty of those then at the store, would buy the 1985 Topps packs and if Mattingly, Gooden, Big Mac, Eric Davis, Clemens, Puckett, etc did not come out then the rest of the cards were left on the counter.

Think of Mattingly as today's "insert" card and yes some things adapt but do not change.

This is a segmented hobby and yes for the most part the only thing most collectors care about are the "hits". Even my wife when we open boxes for the hobby column I write only cares about autographs and relic cards that she pulls. We opened an 1982 Donruss box for my b-day and she was bored in five packs. Of course, I got 5 Ripken Jr RC's out of that box so I enjoyed the rest of the box

As for kids, the barrier for entry to attend events is high. Back in the day the average show was $1-2 with shops in every town. My friend had one of the seven stores in Minot ND during the real hobby peak time.

This board, because of the vintage nature, does skew much older than FCB. At the national i was talking to a fellow dual board member and there is very little crossover between posters. The FCB posters skew younger, probably by at least a decade.