[billyb]

I am 67 years old, and have been collecting, on and off since 1984. My collection consists of mainly 1970 and 1980 cards, with some 60s thrown in, but not many. I have about 75,000 cards, and have decided to sell off my collection and always wanted to run a baseball card store, but in Northern Michigan, in a small town, just did not make any sense. But I wanted the experience at selling, so I got a space in our local antique store and with no advertisement, decided to just let happen what may happen.
I have been pleasantly surprised. I cannot tell you how many people, while looking for antiques, actually spent a good amount of time going though binders I have displayed, and looking at the stars in a display case. Sales are better then I thought, and now have collectors coming from a good distance away, just because in northern Michigan, there is not many locations to buy cards.
Now, for the kids, another surprise. Many kids are not collecting, they are children of the 1980s youths, where their parents had a bad experience collecting in their youth. But these kids want to collect. I do not sell any modern day cards, I have some cards in the early 90s, but these kids do not care, they want to collect.
I have about 1000 sport flics of various years, and because of their movement, I decided to hand these cards out to the kids. The kids love them, I also had several boxes of 87 and 88 donruss cards, and if the kids were extremely happy, out came an unopened pack of cards for them to open.
The look at these kids faces is worth the freebees, but many times, the parents came back, or that very day, bought more cards from me for their sons, or daughters (yes daughters). I have been doing this for about four months and am having a ball.
So to make a long story short, I truly believe, this hobby is still strong, it just may need a little nudge in the right direction.
Just my experience.