I am poor. Thirteen years ago I got back into the hobby I loved as a kid. I wandered into a card store and discovered I could buy the cards from the 80s, 70s, and 60s I wanted but rarely saw back in the day, and for less than they would have cost me in 1992. I spent $5 a week building a collection of stuff that meant something to me for nostalgic reasons or because of the team I followed. If I skipped a week, I had &10 for the next. I got complete sets of 84, 85, and 86 Topps for $2 a $5 each. i soon discovered a Gold Medal Foods Ducky Medwick on eBay for $15. I couldn’t believe that someone as poor as me could acquire a pre-war HOFer. This led me to Net54 and a whole new world I never dreamed of having access to. Then I found a Ty Cobb without the Cobb price tag, and a Sisler, and a Ruth. And I eventually put together the whole Gold Medal WS set. It was great fun for a while. Now, all that stuff is 10x what it was ten years ago. Which is good for the stuff I already have, but bad for the $5 a week budget. I’d like to say my situation has also improved ten-fold and a $50 per week budget would be nothin to me. But unfortunately I can’t say that. Instead, what I’ve tried to shift to is trading. And that has been a blast. The trouble is that it is very time consuming. I often have to take extended breaks. Why do I write all this? I don’t know. Maybe just to recognize the OP’s frustration about how the hobby changes and that there are consequences - and that it is kind of lousy when you are in a groove with it and it all makes sense for you and then it gets turned upside down. If you are limited in how you can enjoy the hobby, and the hobby changes on you and messes with your limits, then you’ve lost your hobby, and the loss is real. But sometimes there are ways to pivot and discover a new angle to take and still find a similar enjoyment. I liked what that 60s Post Cereal set collector is up to (not for me, but I like the idea).
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