[FrankWakefield]

ctown... I was bicycling in 1964, doing the same thing. Coke bottles brought 4 cents, Pepsi and RCs 3 cents. I could find them in ditches along roads... I'd check the ditches on Saturday mornings, and usually get enough bottles to get 6 to 8 packs of cards...

And I read the posts.

An old collector of motor cars once explained to me that the value of Model T's peaked a few years ago, when men reaching retirement with spare money could indulge themselves by buying an old car they'd once had... He said the demand bubble peaked with that demographic. And that as those guys died off, the demand for those cars decreased a bit, and prices fell. (I never drove a Model T as a kid or as a first car, so I'm not as interested in having one as someone who did.) I understand that it isn't the same with ball cards. None of us saw Christy Mathewson pitch. (My great uncle did tell me about catching a train up to Detroit to pick up a car to drive back down to Kentucky. He went to a Tigers game, he told me about seeing Cobb getting a hit off of Walter Johnson, and stealing a base...) So we'll still collect Mathewson cards, and the old cards. But there is a slight effect to card collecting. Will any of you admit that you draw the line at the 20th century, and don't buy Old Judges?

There are collectors out there who draw the line at 1952, because of the big Topps, and collect only forward from there. Those guys don't look at this board. We here aren't a fair sampling of ball card collectors.

The crass, hard-hearted, cynical side of me makes me think that if folks would invest in an education then they'd see that pouring money into a ball card collecton isn't investing. Not even if you want it to be.