[dougscats]

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