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Posted By: John

The Registry:

As for a place to show off your collection you could do that here, or with a simple web page. The registry is not about sharing it’s about climbing a social ladder. It’s about my car is bigger and more expensive than your car, look at me look what I can afford and you cant. It's pure and simple keeping up with the joneses. If you think its anything more than that your fooling yourself.

One of the funniest things to me about the registry, it’s like a retarded high end country club with the very wealthy at the top of the clubhouse surrounded by any “Joe” who could dig up a driver both waiting for tee times. There are no guidelines what so ever. I love how many sets are registered with 2 or so cards for a 500+ set giving a completion percent of less than 1%. These guys are of course listed right next to the heavy hitters funny stuff. Leon should list each on of his type cards he’s probably working on at least 200 diff sets right now.

I’m not too impressed with people with these ultra-high grade collections. For the most part (some exceptions) these collections aren’t collected they are delivered. Collectors put them together with virtually unlimited budgets working with a huge network of dealers. These dealers find these cards then deliver them to the collectors assuming they can afford the card when it is received. Am I impressed with the high-grade card it self absolutely, Am I impressed with the collector who has it most of the time the answer is no.

It’s easy to assemble or obtain most anything when funds aren’t limited, as it is for most of us. What really impresses me is when collectors working with normal budgets track down and obtain nice collections that they enjoy and are passionate about. I find these people having more reverence for their less than high grade cards than the guy with his stack of mint 9’s. These are the people who have kept the hobby alive and will continue to keep it alive after all the hype is dead and gone. And the people with the heavy wallets move on to the next big thing.