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Posted By: Cardtarget

Apparently I'm allowed to post here Leon? Note that I never posted this or responded in this thread. In fact, I didn't even know this thread existed until 5 minutes ago. My name is Mike Masinick.

Here's the deal:

If CardTarget isn't for you, that's fine. I certainly respect that many of you have MUCH more experience dealing with vintage cards than we do. If you have the cash to spend at Mastronet auctions and the time to do the research and you enjoy your collection, you are not our target audience. No hurt feelings, I completely understand!

To understand why/how CardTarget works you have to understand a lot about where we came from. Most of our users are people who got into eTopps cards. For those of you that don't know, eTopps cards are made by the Topps company and are stored in their "vault" and bought and sold online. That whole concept was modeled after the stock market and started back in 2000.

For the most part, eTopps cards lost a lot of value. Many people lost a lot of money by purchasing these eTopps cards for $9.50 from Topps and then they can only sell them for $2 a few months later. The weird thing is, they kept buying them for $9.50. Why? Because the concept of eTopps is very fetching to a lot of people in the internet generation. Being able to speculate, buy and sell, have no shipping, etc was perfect for a lot of people looking for a hobby they could enjoy at work, at home, and on the road without having to make daily trips to the post office and have closets full of cards and a nagging wife asking them why they have a full basement.

Fast forward 5 years and here we are. CardTarget has taken a lot of the negative things about eTopps and replaced them with a "marketplace" where you are buying a share in a card that likely isn't going to drop in value. You can build a collection of solid high grade stuff as long as you can sacrifice the ability to pick it up and look at it every morning. This is not an investment opportunity... It's an avenue for a new class of collector. It bears saying again that CardTarget was never intended for members of this message board. But I very much appreciate the help I've received from many of you. I will now change my username since it is apparently met with aggression from the moderator. It was not my intention to invade this forum or use it for any advertising purpose. In fact, I'd prefer you all stay away from CardTarget for a few months until we streamline the processes and get the market to a more advanced state. =)

Feel free to email me with any questions. mike@cardtarget.com

Bottom line: Many people enjoy it and it provides them an outlet and a community. You might not be one of them, but don't discourage those of us who do enjoy online collecting from getting into vintage cards. It's all in the name of enjoyment.