Guys, as I re-read my post, I know it sounded dire. I know in the future there will be card collectors, and very serious card collectors. We all would agree our hobby has retracted to an unpleasant extent. Looking back 30 years ago, everything was BOOMING. We can name some of the significant signs, easily: the dwindling number of brick and mortar baseball card shops, the scant number of card shows, periodicals that have ceased publication, combined with others, or shrunk.
However, on the plus-side, and it is a significant plus-side, we have a plethora of on-line hobby outlets. We happily have Net54baseball.com, providing us with a great outlet to voice our joys, sorrows, concerns, and remembrances. We have a very strong cadre of auction houses, from which we can buy, and sell. If said auction houses were not selling well, they would have switched to what was selling well. Most of my purchases have been on eBay; thus, the brick and mortar has evolved to on-line, making them a veritable highway of card shops.
As far as most kids today not knowing Mickey Mantle or Hank Aaron, well, that's really understandable. In my day, they knew who Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig were, but probably not Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson, Ted Williams (by the time he retired from managing), and Stan Musial. The passing parade does a lot to slowly drain the memory of the once-famous.
There's probably a lot more younger card collectors and fans of the past than I think there are. Still, there are more choices today that were unavailable in the past. In my time there was no fantasy football. I hear in some quarters that is quite the rage. As I wrote before, for many youngsters of a generation ago, their happiness was derived from their video game enjoyment. Those that loved collecting cards then were driven by the hobby periodicals that told them, in no uncertain terms, that they were holding onto gold, and their cards would all be worth a fortune some day---rookie card mania in the extreme. Sellers sold bricks of 100 Greg Jeffries, and other names that you could come up with in a flash. Years later, when those trusting young collectors tried to sell.......
Take heart, me buckos, collect what you love, and maybe someone else will want to buy it from you down the way. The major sports aren't going away; look what happened with all the frenzy over Aaron Judge last year; then too, look what happened to the frenzy over that pitcher, Stephen Strasburg (is that his name? Spelling?) I'd like to edit, but gotta go.
In a nutshell, the hobby changed in ways it had to, with professional grading, and a strong on-line presence. Some collectors could not, or would not, change with the times. Some have grasped it and flourished.
Bye. ---Brian Powell