Quote:
Originally Posted by Snapolit1
Wow. . . I think you guys are making this a lot more complicated than it has to be.
Charlie Chaplain's last great movie was 1940. 78 years ago.
I was in Port St. Lucie last week for the very first day of the Mets Spring training. The parking lot was crowded by 9 am. By 10 am all of the fences were lined with people including many many young kids holding cards, caps, and other stuff screaming for autographs. Young kids running in jerseys from field to field trying to see the top stars. All holding something to be signed.
I didn't think to ask any of them if they knew who Charlie Chaplain was.
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Er...Babe Ruth hit his last home run 83 years ago and most little kids don't know who he is either. They also line up for movies today and ask movie stars for autographs. Not sure how this is relevant.
My point was simply that Ruth and Chaplin as cultural figures are about equalyy recognizable to the general public today. Most people have probably never seen a Chaplin film (or a Ruth home run of course) but could tell you who he is if you showed them a picture. So its odd that cards of one are worth a ton while those of the other aren't. There are a lot of reasons which we all know why that is the case of course, but they all really boil down to the simple fact that American kids grew accustomed to trading baseball cards rather than movie cards. As American kids (and future adults) no longer have that association, this distinction will likely be less and less important. 200 years from now somebody interested in 20th century antiques probably isn't going to value baseball cards per se as highly as we do above other stuff.