Friends who don't understand pre-war collecting.

[sandmountainslim]

Just makes me want to shake my head.
I have a friend who is long time friend and plays in the same fantasy baseball league with me now/played in the same Little League with me 34 years ago and has collected cards since he was a kid. He collects Johnny Bench cards and has a pretty good collection of 70's thru modern cards mostly Topps. I try to talk bb cards with him and he likes my Dimaggio Exhibit and my Willie Mays cards and my Mantles and Hank Aaron cards as well as the Fleer Ted Williams stuff I have but when I try to talk T206 or anything from the pre-war era like my small Goudey collection he just turns up a nose at it all!
I was telling him about my T206 Gandil and the Cicotte card I got last week and I may as well been telling him about Soccer or WWE cards, "Nobody ever heard of those guys. Why would you pay money for them?" Nobody ever heard of them?? What baseball planet did you come from?
I need to start dissing his Johnny Bench rookie like he walked up with a Sammy Sosa collection
I had to rant to someone and ya'll are it

[BruceinGa]

I heard the same thing this morning at the Waffle House! Guys said they've never heard of those players.

[sandmountainslim]

Originally Posted by BruceinGa

I heard the same thing this morning at the Waffle House! Guys said they've never heard of those players.

Don't it just burn you up?? Lol it does me!

[bnorth]

Originally Posted by sandmountainslim

Just makes me want to shake my head.
I have a friend who is long time friend and plays in the same fantasy baseball league with me now/played in the same Little League with me 34 years ago and has collected cards since he was a kid. He collects Johnny Bench cards and has a pretty good collection of 70's thru modern cards mostly Topps. I try to talk bb cards with him and he likes my Dimaggio Exhibit and my Willie Mays cards and my Mantles and Hank Aaron cards as well as the Fleer Ted Williams stuff I have but when I try to talk T206 or anything from the pre-war era like my small Goudey collection he just turns up a nose at it all!
I was telling him about my T206 Gandil and the Cicotte card I got last week and I may as well been telling him about Soccer or WWE cards, "Nobody ever heard of those guys. Why would you pay money for them?" Nobody ever heard of them?? What baseball planet did you come from?
I need to start dissing his Johnny Bench rookie like he walked up with a Sammy Sosa collection
I had to rant to someone and ya'll are it

I actually think this is very common. People get stuck in one era of collecting and don't care about any other era. Post about modern cards on this forum and you would get the same response as posting about WWE cards. I think it is very normal really.

A good friend should at least act interested, I know when I bring up cards several of my friends act like they care.

[sandmountainslim]

Originally Posted by bnorth

I actually think this is very common. People get stuck in one era of collecting and don't care about any other era. Post about modern cards on this forum and you would get the same response as posting about WWE cards. I think it is very normal really.

A good friend should at least act interested, I know when I bring up cards several of my friends act like they care.

I went to a flea market (Collinsville Trade Day) saturday and a guy with a table of junk had a common rough 59 Topps on top of a stack of cards held together buy a rubber band....so naturally I hoped there were MORE fifties Baseball cards in that pile. I asked to see the stack and there was that 59 followed by about 35 cards of Brutus Beefcake, The Undertaker etc lol I guess his ploy SORTA worked but I didn't buy anything so it didn't work like he had hoped.

[BruceinGa]

10 or 12 years ago my wife and I would go to Scottsboro for Trade Day and Unclaimed Freight and made it once to Collinsville, lots of guns, chickens and goats, lol.

[conor912]

That doesn't surprise me one bit. I think a lot of collectors, probably even the majority, directly associate collecting with their childhood or players they've actually seen play or both. As hard as it may be to believe at times, I would guess that prewar collectors make up only a very small percentage of the overall sports collecting community.

[drcy]

Tell him that Bench was soft, playing with gloves and shin guards.

[Sean]

Originally Posted by conor912

That doesn't surprise me one bit. I think a lot of collectors, probably even the majority, directly associate collecting with their childhood or players they've actually seen play or both. As hard as it may be to believe at times, I would guess that prewar collectors make up only a very small percentage of the overall sports collecting community.

I agree. When people hear that I collect baseball cards, they ask me "who do you have?" I ask if they've heard of Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and Cy Young. Most of them haven't, but for those who do I tell them about or show them some cards.

I very rarely come across anyone who can identify lesser hall of famers, let alone Gandil and Cicotte. The last time someone at work said that he too collected, it turned out that he had a Derek Jeter rookie. That's why I'm here on Net 54. Without these guys I would never have anyone to talk with about pre-war cards.

[Section103]

I'm glad for all of them that just don't get it. I don't need the extra bidding competition.

[BruceinGa]

Originally Posted by Section103

I'm glad for all of them that just don't get it. I don't need the extra bidding competition.

Great point!!

[abothebear]

There was a steep learning curve for me when I first started looking into pre-war cards, and I collected cards for most of my childhood. And if I didn't have the internet I probably would have given up. Anything before Topps was fog in a land with little to get your bearings with. Building a context to understand it takes time and effort. And it helps to have an entry point. I started by looking for pre-war Cardinals HOFers, the team I was a fan of and a franchise that happened to have colorful characters and a winning history in parts of the pre-war era. From there I learned more history, and then knowing some history helped understand some of the other cards, and back and forth, etc. In some ways, though the sport and the medium are the same, pre-war card collecting is as different from modern card collecting as stamp collecting is.

[Bocabirdman]

Originally Posted by Section103

I'm glad for all of them that just don't get it. I don't need the extra bidding competition.

Exactly.....Phil Lesh, the bass player for the Grateful Dead, has wondered aloud, pre-decriminalization, "Do you think reefer would be as expensive as it is these days if we smokers didn't turn on so many damn people back in the day?".

[glynparson]

Gets my approval.

[frankbmd]

Originally Posted by conor912

That doesn't surprise me one bit. I think a lot of collectors, probably even the majority, directly associate collecting with their childhood or players they've actually seen play or both. As hard as it may be to believe at times, I would guess that prewar collectors make up only a very small percentage of the overall sports collecting community.

If you're old enough, prewar is your childhood.

[btcarfagno]

Originally Posted by frankbmd

If you're old enough, prewar is your childhood.

That you Frank?



Tom C

[Nashvol]

I only dabble in prewar, but several years ago I asked a vendor at a local card show what his thoughts were about T206s and he said, "Good luck - most of them are fakes." I had been steered to him for his expertise.

My budget, not his comment, keeps me from delving deeper into them. I love the historical cornerstones of the hobby and the expertise of the members of this forum...

[conor912]

Originally Posted by frankbmd

If you're old enough, prewar is your childhood.

True that. My grandfather was born in '31 and remembers collecting '38 Goudeys. He still calls them "the cards with the funny heads".

[toledo_mudhen]

Pre war refers to Vietnam..... Right?