Baseball Cards Top Five Darkest and Brightest Moments

[iggyman]

Lovely Day (fellow prewar card aficionado's),

Buster Olney had a column the other day ranking the Dodgers bankruptcy as one of the "10 worst chapters in Major League Baseball history.”
That got me to thinking...........hmmmm, what are the top "five" worst and best moments in baseball card history??? Perhaps, we can reach some sort of Net54 consensus (yeah right!).

Okay, let us start the rankings. I'm sure (some of) you ivy league guys can come up with a way better list, but here is my best shot after five minutes of pondering. On a side note, I had an easier time coming up with "bad things" that have happened in the hobby as opposed to "good things" and on another side note, all of the bad stuff is from recent history and most of the good stuff is quite old. (guess the world is going to end afterall....).

DARKEST

1. The Maestro fiasco/betrayal.
2. T206 Museum / Patrick Chan and his OLD MILL overprint deception.
3. Demise/extinction of baseball card shows & stores.
4. Over supply of baseball cards (1980's, 1990s, 2000s...)
5. The words "investment" and "baseball cards" in the same sentence.

honorable mention (Barry Halper, high prices, card doctors, and the Topps 1963 Pete Rose counterfeit rookie cards).

BRIGHTEST

1. Decision to put cigarette picture cards in tobacco products.
2. Grading companies .
3. Decision to pull the T206 Honus Wagner card from distribution.
4. Creation of Net54 and its predecessor Full Count.
5. Ebay .

Honorable mention (National Convention, Hobby pioneers, publication of Trader Speaks, and Topps 1952 high numbers in the Hudson River).

[vintagecpa]

Darkest:

1. High-Quality Printers (Counterfeits).
2. Too many cards and companies after about 1980.
3. Beckett Price Guides. It turned every casual collector into a dealer.
4. All card shops going online. I miss the block and mortar card shops.
5. Refractors and inserts. It turned collecting into a Magic side show.

Brightest
1. eBay
2. Grading Companies. I can't imagine spending big money on a card I don't know is real.
3. Finding out how many vintage cards still exist.
4. Obviously Network54
5. Selling my 1985 Topps McGuire Olympic card for $100 in the late 90's.

[jeffmohler]

I am too new of a collector to come up with a list of 5 for best/worst, but I will vote for Net54 as one of the top 5. My best memory was seeing the Skydash find play out in real time right here on Net 54.

I suspect that Net54 has been instrumental in helping Ted and some of the others put together their studies of T206. I am sure that the T206 scholars could have done it the old fashioned way (snail mail/email), but many of their theories were confirmed by putting their questions out to a broad audience.

Jeff

[abothebear]

How about for darkest, the introduction of the factory set. I believe Topps started in '86, maybe Dunruss a few years earlier.

[novakjr]

Originally Posted by abothebear

How about for darkest, the introduction of the factory set. I believe Topps started in '86, maybe Dunruss a few years earlier.

I believe Topps did a factory set in '74.

[perezfan]

Seems funny to see "the demise of Card Shops" on the Darkest list, and "Ebay" on the Brightest list. The "former" likely would not have happened if not for the "latter". So there's a bit of irony there...

But I understand the sentiment, as I miss the old Card Shops too.

I would say that the over-abundance and mass-production of card issues from the 1980s - 2000s was the most damaging aspect. It not only drove masses of collectors into apathy mode... it also "cheapened" the hobby. Or at least that's the perception it conveyed.

[U240robert]

Originally Posted by novakjr

I believe Topps did a factory set in '74.

Yeah they did !
They also had 'presentation' sets from as far back as the early 60's.
Although not sold to the public they were given out by Topps.

[novakjr]

Darkest

1)counterfeits
2)scammerish grading companies and authenticators
3)Too many brands. And then those brands each having 5-10+ sub-brands, including inserts(I have no problem with the idea of inserts as they were done pre-'91)
a)Parallels
b)Any insert that requires something to be cut up(jerseys, bats, auto's cut from other cards, so on and so on..)
c)Autographs of every person ever associated with the game in packs.
4)Card shops going "solely" online, and high shipping prices.
5)Publications and price guides dictating the hobby, rather than simply reporting it...

Brightest

1)the creation of cards in general.
2)Grading Companies and authenticators
3)Competitive brands and inserts/autographs as originally concieved.
4)ebay and online shops as they basically made regional material available to everyone.
5)Anything Hobby related(publications, conventions, Net54, blogs, the Standard Catalog, so on and so on)

With this hobby, every bright thing usually gets abused and leads to or turns into a dark thing, and then those dark things eventually lead to the creation of new bright things, which in turn get abused and creates a dark thing... It's an endless cycle of innovation and corruption.. Basically, Abuse and overabundance.