Has your hobby ever been a negative?
 

I was reading a recent thread about buying on credit and it made me ponder this question - has your hobby ever became a negative thing in your life?

(Poll is blind)

I think it's actually been a positive for me. Since I've gotten back into the hobby about a year ago I read a lot more, anything from books or periodicals that are hobby, baseball, hockey or historically related and I spend less time watching television or going out for entertainment. Had I got involved in the hobby a few years earlier though when I was younger and not so financially responsible, it might have been a different story.

Not for me.. always positive thing in my life !

Big +1 for me

can i submit 2 answers?

My first 20 or so years in the hobby I don't think I ever paid more than $100 or so for a card...the last 15 yrs has been a different story! I have no family...am single...so I have no one to take care of besides myself. I had a minor scare where I(while drunk bidding) ended up with $35K of winnings from a major auction house...I had the cash...didn't exactly want to spend it all on cardboard...but was prepared to do so as a result of my actions.

This hobby has always been a positive for me and I have never bought anything on credit...and I never will.

Sure.

[QUOTE=ullmandds;1095055]I had a minor scare where I(while drunk bidding) ended up with $35K of winnings from a major auction house...I had the cash...didn't exactly want to spend it all on cardboard...but was prepared to do so as a result of my actions.QUOTE]

Thanks for the brutal honesty. Worst hangover ever.

1, 2 and C

Positive - I have made great friends, had a great time and learned a lot. The only minor downside is that my wife will occasionally complain about how excited I get looking forward to The National as opposed to the way I always dreaded taking the kids to Disney. :p

Dreading taking the family to the Evil Empire is just good common sense.

Collecting has been a source of friction with my wife at times but the positives vastly outweigh the negatives.

I was one of those guys responding to the credit thread that may have sounded nagative. This hobby has been nothing but positive from day 1. I truly believe it serves several purposes within my life. This hobby provides us a world away from our everyday and allows us to receive certain intangibles we each are looking for. Personally, it reminds me of when I was 8 and life was simple.

+100 on Disney

I can get some nagging about my spending from the Mrs. but she supports my hobby. Heck, she even went the National with me last year! :)

Thats awesome, did she enjoy it?

I have never bought anything I couldn't pay for with cash. Auctions can be addicting so you have to create a budget and rules to avoid the pitfalls. The only negative to the hobby is the disappointment in losing out on an item you really want. It is often a short term feeling that gets easily replaced by the next big WIN.

Not since the divorce....

She loved it! She has royally been on my case about booking a room for Chicago.. seriously :D

Yes. I got out in 2005 because it was no longer any fun. It's real important to do whatever it takes to have fun. I still have bad periods where I don't want to put up with any b.s. (kind of in one at the moment :)), but the solution is fairly simple - if something causes me angst, I simply avoid it. Given that we are on the internet, avoidance is really simple.

Back in the early 1990s, I had a banker buddy who got literally addicted to cards, busting packs in particular. Lost his wife and job and ended up in jail. I have had times of slight imbalance, but I think those are largely past. I don't go to bars, I don't chase women (other than my wife of 28 years) and I have been blessed enough to be able to spend a little on ball cards without it leaving a mark financially.

It is a really bad story for your buddy....

I am like you, i don t drink, never go to bar, don t chase women
(same wife since 10 years), i have 1 kid, my only addiction is little cardboard :) and i spend what i can on card...
when i buy a card it is because i have the money for paid it cash now.

giving up your wife and your freedom for baseball cards...how romantic.

Steve, I agree 100%! The hobby has been nothing but a positive for me. I only spend what I can pay for and although I buy with resale somewhat in mind it is far down the list of what I'm considering when buying. My wife has never given me any grief but then again she has not asked how much I've spent. ;)

I've met some great people, mostly enjoyed the internet chatter and relieved a lot of stress by escaping to similar concerns that I had when I was 8!

I have been involved in the hobby since the late 70,s and it has been nothing but positive for me. The hours of enjoyment are well worth the expense.

No.
 

I have slides and press photos, but no negatives. ;)

Always been positive for me, but I have experienced a lot of negativity in the hobby. Particularly when it comes to people wanting to be the King of a subject.

As a married guy, who is lucky enough to have a wife who enjoys the hobby as an outsider lookin' in, there is no negative side.
As a single guy before, meeting her, it didn't do much for my success rate pickin' up women. Given the size of the collection back then, it did even less for repeat visits:D:eek:

You sure it was the size of the collection that was the problem? ;:eek:

No, it might have been the SIZE of my bankroll after amassing the collection.:D

I love this hobby and an awful lot, and it is my favorite, and it has brought me and my Dad closer together.

However, when I was about 17, I found a nice block of cards from the 50's on Ebay, or so I thought. The seller told me he could give me a slight price break if I paid via check. Being the complete moron kid that I was, I happily agreed.

I had been working since I was 16, so I had saved about $2k, maybe a little more actually, and I sent him close to every penny of that. I am sure you all know where I am going with this ... no cards, and because I did not pay directly through Ebay, no restitution. The seller (who was in Canada) disappeared, but actually began selling under a different Ebay name. I told Ebay about him and what happened, but it made no difference, and he continued to sell. I was a stupid teenager, and learned never to trust someone whom you do not know, or have not done business with in the past.

Other than this one massively shitty experience ... NO REGRETS!!!!

Derek

hey arround 2003 i had the same situation with a canadian ebayer... i bought from this guy a C55 george vezina card and i paid with money order out of ebay.. i never received any Vezina card... The user ID was Crazy cannuck and his Name Jason bobbit... i will reme,ber his name for the rest of my life... at that time the price i paid for the vezina was a lot of money for me 800$..

After a lot of inquiries and menace i called the RCMP ( FBI for canada ) and after that Jason bobbit agree to send a refund to me..

I know this guy steal a lot of money from several collector....

It is probably my only Bad experience with this hobby

Nelson, I remember that seller - he had an entire raw T206 set on ebay.

I am glad you got some justice. Funnily enough, I think this happened to me in 2003 as well. Live and learn.

When i called the rcmp about this user, the rcmp had a lot of call about this guy

Jason bobbit crazy canuck Never deal with this guy !!!!!!!

I found crazy_canuck. Is that him? I want to put him on my s--t list.

The hobby has been mostly positive for me. I read more, and have something to keep me occupied when I am not at work. Though I must admit, it can get tough when I think about having funds for other activities. On a smaller budget with a family of four, I just have to stay disciplined.

I cant certify to you...my experience was long ago in 2003

The hobby has been very positive for me, except that, since I'm a very low end buyer on a limited budget and not a "player" in the auctions, some collectors don't really bother talking with me much at shows and/or online. :(

In terms of financially no - but in terms of enjoying the hobby yes.

I started collecting vintage cards in the mid 1970s as a kid going to antique shows, etc with my folks. By the time I graduated from college and grading came into the hobby I was kinda repulsed by it all. Locking my cards under plastic? How does one smell them? I didn't even get close enough to grading to really understand it - I just dropped out of the hobby.

Then in 2009 when I had to clear out my parent's place I took back all my cards. That's when I did research on 'protecting' them and found this forum.

My wife knew me before I got back into the hobby and now and she would vouch for me how much absolute enjoyment I get from finding/buying/occasional selling and especially meeting people on this site that I can now call friends.

Happy collecting everybody.

oh but don't out auctions.

:)

peter

Positive for sure. I never made vast amounts of money, but we had a decent middle class life for years and I had some extra to spend on cards when they were cheap. We had some savings, but my wife got sick and despite having "100% coverage" we lost all our savings. Things were tough for several years, but I held on to my collection. We came through it and the last few years I have been able to sell and trade and make a fair supplemental income. Retired now, but the cards I held on to stubbornly have appreciated enough to give us a retirement cushion. VERY good investment even though it was always a hobby and I never cared much about the money.

Re: The Original Point of this Thread
 

It has been a huge positive from the perspective of a guy who has always loved baseball and its history. When I was a kid, I learned the basics of dice and probability just for the purpose of creating my own tabletop game, and any players I wanted to put in it, before discovering Stratomatic in the early to mid-sixties. I played in high school, summer leagues, and most recently in the over 30, fast-pitch hardball league when in my early to mid-forties. My objective, I guess, was to "capture the game" to the fullest extent possible--sort of what Bill Mastro referred to as the "collecting gene." I always felt that the cards connected me to the player, and took me back to that time--the very history of the game I could hold right in my hands: Ruth, Cobb, Gehrig, Williams, Aaron, Mays and Mantle, and the like. An instant of those players' lives (I collect HOF'ers and stars) captured for decades or even centuries, and of course, the rarer the better!

The only downside is when I've been forced by economic circumstances to sell some of my collection--that can be tough, depending on how hard the card is or will be to replace (examples include '59 Bazooka Mantle, cut outside the dotted lines, and graded NRMT; '25 Exhibit Gehrig rookie; 1916 M 101 Sisler rookie). Should such circumstances befall any of you guys, I would recommend Bill Goodwin without hesitation to handle the sale through his auctions--top-flight, honest and reliable in all respects!

Good thread,

Larry

Larry, I played Stratomatic, APBA, and the old Cadaco game with the spinner for hours on end with a few friends. I never saw Larry Doby or Al Rosen play a single game, but I KNEW them. I had their cards and they were the backbone of my team. I remember winning the pennant in one 60 game season. Doby hit 15 HR tying Babe Ruth for the title and Al Rosen chipped in 14. This was about 1968.

Yeah, those were the days, Ken. If we weren't actually playing ball, we were playing Stratomatic for hours on end, picking teams from a mixture of current player cards, old time teams, and Strato's special hall-of-famers cards. We had 4 guys in my neighborhood who regularly participated, and we must have played a few hundred 50-game seasons, after which we'd have a whole new draft and restocking of players!

Great days!

Larry

It's disappointing when you loose your job or other issues come up and are forced to sell them to pay bills, especially when some of those bills were created from collecting :eek:.:o

OMG, Crazy Canuck...
 

When you started talking about a Canadian guy (I thought they were all so honest) ripping you off, I thought "Crazy Canuck" right away. That guy was nothing more or less than a crook and a cancer. I was really lucky to get reimbursed (in one of his above-board moments) for the $1500 he tried to stiff me on.... also about ten years ago. I wonder if the RMCP ever got him.

But that's almost the only neg I can come up with in my collecting since I resumed in 1999. Back in the 80s it truly was the wild west-- people are saints compared to those bad old days. But now I have (almost) nothing but good experiences to remember.

Tim