Why do you collect?
 

I've gotten back into collecting T206's from 1909-1911 and was wondering what everyone here collects and why they do it. We all know (or most of us do) that you're probably better off buying stocks as an investment BUT this is a labor of love. So we buy what we love but what is the story behind our collecting?

Tell me yours!

I have always been a baseball fan and collected cards as a kid. When I got older, I gravitated more towards the T206, E901, and 1933 Goudy cards. The T206 cards strike me as very small, colorful works of art that really isn't seen today.

Very cool! And I agree with the T206 assessment!

Definitely a labor of love and a sacrifice for smarter alternatives. I'm an ecard guy so a different world from the Tcard guys, an image collector/type collector with centering OCD so I buy what appeals to me on a visceral level, I also try to keep my collection to 500 cards +/- to avoid my brain getting confused about my collecting goals.

I've always thought an ultimate Ecard collection would include a Master set, color run, back run, and a high grade Ecard set. Tough to say the least.

That being said, the most important thing for a collector is to love what you own and everytime you look at your collection, no matter what the content, brings a smile to your face.

I’ve been working on an answer to that question for years.

Nothing makes me happier than pulling out my pelican case after a month or so and seeing some cards that I honestly forgot about as they are in different locations. Makes me giddy inside.

Why do I collect?
 

For the chicks.

In a word, nostalgia. I try to collect things that are connected to my earlier days.

Back when I was a kid I had the Picture History of the Boston Red Sox, and read it twenty different times. So I need the players from that book.

Yaz hit a home run to win my dad a car when I was six years old. So I collect Yaz in particular.

In the first Red Sox game I went to, Freddy Patek hit 3 home runs and a double, so I need his 1980 Topps card.

I got into the story of the Brooklyn Dodgers when I was a teenager. So I collect those guys.

I have always felt the 75 mini set has a certain mystique, so I collect that.

I used to bowl at the Sammy White bowladrome as a kid, so I PC his stuff.

etc.

I collected as a kid, when I was 12 I completed the Topps 1960 set. My daughter had an interest also and she scored a T206 card in a Topps pack. That started my trek down the T206 rabbit hole. I only pick up a couple of cards a year but have fun looking at the cards. I am currently working on the 1954 and 1964 sets.

Collecting keeps me off the streets of Western New York. If I didn't collect I would be a menace to society.

Seriously, it's a nice diversion from the everyday pressures of life.

I love baseball. My older brother collected baseball cards. I started buying cards in 1965 and started collecting in 1967. I have never stopped. I have had a few pauses, but I have always treaured my collection, whether cards were worth pennies in the 70s or hundreds or thousands of dollars now.

Also, I have definitely been better off buying cards than stocks. This may not be true in the future, but for me at least, I would have never realized the gains in the stock market that I have in cards.

In the late 1960s like most kids I brought baseball cards because of the gum. I was not into collecting them. I remember we would put them on our bicycle wheels in the spokes with a clothespin. But mostly I played a game of pitch, it was like pitching pennies. You know the gambling game in which pennies are tossed against a wall, the winner being the person whose penny lands closest to the wall or topped the other penny. Pitching baseball cards was the same game.

While I did not collect baseball cards I did collect baseball photos. When I got married in 1976 my wife had some baseball photos she had discovered in 1968 many from the 1940s. This is the reason I started collecting cards.

You see I started looking into the photos we had collected. Going to baseball card shows to try and find more on the photos I had. It was in the late 1970s when I started going to card shows. At this one show I showed some of the photos to some old-timers. I recall them saying something like the photos match some baseball cards they had collected as kinds. I started looking for cards that matched the photos we had.

The first cards I collected matched one of the original photos I had. My journey began with these sets of baseball cards. Below are my first cards I collected to keep.
John

I collect because it brings me closer to the game I love - makes me feel like I own a piece of history and and a direct connection to the game itself. I am drawn to prewar memorabilia, photos, and cards mostly because they are among the few records we have for the players and the game of that time. Today, there are so many images, cards, and videos of the players and the game - and while that is amazing as a fan, it makes collecting more modern stuff less appealing to me due to that overexposure.

Also, I really enjoy displaying my stuff...rearranging and updating displays is a really fun hobby within the hobby for me. And the best part of it is hanging out in that space just soaking it all in.

I have collected all my life. Like many others here you are born to collect..

Like a couple of people have said, my two main reasons are nostalgia and diversion. Every time I scroll a new auction, there's that chance they'll have one of the cards I've been waiting on!

Also, like most everyone, I got back into collecting later in life after collecting for years as a kid. My first goal was to not repeat the mistakes of my youth, which is to say, don't collect for 5-10 years and end up with 100 cool cards and 3 closets full of crap.

So, I made a list of 100 specific cards I wanted to collect. I tried to mix in expensive, cheap, easy-to-find, rare and that list quickly grew to 500 cards of all sports and even some non-sport. But has stayed at the 500 mark for a couple of years now, so I hope it doesn't grow too much. (Yes, everyone once in a while something will catch my eye that's not on my list and I'll buy that. What are you gonna do?)

My venture into the collecting world started with the first long, fun walk through the woods and neighborhoods (in the days when moms actually allowed their children to go off on their own) to finally reach the stationery store and buy a pack of cards with my older brothers, and has always stayed interwoven in my life, come what may.

I see the pursuit as a cardboard time machine, whether that involves marveling at cards that came out before we were born (and sending you off to read about those times and players) or remembering your childhood baseball card escapades with your friends or thinking about your dad launching balls high into the air so you can perfect your Willie Mays 'basket catch' skills. So, yeah, nostalgia.

Yes, that's precisely it. Nostalgia is what prompted me back down the collecting rabbit hole because I have the collecting(hoarding?) gene.

I marveled at the cards that the older kids had in the schoolyard when I started first grade. These included Topps Flags of the World, TV Westerns and Zorro:

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I was awe struck by the 1958-59 Topps Hockey cards and 1959 Baseball cards when they hit the playground. By that summer I had the financial wherewithal to start buying and collecting the 1959 CFL cards myself. I then dabbled in each year's Hockey, Baseball and CFL cards together with certain non-sports sets such as Sports Cars, Spook Theatre and Civil War News. Then in the summer of 1963 a buddy and I went big time into amassing every single card we could get our hands upon and gathered up about 6500 different ones. But I then turned over my half of my collection to my buddy when I went off to boarding school in Kennebunkport, Maine in 1965. He then turned the collection over to the snot nosed kid across the street a few months later.

But the memory of those cards never left me. By 1969-70 I was looking back and wishing I still had the 1959 and 1960 CFL cards I'd had as a kid. And in 1979 as a young man with a good job I decided to re-amass the treasures - e.g. cards, comics, model kits - of my formative years.

It's snowballed from there. I have far more of all these items now than I ever imagined having as a kid. But possessing them has always brought me delight, and I've now reached the stage in my life where they bring me the comfort I envisaged they would one day (once I'm too old and grey to be the young punk hot rodder I was as a young man).

But I'm actually unhappy when I've not been able to add to my various collections for a year or two. Therefore I have of course frequently questioned my motivation. Sure they're a mental snapshot that provides me with a very real link to my younger days, but why am I so resistant to just letting go of bygone days? Am I actually addicted to collecting? Am I any less pathetic than an alcoholic or a drug addict? Well, at least this collecting business neither destroys my health nor kills brain cells. (Participating in various collectible forums actually helps me improve my writing skills!) And like I say, my collections now actually bring me comfort!

;)

To paraphrase Terence Mann in Field Of Dreams:

“America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But collecting has marked the time. These items, they are a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again.”

Personally, I find that modern life is so frantic, so immediate, so consuming, and so impermanent that I long for something more. I want to reach that constant that baseball represented to Terence Mann (and yes, I am aware that he is a fictional character, but don’t let the facts obscure the point).

The mere fact that these things we collect are tangible sets us apart from the non-collectors. My wife often asks me why I want to keep a card when I could sell it for a profit. The non-collectors like her will never get the appeal these things have for us collectors; it is almost mystical. These things were made with great ingenuity and effort and care. They were meant to be enjoyed in the physical world. Some were meant to be cherished as heirlooms. Many were not, which makes their continued existence 100 or more years later all the more wonderful. Why would generations of someones save a scrap of paper through two world wars, two pandemics, depressions, natural disasters, and so on just so I could look at it 110 years later?

Pondering these questions is one of the things that gives me respect and, yes, love for old cardboard. I often think about the journey that items have taken. To me, it feels reassuring. Even though someone’s children or grandchildren just did not care about and would just as soon throw away the items, there are strangers who do care about these artifacts and will preserve them. That's what I find redeeming about the process: we collectors are the Memory Alpha for these people, both the subjects of the items and the people who cared for the items, just as other collectors will be for us after we are gone. Little Howie McCormick is long gone but his back-stamped T206 collection lives on through the collectors who have his old cards and actively trade and discuss them on card chat boards.

Now, excuse me while I go watch Field Of Dreams again.

https://youtu.be/Xq3hEMUeBGQ?feature=shared

You've mentioned your wife's complete disinterest in your collections a number of times. What does she like then? Anything? Just spending money? Have you ever asked her whether you should channel your compulsiveness into being an alcoholic or drug addict instead? Would she be happier then if you had these more conventional adult pursuits? :confused:

Good point! I've never really dwelled upon being a conservationist of history myself but it's well worthy of consideration.

:)

Because I always have and, to quote Van Morrison, it's too late to stop now.

I collect purely as an addiction

and mostly Ruth and Jackson and oddittie cards but many times my addiction has had me by what ever is the Shiny item in front of me that I think is cool

1. To bring back, and retain, memories of my childhood.
2. To have attainable goals that I can make progress toward achieving.
3. To have events (auctions) to look forward to.
4. To acquire cool things now that will be increasingly scarce and valuable over time.
5. To diversify my assets.

I collect for many reasons, first and foremost the love of the game! My father introduced me to this wonderful hobby at a young age and vintage at that. I picked up the ball and ran with it. I collect my favorite team, players of significance to me and autographs. The possibilities of why one would collect are endless. Lastly I’d like to end that it makes me happy.


Danny

Collected as a kid, stopped for a long time and came back to it within the last 5 years. Started off as nostalgia, opening boxes from the 80's, seeing some of the designs brought back memories I had forgotten. Then I started buying cards I wanted as a kid and now I have certain things I PC, nothing crazy expensive, just stuff I like and enjoy.