Maybe there's something unique about sports cards / memorabilia and it's collectors that shape what should and shouldn't be a rule for collecting...it's devotees seem to believe that a set of rules exist, have always existed, and it's a crime to see the paradigm differently.
Funny, I don't remember too many of the posters that have been on knife's edge in this thread, feeling similarly about collectors from the early 1900's cutting down their cards to fit in whatever holder they were working with...
From needing to fit albums, or their wallets, or sections of wall that they pinned whatever formation they desired.
I wonder if anyone walked by and called them selfish, or monstrous for their actions? Oh go on, now you're going to tell me they just didn't know better, that collecting then was different...
No shit. And it's different today, and will be different in 30 years time.
What about presentational bats cut down to a certain dimension before being adorned with silver and other ornate encumberances. Destroyed, or altered to fit a desired memorabilia design? Ahh, but if only ALL bats of ALL time had been kept, we could ALL be swinging and feeling their weight.
Sword collectors don't all just collect entire swords. Japanese Tsuba are enormously popular and seen as art themselves even though they form just one part of the sword.
Similarly do we condemn a family who break down the diamond tiara that some exceptionally wealthy member once owned, but which now forms rings given to daughters and bracelets and necklesses that so very many can enjoy.
Surely a Tiara is much more magnificent. It also has less relevance to today.
That Ruth bats and Gehrig gloves should exist is wonderful, and I fully hope that a number survive intact for eternity. I'd be interested to know out of an entire American generation of kids how many ask to go view them in a museum in their lifetimes.....could we guess less than 1 tenth of 1 percent.
What if 10 times that number owned a piece of history themselves and that they shared that feeling, that connection, to their next generation?
Maybe that doesn't matter to some here, that people don't know what's good for them and thus we should just do some things because it's the right way to do it.
I'd answer that by saying this.
Most collectors of today who grew up in the 50's - 70's never once stopped to think that they were doing something awful by folding their cards in half to fit a pocket, that watching them tear into pieces in their bike spokes was some sort of assassination, that drawing glasses on the faces of hated rivals or ones own name or other designation would somehow be a besmirching of the sanctity of the paper.
Oh those precious millimeters of border to each card - what have you done to me elastic band, what have you done!!!
They've only grown to treat this stuff so incredibly deferentially over the last 40 years. That's a damn new phenomena in the history of all things collecting and surely not the last word, no matter how big an expert or devotee you might think you are.
Only a precious few collected with any great long term holding plan for the first 80 years of sportscards production, and condition was no barrier to the enjoyment of them nor was passing judgement on how previous owners had kept their own collections alive at all important.
But geeze were precious these days.
Better slab everything up boys, the PSA / SGC / BGS baseball bat boxes that will survive being shot into space are only around the corner.
Perhaps there's time for a few to buy everything up so they can save collectors like myself, from myself.
Here's hoping.
