[jchcollins]

The hobby is in many ways different than the sport(s) from which it's subjects are drawn, and as was insinuated earlier - the history of the hobby and especially the mainstream, self-aware hobby (IMHO, after about 1980) of course exerts its own influence - and in many cases this is based on sometimes random preferences derived from hobbyists - many of whom are indeed old white guys. I digress:

I collect mostly postwar vintage, simply because while I could choose to pour significantly more financial resources into things like prewar or modern speculation - at some point I stop because I can't get past what I perceive as ridiculous prices to pay for single pieces of cardboard, when in my heart of hearts I realize that anything "old" related to baseball instantly seems cool to me and makes me feel like a kid again. But even with postwar, the general theme of the OP's post rings true. If you followed only whose cards were hot, you would miss out most of the time on players like Frank Robinson, Joe Morgan, Steve Carlton, and a host of others. To me this is where it seems my grass roots collecting background was in many cases more helpful back in the day (late 80's, early 90's) - I didn't know much of the organized "hobby" and it's existence outside of each month's Beckett arriving at my door. So I based my preferences for what I wanted to collect in vintage cards (again, mostly 50's and 60's - prewar cards weren't unheard of when I was a kid, but they were more expensive than drugs...) on what I read of baseball history. An example that I think ties in well here - and nothing today against this player - but when I was like 11 or 12, I would have put Duke Snider at the top of the list in terms of famous '50's players. I had his book, met him and got his autograph at a card show. In my mind he was every bit Mantle's equal. Popular sentiment today would say otherwise, of course, and that is very much borne out in the price of The Duke's cards. But that's what you miss if you go only on what is only popular in the hobby vs. what you might have read about history.