Quote:
Originally Posted by Bigdaddy
That's the thing, Brent. If all cards were valued at $1, then we wouldn't have a National Convention, local card shops and shows, Net54, supplies for displaying and preserving our collections, access to other collectors to buy-sell-trade with, and all the other venues we now routinely use to build our collections. Without the money factor, many people are just not interested. It's no coincidence that the rise of many of the things mentioned above paralleled the rising value of sportscards. I'm sure there are plenty of other things to collect - old buttons, matchbook covers, milk bottles, Slurpee cups, cigarette butts, rusty nails, etc., that the 'investors' have not infiltrated. And the other thing with devalued cards, many of them would just be thrown out - there would be no new 'finds' as they would be sent straight to the dump.
Money in the hobby is not all bad.
And I'm a collector, just one that has learned to take the good with the bad as far as money entering the hobby.
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The problem with this statement is that essentially it’s not at all accurate.
There was a hobby long before the National Convention, local card shops and shows, and early collectors had no problem finding cards as well as other collectors to trade with, all before money was a factor at all. They also preserved much of the supply of what exists today for prewar cards, and again, they had no trouble doing this despite no hobby supplies for the most part existing.
And guess how much fraud was in the hobby then??
These were the actual “collectors” in their truest and purist form, not the modern investa-collector who thinks there needs to be money or the desire for profit just to have interest in the hobby. Unlike many here, they did it for just the love of cards. They existed before, and certainly, they can exist now despite how nefarious the “hobby” has become, which includes the endless contemporary influx of investors who care nothing whatsoever about actual cards.