Now that the poll has been up for some time, I thought I would chime in with my interpretation of the results.
Currently close to 52% of the votes cast by, surpisingly, voters, indicated that 50% or more of their Prewar collections consist of cards of Hall of Famers. At the other end of the spectrum, about 38% voted that 24% or less of their Prewar collections consisted of Hall of Famers. And the final 10% or so collections rest in the 25% to 49% range.
What do I make of this info? To my eyes it certainly seems like the collecting focus has shifted to Hall of Fame collecting (Hall of Fame status was an easy way to delineate things, but I imagine if I were to add very popular players to the mix, for example Black Sox players, Hal Chase, certain other non-HOF stars, etc., the percentages in the 50% and above categories would be substantially higher still). The comparative rise in value of these cards, versus the regular schlubs, not only supports this apparent shift, but in my mind reflects the investment aspect that has come to dominate our little crevice of the card collecting hobby, just as it has definitely done so in the much more larger mainstream modern sports cards sector.
Also, in regards to the lower end percentages, folks that are more set, team, type, or budget collectors would likely fall into the 24% or less category, with the natural range for them falling in the 6 to 15% groupings, if hypothetically a collector would not pay any attention to the players when collecting. I have a feeling that this indicates, while still a popular avenue for Prewar collecting, an overall shift towards collecting Hall of Fame and very popular player cards. The ones who responded with posts commenting that they did not participate in the poll, because they didn't think of their collections in this fashion, etc., would likely be in this grouping.
If a similar poll had been conducted 10-20 years ago, I imagine that percentages would have skewed toward the lower end. Unfortunately my time machine has been on the fritz lately so it is unlikely that I will be able to slip in a poll thread to the beginning of this board or its precursors, so we will not know how exactly those collectors would have responded. If we were to push things back a decade or two earlier, pre-internet days, I feel strongly that the vast majority of folks would fall in the lower percentage ranges.
Just a few thoughts, perhaps share some of yours?
Brian
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