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Posted By: warshawlaw

The rose-colored glasses slip on every now and then around here and we all look back to the days of cheap cards and cameraderie...and it is selective memory at its best. The card "market" has always been driven by the same elements; they just used to be smaller money elements. I've been seriously into cards for 28 years (I consider running dealer tables regularly at shows in 1978 to qualify me as an "Old Timer" even if I was only 12-13 at the time) and the rivalry and competition for good cards has never been absent. The borderline personalities have always been there too. We just have a more sophisticated marketplace with lots more information and opportunities for communications today. The supply-demand-desire-behavior issues are the same as they ever were.

We've hashed and re-hashed the slabbing issue around here. Some people are never going to accept a third party opinion system, no matter what its merits. Some "old timers" have their own ideas about grading that don't comport with the slabbers' ideas and feel that their inventory and/or collections have been devalued as a result. Some people have been burned by that system and justifiably want no part of it. Some people have been helped by it and support it. Regardless of where you fall in the spectrum, the market for vintage cards is firmly in favor of the slabbing concept; the numbers prove it. All of the high-priced vintage cards that attract our attention of late (Baltimore Ruth, T210 Jackson, CJ Jackson, T206 Wagner, etc.) have been sold slabbed. That in and of itself speaks volumes. Those of you who can and would plunk down five or six figures for a card can answer this one (cause I sure ain't one of you ): would you do it if the card was not guaranteed to slab or already slabbed?

The truth, regardless of acceptance of it, is that anyone holding prewar cards purchased more than a few years ago has been helped immensely by the third party grading concept. The slabbers have driven a lot of the price growth we've seen. I don't think that's bad or good in and of itself. Both positions have merit. I LIKE having an endless auction on Ebay, big National shows, devoted publications, and not being made fun of by my peers for collecting cards, none of which would be where it is today without slabbing. I DISLIKE how much the cards I like cost, how many crooks and scamsters are drawn into the business and how much buying, selling and trading them is like handling a stock portfolio. Not much to be done about any of it, though. Technology marches on, the market has its own force, and not even the continuing saga of sleaze emanating from PSA will dampen things for long. The folks decrying the rot of the business from slabbing and big money are a bit too Luddite for me; the folks buying plastic and not cards too dumbed down for me. There is a compromise in the middle, which most people strike pretty well.

I guess what I am long-windedly trying say as an Old Timer and a current collector is that I share the pain of my fellow travelers from the good old days who miss the ability to collect it all if only it can be found and feel the frustrations of the forward-looking nouveau collectors when being chided with tales of the good old days. The old days of card collecting are gone and are not coming back unless there is another Great Depression (and none of us want that). Accept it and move on, fellow old farts. But you young whippersnappers, show some respect, you might learn something