Posted By:
Bruce BabcockIf anything, cards were more celebrated "back then," in a prior century, in a land far away. The $25,000 T206 Wagner card was discussed in the "Peanuts" comic strip. Dealers went on nationwide buying trips, advertising in newspapers in major cities and setting up in hotel suites to buy material from the public. There were more hobby publications and more shows. Big shows with tons of vintage material and far less corporate presence. Shows with live auctions. The auctions were reserved for unusual items that were hard to price, not just standard dealer inventory that wasn't selling.
You could buy cards in person from Bill Heitman and Lew Lipset and others. These guys literally wrote the book about our hobby. Collectors may know about more cards now, but they don't, as a rule, know more about cards. Obviously I'm not talking about the many knowledgeable contributors to this forum.
These guys who brought the fake Wagner to Connelly would have been laughed out of the building at a show in the 1980s. Today they get newspaper coverage, HBO coverage, an ebay live auction, etc., as though this were a true controversy. Ebay dominates the business to a great extent yet no one there knows or cares a thing about cards. Ebay has made it easier to peddle junk to uninformed consumers. Some grading companies are unable to correctly identify the cards they are grading. The stakes are higher, the transactions are easier but the overall knowledge level is lower and the opportunities for fraud are greater.