[Archive]

Posted By: Dan Bretta

Jim, I respectfully disagree that the PSA8 crowd is the backbone of the hobby. IMO the majority of hobbyists are the collectors who value the card over the number on a slab....and Barry's assessment of 1-2% is right on when considering prewar collectors. A good majority of prewar cards are difficult to come by in any condition that most collectors (99%)will take what they can find regardless of the number on the slab. Bruce may the only prewar collector I know of that will not include a card in his collection if it doesn't meet a specific grade. Of course I don't know anyone around my area that collects cards to put on a registry.

I gravitated towards vintage (vintage as far as I'm concerned is anything pre-Topps) cards because of the way the hobby was headed in the late 1980's....people were actually selling blocks of 100 Wally Joyner rookies as an investment And while that idea thankfully went into the toilet it was replaced by the card companies inserting short printed insert cards into packs. I still go to my local card shop to get supplies and talk to the owner who I've been friends with since the mid-80s, but it's really become more of a gambling parlor for adults buying boxes of cards hoping to pull 1/1 cards...you can see them sitting at the table opening the packs, keeping the inserts and just giving the cardshop owner the "regular" cards because they are "worthless".

I'm not denigrating anyone because I believe people should be able to spend their own money however they want to, but IMO the PSA8 registry crowd is just like the gambler hoping to pull the 1/1 card...they are aspects of the hobby, but they are by no means the backbone.