Posted By:
Eric BrehmI'm Eric Brehm, aged 49, married with three teenage children, living in a suburb of Boulder, Colorado. I worked for 20 years as a government consultant and research statistician in the computer engineering field and am now semi-retired.
I re-entered the hobby this year after a 20 year hiatus, and have been working mostly on the 1933 Goudey set, and more recently have taken an interest in T206 as well. I collect cards for enjoyment but also view them as an investment of sorts; I certainly do hope they will hold their value in the coming years.
T206 is particularly impressive to me. I realize that some veteran collectors might harbor a bump in their cranium about the excessive amount of attention that is paid to this particular set, often to the exclusion of all else. But it is what it is. It is to baseball card collecting what Mount Everest is to mountain climbing: it is there, it is big, it is beautiful, it is mysterious, it is the king of its domain, and it is very, very challenging. I can't imagine I would ever be able to collect the whole set but it is fun to work on it anyhow -- the journey in this case being perhaps more important than arriving at the summit.
After 20 years away, I am amazed by how much the hobby has grown, pleased to see the emergence of professional authentication and grading services (not a perfect system, but it certainly makes it easier to buy and sell with confidence), and virtually stunned by the incredible growth in value that has occurred for quality material. I have made some new friends who have been helpful to me, particularly cmoking who has been very generous with his knowledge of the Goudey issues. And I am happy to see that Barry Sloate is still active and doing well -- I always thought among all the hobby people I dealt with years ago that he was about the most honest and decent.