Posted By:
Iggy
Since we are in the beginning of a new year and the century is still in its infancy. Any Nostradamus predictions, as to how this hobby will look like, oh say... 50+ years from now??? This is assuming the planet is still here in its present form. After reading George Vrechek's excellent research ( http://www.oldbaseball.com/refs/1930s.htm ) on early hobby publications, obviously some of the early pioneers (Burdick, Barker, Bray, Wagner, etc.) would be both amazed and horrified with all the changes in the hobby (eBay, grading companies, card prices, premiums on rookie cards, baseball card shows, major auction houses selling cards for six figures, the accessibility of baseball card information, the ease of creating somewhat realistic counterfeits, etc...). Here are some of the changes I think, we will see 50 years from now:
1. Grading companies will be able to insert a minuscule microchip on the backside of pre-war cards. With a wave of a scanner, it would identify its origins, prior owners, condition, and authenticity. A few dinosaur collectors will still want to keep their collections microchip-free (count me in as one of them, of course, I would be 95 years old by then and a bit senile).
2. Some sorta' eBay system would still exist. Although, you would be able to pre-program your robot to constantly scan eBay's database. The robot would know your interest and put in an appropriate bid/snipe. Actually, the entire transaction would be handled by the robot, you would just sit back and wait by the mailbox.
3. Baseball card shows would have met their demise in the year 2019. Being replaced with 24-hour "virtual reality" baseball card shows.
4. Perhaps, we would all be able to scramble the atoms in a baseball card and send it to some safe-deposit site somewhere. Sure would help with storage. However, that would eventually lead to creation of exact duplicates, which, in all probability would render all collectibles obsolete.
5. Card restoration and doctoring will be common-place and relatively cheap. I would imagine you could take your cards to your local antique dealer and for a small fee, a small robotic arm/microwave type device would eliminate all those creases in that 'E95 Wagner card.
6. Conservation might be a key issue, as paper is not really meant to last into the millennium.
7. Counterfeits would be rampant, with even grandma having the technical ability to recreate authentic looking cards with her pocket size printer/cell-phone gizmo.
8. To counter fakes, a hand-held device would be able to estimate the age of a paper collectible.
9. Pre-war card prices would surely dwarf what cards go for today. Making them accessible to only the wealthy; with the working guy/gal having to settle on completing those sets from the 1970's - 90's.
10. Does demographics play into the hobby at all??? I mean, when pictures are posted of Net54 members, the classic profile is a white American dude somewhere in middle-age. With a few exceptions, you don't see black faces, Hispanic faces, oriental faces, nor women. With the U.S. population becoming more and more Hispanic, with their rich tradition of soccer. Will baseball cards find a smaller and smaller niche as time goes on??? Or does, as history suggest, the melting pot always finds a way to assimilate the latest immigration wave?
Okay, I'm done. I could probably go on, but I better end this before I meet my own demise within this group...
-Lovely Day, Iggy..
<<Disclaimer:>>
This thread is dedicated to the "wild" imagination of Peter C....