[Steve D]

I think they should keep the paper version, but split it up into periods.

Krause Publications does this exact thing with their annual Standard Catalog of World Coins. One volume covers 2001 to the present, another covers 1901 - 2000, and yet another covers 1801 - 1900. If they do it for coins, then why can't they do it with baseball cards?

One book can cover 1886 - 1980, and another can cover 1981 to the present. I picked 1981 as the break since that's the year Topps' monopoly was ended, and Fleer and Donruss entered the fray.

Or, they could have three volumes...one for 1886 - 1947, one for 1948 to 1980 and the third for 1981 to the present.

For me anyway, something needs to be done. The Standard Catalog has become too big and cumbersome to handle easily. They should not however, short-change any collectors (re: customers), by eliminating sets from the book. All sets have a following, and to remove sets from the book only serves to alienate customers, and cause them to go somewhere else.

Edited to add:

Also, it seems to me that trying to include nearly everything in one book is just a case of hanging on to the old standard of people trying to collect everything.

These days, I would think that no one is trying to collect every card ever made; there's just too darn many of them out there! Nowadays, people are collecting favorite players, teams, hall of famers, cards from a favorite period, etc. The hobby has become irretrievably fragmented. Breaking the Standard Catalog into separate volumes covering specific periods, would better cater to today's collectors, who would then be able to have a book that lists the cards they're interested in, at a better price-point, and in an easier to handle format. Sure, there are collectors, such as hall of famer collectors, who would need every volume, but they would be the publisher's dream customer.

Simply stated, breaking the catalog up into separate volumes would serve more people, and probably bring more money to the publisher at the same time. Seems to me that this would make everyone happy.

Steve