I started collecting as a little boy in 1970-1971. About the only influence my childhood collecting has on my collecting now is that I am happy picking up cards from that era even though they aren't rare or expensive (I mostly buy them raw at the National and try to stay under $2 a card). I haven't bought a pack in years and don't even bother with modern (post-1980) cards except the occasional autographed insert I find on the cheap for a player I like, such as the Pride of New York series of cards covering Yankees from the 1970s and thereafter. My real collecting effort is in cards that predate my existence by decades and that effort did not really take off until about 20 years ago when I got out of school and finally had disposable income to devote to it.
Nostalgia is a funny thing; it doesn't necessarily spring from a direct association with the items as a child. Nostalgia can be for a perception of America in "simpler" times, or of baseball when the grass was green, or of baseball when the athletes were working slobs like everyone else, or pre-drugs and steroids (I know...), or before the DH, or before postwar expansion diluted the game. Or it can be based on the perceived beauty of the items in question. Or you can simply have a collecting "gene" that leads you into all sorts of hobbies (visit a postcard show and see the crap (from our POV) that people collect; they've got the same bug we do). My point is that whether a kid buys packs today doesn't necessarily predict whether he spends thousands of dollars on vintage cards later. I think a lifelong love of baseball is far more likely an indicator of future interest and I see little leagues booming and attendance at MLB games at over 75 million people a year. As for other sports, if they lead that kid to later collect football or hockey or boxing cards, hey, great, to me they are the "gateway drugs" to baseball cards.
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