worst - in no particular order.
1 Fakes and fraudulently altered cards.
2 demise of card shops. ---Tough one, many of them went because of a lack of knowledge of both cards and business which is as it should be.
3 The rise of a lottery mentality and corresponding lack of general interest in cards older than a couple weeks
4 The failing of print publications with worthwhile content- Use the internet/electronic formats, but if it's worth knowing it's worth printing
5 The well funded collector as a sort of celebrity. Halper may have been the first? but there have been others that are better known for spending ability than knowledge. Fortunately there are few of them, but those few make everyone else focus on the monetary aspects of the hobby.
The best - Again in no particular order
1 The Rose rookie fakes - woke people up to what was possible.
2 The pioneering collectors and cataloguers like Burdick. Without them we'd all be just stumbling around in the dark.
3 Catalogs/checklists/price guides - Yes, even Beckett. Before them things were a bit of a mystery. How many cards in a set? What players? Without those things collecting isn't readily accessible to many people. And also brought some consistecy to pricing.
4 The internet. Like it or not it's made cards more available, and shown just how common the common stuff really is. It also makes lots of information easier to find.
5 Availability of a wide range of decent if not good looking storage supplies. I bought my first plastic pages in late 74 early 75. And they were horrible. Now there's a full range of stuff from penny sleeves to grading slabs. Anyone who recalls stacks of rubber banded cards at shows and being warned against putting them on too tight - or worse yet, dropping cards wrapped unexpectedly loose or wrecking a card or two by wrapping tightly should have this on the list.
Steve B
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