In my years of collecting '75--present day
Worse
1- the idiotic inserts that have taken over the card industry for the past 20 years. I've seen kids open a pack of cards, dump the cards on the ground just to get the insert making the cards worthless.
2- Mass production of cards in the 80'- 90's killed the hobby. The card companies got so greedy.
Dumb speculators in the 80's and 90's that manipulated the prices of the hobby. I remember the Billy Ripken ---Face card going up in price several times during the same show. A month later the cards sat at dealer tables without any interest. As a result of the speculators, the card companies massed produced.
4- Multiple releases every year has also been apart of the reason the new card market is dead. Topps/Upper Deck/ Donruss/Fleer all had multiple full sets every year it was nearly impossible to keep up.
How on earth could a kid collect all that.
5- Ebay- has turned everyone into a dealer and most shouldn't even try it. Cards are over graded/ altered and misleading. Ebay is very much like the wild west of the sports card world. Ebay and the mass production of cards have also killed off the local card shops and shows.
Best
1- Beckett. Regardless of prices the initial books help bring alot of information on sports cards to a mass audience. I started collecting cards in the 1970's when I was 10-12 yrs old and to find a baseball card guide of any sort was very difficult. I remember the Sports Collectors Bible by Bert Randolph Sugar but his card listings were very general. Not the detail that the Beckett guides offered.
2- Magazines and newspapers in the early days like the 'Trader Speaks' and 'Sports Collectors Digest'. Along with Baseball Card Monthly magazine from the early 1980's. Back then I thought it was cool someone put out a magazine on baseball cards. I remember SCD in the 80's and early 90's when an issue may be 200 pages and filled with ads and info.
3- Sports Card shows/conventions and the local card shops.
4- Donruss and Fleer. Initially it was great to have more than Topps
to choose from. Donruss and Fleer produced some of the nicest cards of the 80's. I still think the '84 Donruss set was the best set from the 80's, even though alot like the Upper Deck set.
5- Ebay- despite the problems with dealers/scam artists and the ilk.
On ebay you can find just about any card from the past 50 years at any given moment making it the ultimate convention.
Things that annoyed me from the past- besides the insert mania but going to a card show and seeing dealers with beanie babie type toys and not sports cards. That was part of the reason I stopped going to local mall shows-- not many dealers actually sold cards. Mostly crap.
|