Gateway drug...
OK, I think almost all of "us" collected cards to some extent as kids. Who of us started with collecting old cards instead of cards contemporary with our youth? The cards I got were from small grocery stores, and then a bit later in trades with childhood friends. I think that's true for most of us.
We didn't start with bidding on 4, 5, and 6 figure graded cards.
Most of us didn't start collecting old cards until after we became aware of, to varying extents, the history of baseball. For me it started with reading Carmichael's My Greatest Day In Baseball, an early 1960's edition. It took that mental stimulus, coupled with encountering an opportunity to buy an old card (years before there was internet or eBay, never heard of a card show then and couldn't have gotten to one if I had heard).
I think that article is fairly well written. I think his deductions are tailored to the finding he wanted to make. I feel like there's a significant disconnect with a deep pocketed speculator in a slabbed basketball card, and an armchair baseball semi-historian collector of 90 to 140 year old ballcards. From the outside they both look like card collectors. But they aren't. For those of us who own a few shares of stock in some NYSE or NASDAQ listed company, did we invest in those shares or did we collect them????
I don't want a room, closet, safe, safety deposit box that smells like slabs. And I think I like it that people with deep pockets have recently paid 6 figures for slabbed basketball cards and slabbed hockey cards. I'm not gonna buy any of those. I hope those guys continue to chase shiny cards in shiny smelly slabs (do they really smell?) and may they never develop an interest in old baseball cards. I almost always eat a big bowl of Cheerios, Rice Chex, Frosted Flakes, whole milk and blueberries for breakfast. I hope there's not a big influx of moneyed buyers who start buying massive amounts of that stuff resulting in an increase in prices on my breakfast stuff. I hope they stay focused on graded Jordan's and graded Gretzky's.
So maybe that article describes what could happen to the old ballcards. But I hope not.
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