Lionel Carter and old time collecting

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Posted By: warshawlaw 

For those of you who get SCD (shrinking in size by the week, BTW), there has been a fascinating series of articles recently about "card master" Lionel Carter. Mr. Carter has been collecting for like 50 years and had friendships and correspondence relationships with just about everyone who was anyone in the early days of the hobby. He also kept his hobby correspondence and has been permitting SCD to run a series of articles excerpting his letter collection.

The articles are really interesting in terms of what they say about the hobby then and now. To begin with, there was a dramatic lack of information back then. The ACC was out, but there were no checklists to speak of, let alone price guides, and collectors frequently had no idea of what was out there in other regions. They also had to wait weeks or months for information that we now find readily on the internet or in various hobby publications.

There was a familiar chord of complaining: complaining about the hobby publications not being run professionally, about various dealers and collectors who charged too much or who did not pay for stuff they ordered, etc.

There were also the same "brags" about finds and collections.

Condition was barely a consideration. These people were trading cards worth pennies each, so they frequently made comments to the effect that while they would like nice cards, they were fine with excellent condition cards. Also, it is evident that the formal grading regime and nomenclature that we take for granted was in its formative stages, at best, really until the 1980's.

The articles also pointed out one aspect of collecting that has changed dramatically, for the worse IMHO: the decline of informal networks of collectors as the backbone of the hobby. Collectors relied on each other for information and material, and they established local clubs where they would meet, trade and do what we are doing here, discuss our shared passion.

Anyway, the articles are absolutely fascinating.

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Posted By: jay behrens

Collector groups are nice. More than anything, I missed the montly meetings of the group Mark Macrae formed. And yes, Julie was at these meeting too. And she speaks much better than she types ;)We would talk about recent finds, upcoming shows and one or two people feature certain sets. Even in the small group, we had a lot areas covered, from Japanese cards, to vintage, to regionals, to the new stuff.

Jay

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Posted By: Tom Boblitt

Adam's note....I've read all 4 articles and they, without a doubt, are nearly the only thing worth reading in the mini-SCD over the last year or two.

I really like all the info about the letters from Frank Nagy and other hobby bigs......

Is he still alive? Does he still have a massive collection of cards? You would think someone would receive a huge windfall from a collection like that and wondering if he's sold them or his heirs. I don't immediately remember what they had said about him.

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Posted By: Paul

I believe Frank Nagy must have passed away. A couple of years ago, Steve Verkman auctioned off a portion of his collection. I have his 51 Topps Current All Star Berra.

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Posted By: Preece

Mr. Nagy passed away from cancer about 20 years ago. His kids were not interested in keeping the collection and it was sold. My uncle, Donald Schlaff, took me over to Mr. Nagy's house (early 1970's when I was about 10) to see his collection since I lived about 1 mile away. As a beginning collector at the time, it was a day that I will never forget. Mr. Nagy was a very generous man with his time and gave my two brothers and myself a personal tour of his collection.

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Posted By: Paul

Which all makes me wonder how CleanSweep determined my Berra came from the Nagy collection.

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Posted By: Julie

let's not kid ourselves--this was hardly the distant past (early '80s)of card collecting! Already when I started collecting in 1979, I only lasted 2 weeks without a price guide, and the condition-sensitivity was ubiquitous. I renmember one of the last meetings with Mark at St. Leander's Church, he brought several cards to examine, and people were talking about "carefully trimmed," "touched up," and even "rebacked."
Still, I'm awfully proud of my fr-good Zeenut McMullen, which Buck Barker wrote all over the back of (his COMPLETE stats).