Our future...from the mind of a seven year old...

[Clark7781]

Dear fellow vintage collectors,

I am a modest man. I work hard, own my own businesses, and collect items associated with baseball. I am hunting the Monster for myself, and am half heartedly hunting the T205 set at the same time.

I LOVE vintage. I have added a lot of pre-WWII cards to my collection, but as I am only 36, my collection is not as diverse as other collectors previously mentioned in other posts.

I am from Philadelphia, and LOVE everything Phillies. I Love Baseball, and love autographed baseballs. My holy grail being a 1930 team signed ball by the NY Yankees with Ruth, Gehrig, and Lazzeri on it...

And a ball signed by Connie Mack and Cy Young.

And than there are the cards.

My seven year old son, Ewan, loves the Phillies. Chase Utley is the man according to him. He collects modern cards with Phillies players, but I am introducing our next generation to the finer appreciations to vintage cards. I collection T- cards and some Goudey ones also....

My question to the experts is thus: how do we make the younger generation appreciate the cards of people who died 50 to 100 years ago?

Food for thought and something for discussion

[philliesphan]

I think it is intrinsic..a love for history and a penchant for collecting.

Although many of us here collected cards as kids, many of us are collecting cards of players that they never knew, never saw play, and have only read about. Yes, we have some great collecting legends that post or lurk on these boards, but there's even few of them that remember collecting in the 1950s.

In other words, everyone on this board is collecting cards of players that died long before they collected. So long as your seven-year old sign likes collecting Chase Utley and the Phillies now, why wouldn't one expect he might become more interested in the history later?

Speaking from similar experience, I grew up watching Schmidt, Carlton, Rose and the Phillies. But most of my collecting budget these days goes to pre-war Phillies.

[Jay Wolt]

My question to the experts is thus: how do we make the younger generation appreciate the cards of people who died 50 to 100 years ago?

Have them watch the Ken Burns DVD set & a read Lawrence Ritter's "Glory of their times"

[zljones]

I have been talking about cards with my fiancee's 13 year old son and he said kids these days have no interest at all when I try to show him some he says "cool" but in a very non-enthusiastic way, and this kid loves sports and plays baseball even collected some cards years ago, but these kids just do not care, it is great your 7 year old has at least some interest, I guess starting them off young is the way to go, for my future stepson it's possibly too late.

[Cardboard Junkie]

I would introduce him to movies and clips and documentaries like Burn's baseball and show him cards of the players as they are mentioned . Use cool names like "The Georgia Peach" and terms like "Merkle's Boner" "Sultan of swat" watch "sandlot with him" and field of dreams and try very very hard to take him to ballgames..I remember in the fifties meeting Al Kaline I was in awe of my hero! Thats the kind of stuff it takes....oh and let him have an active say in what you buy and why. Just My Opinion. dave

[Texxxx]

He is young and will have a tendency to admire the people that he can watch on TV and see in person. That is normal. As his grows up he will expand his horizon to other people as his learns what they did as ballplayers. He may or may not learn to love the ones you do. That is all right. We all have different taste and it has changed for us through the years. For now I would say to teach him to take care of the cards he has because they may be worth something when he gets older.

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by philliesphan

I think it is intrinsic..a love for history and a penchant for collecting.

This.

As a young kid my absolute favorite cards were the 1976 Topps All-Time All-Stars cards and the 1979 Topps All-Time Record Holders cards.

I was probably the exception as I was a complete history nerd, but how else was I going to get a cool looking Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Cy Young or Hack Wilson card?

[vargha]

I remember reading plenty of books from the library as a kid about the old stars. They were entertaining and written for 8-16 year olds (depending on your reading level). They offered me a great window into the pre-war era as a kid growing up in the sixties and seventies.

[jbbama]

Sadly the video game generation has no interest in an old piece of cardboard or photos. They want to know "what else does it do" or "what do you do with it", then you say "you look at it, its history".............(blank stare from kid), it just doesn't interest them. Maybe its adhd??? Just my 2 cents.......of course kids today could care less about 2 cents also.

[steve B]

Does he play baseball too? Maybe round up a somewhat worn prewar style glove and try playing catch using it. I had one ages ago, and used it once in a while. It really helped build a bit of respect for the fielding of the prewar players. Trying to bat with an old style thick handled bat was also interesting.

Since it's Phillies and Chase Utley maybe a collection of Phillies second basemen? There's something to seeing the continuity of a team and position laid out before you in cards.

Of course the risk in puhing history is making it too much like homework.

Steve B

[bbcard1]

My interest was stoked through 1) Apba baseball and 2) baseball books about oldtimers. This creates a basis for collecting by creating a context for why someone should care about who Eddie Collins is.

[aaroncc]

Originally Posted by D. Bergin

This.

As a young kid my absolute favorite cards were the 1976 Topps All-Time All-Stars cards and the 1979 Topps All-Time Record Holders cards.

I was probably the exception as I was a complete history nerd, but how else was I going to get a cool looking Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Cy Young or Hack Wilson card?

David as a kid those were my favorite as well. Along with the 1973 Topps All Time Leaders. Also as a kid I would go to the library pick out a book and xerox pages to keep at home. I remember some of the books photos had facsimile signatures, so those were my favorite to copy.

[TobaccoKing4]

playing a Sim Baseball simulation on whatifsports.com was actually what got me into collecting vintage. You can use any player from 1887-present and make a team with them on a budget. After playing a couple seasons, I started to get favorite players in the sim, and be more interested in the players I was constantly drafting like Nap Lajoie, Hughie Jennings, Willie Keeler. This all happened in 6th or 7th grade.

I had been collecting modern cards casually buying only from target and k-marts, and had purchased several rookie cards off ebay of Griffey Jr. and Curt Schilling, (I have a good memory) I wasn't a serious collecter. But since I got interested in those players, I went on ebay and decided to search for cards of those players. I saw how high the prices were of those so then I looked for different cards from the set and was able to land a T206 Delahanty, Washington for $22, my first T206 card and it was in VG condition, I still have it.

I'm not sure if I would have ever gotten into vintage if it wasn't for that baseball simulation game, but I think that it is a good way to get young kids "closer" to these players and when your son is going through looking for players to draft and see's Hugh Duffy hit .440 one season, and how much better that is than Chase Utley, even though Utley is a great player. He will be amazed and want his card, thats how it worked for me atleast.

[sportscardpete]

Topps has all these reprints of old timers in sets, so it isn't the distributors fault. Not enough kids appreciate history. I remember buying a t206 cy young when I was 16 (6 years ago), thinking about how cool I was. My friends are big sports fans, and they didn't even find it cool. Card collecting isn't mainstream anymore, and will probably never be.

Best way to bring cards back into the mainstream is to just make one set of cards a year. That would give collector's less of a headache in trying to figure out the different types of modern sets. Problem is, from a business stand point, it doesn't make any sesne.

[jeffmohler]

My 13 year old son watches a lot of MLB TV and has started to become familiar with the players from the 1960-90s. I got him into the modern cards at first, then we found 80s and 90s cards at garage sales. Now his Christmas list has the 1977 Topps set on it. I ponied up the $65.00 the 77 set cost on Ebay, but it is going to get costly if he gets into older stuff!

Not many of his friends are into cards. I just think it take the collecting gene to get into cards and a history gene to get into vintage. No matter how much you try, most kids just won't have the interest (and probably never will) to get into cards in general and vintage in particular.

[Mark]

My strategy with my 10 year old has been to talk to him once in a while about the amazing greatness of a handful of the all time greats. When I show him an old card of one of these immortals, he is impressed--although he always says something about how it must be worth a lot of money. I am thinking that as he develops an appreciation for the history of the game, he will naturally be attracted to the old cards that are available to the average fan.

[Boccabella]

You can't force feed it to them. Generally, just expose them to the history in a casual way. Eventually, if they love the game, they'll go back and develop the interest on their own, in their own time and in their own way. I didn't really start to appreciate the pre-War generation until I was an adult, even though my father would often talk about his old cards (Goudey) and the players of the past. Now, I'd give anything to go back and try to draw on his memory a few more times...even if it was fuzzy.

[t206hound]

My eight year old plays baseball and loves the game, will go with me to watch the Nats or O's or even one of the local minor league teams, but he won't watch a game on television. He has no interest in baseball cards or even the specific players. On the contrary, he watches football on tv every Sunday, plays Madden on the Wii, collects football cards and knows more current players than I do! He even took a stack of cards to school today to trade with friends.

He knows I collect the "old" cards, but hasn't shown any interest in them. Maybe he will in the future. I did introduce him to TPG after he pulled a Tebow autographed rookie out of a pack. That card immediately went to SGC with a stack of T206s. Thankfully I was able to save what is graded a 98 from looking the rest of his crease-riddled collection that he riffles through every day. I honestly don't care if he ever goes to vintage baseball... I'm just glad he enjoys what he has for the now.

[T206Collector]

Don't ignore the fact that these cards are extremely valuable to a seven year old. "With this one, I could buy thousands of legos," works with my 5 year old. "And if I just hold on to it for a few months, I may be able to buy even MORE legos with it next year."

Many of us raised in the 80's got into it with quite a bit of a push by financial incentives from the Becketts and CCPs of the world at the time.

[sealmark2]

My son just last week took his 11 year old son to the Mark Macrae show and had him help out at their table. I was not able to attend but the reports I have received sound good. I haven't spoken with my grandson yet but I understand that the other attendees were very gracious with him and I think he enjoyed it. Maybe that is what we need. Us old guys introducing the youngsters to the "hobby" and slow down the quest for money.

Who knows it might just catch on.

Mark K. Bowers

[abothebear]

History doesn't matter unless it is a history OF something. In other words, most people need to love baseball to then love the history of baseball. So, a long view approach would be to help youngsters develop a love for the baseball of today.

The other part, and may be the bigger part, is to help them love a hobby, particularly a collecting hobby with real value involved. I think this is a big part of the modern difficulty in cultivating new hobbyists. The only modern cards with value are the inserts, and their value seems to me to be static, or degenerative. If you pull a HOF (best case scenario) game used materials insert out of a pack, chances are the BV will be the same for it ten years from now.

When I was a kid in the 80s you'd pay 50 cents for a pack and you could hope for a Mattingly or somebody's rookie. And you'd follow their Beckett price month to month and trade with friends. A big part of the draw of the hobby was how it combined the game and players we loved with the opportunity to trade and speculate and make money (in our dreams anyway). I don't know if that exists today, and if there is a critical mass to maintain it for the 4 or five years necessary to plant the seed for young collectors to turn to vintage when they get older and have an income.

But, if the love of the game is there, and there is a love of some sort of increasing value based collecting hobby, it seems like a turn toward vintage card collecting would be a natural move some time in the future. But maybe I am basing too much on my own experience.

[David W]

My 9 year old son has to read 20 minutes per night as part of his 4th grade reading grade.

I've got many of those scholastic books about baseball, basketball, and football stars. He used to complain about the reading assignment, now he loves it, he was telling me last night about Mike Schmidt hitting 4 homeruns in a game, which he got from the book.

So simple books like that which are readily available at yard sales for 10 cents or probably on ebay catch their interest.

That is how I got interested in vintage as a kid, reading Bill Stern books, and books such as "Strange but true (baseball, football) stories.

Also, those Laughlin world series cards interested me, I wondered how Deacon Phillippe could throw all those complete games in a world series and one of my first t 206 purchases as a kid was Deacon Phillippe at a flea market in the 70's.

[Ronnie73]

Originally Posted by jeffmohler

I just think it take the collecting gene to get into cards and a history gene to get into vintage. No matter how much you try, most kids just won't have the interest (and probably never will) to get into cards in general and vintage in particular.

I believe there is a collecting gene. I know that I have it. I was collecting coins at 4 years old, stamps at 5, and cards and comics at 6. Nobody ever showed me anything about getting started. I never had went to a ball game or had anything given to me to spark the interest. There wasn't computers either to look things up. My parents didn't really support my collecting either.

I don't have any kids yet but if I did, I would probably do some local shows and have them help at the table and even pay them to help out. Maybe them just seeing others have an interest in items at your table might get them interested and i'm sure the money changing hands wouldn't hurt either. Once they start using their allowance and the money they got for helping at the table and buying cards from other dealers, they just might be hooked.

[Cy2009]

To get a younger person involved in baseball history, then, possibly collecting vintage cards, you have to compare older players with players that he admires from the modern era. If you take a child to a game and he loves watching Pujols, agree with him on how great Pujols is, then compare him to Ruth, to Williams. When the player talks about Matt Kemp, compare him to Cobb or Speaker. By doing this, you put something tangible in his mind rather than just a ghost that used to play baseball. Then buy the child a few cards of each type, modern and vintage and allow his interest to grow. He may like the newer cards better. He may like th evintage cards better. But with some easy nudging, you may get the child to enjoy learning about older players and the history of baseball.

Cy

[skelly]

There will always be some interest in cards as they are historical and collectible, but the last generation who grew up on cards is now in their early 30's and kids today just don't care. Personally I'm in my 30's and even kids that didn't really play ball collected baseball / football cards when I was growing up. Too many reasons to go into, and I'm sure they've been discussed at length here at some point. It is unfortunate, but it is reality. I would be shocked if a person couldn't pick up cards like a 56 mantle, clemente rookie for about 20-30% of the value they have today in roughly 20 years time. With that said, I do feel that truly rare pre-war cards and unique issues, such as 59 bazooka, 1954 Wilson Franks, etc.. will keep decent value.

[vintagechris]

Originally Posted by jbbama

Sadly the video game generation has no interest in an old piece of cardboard or photos. They want to know "what else does it do" or "what do you do with it", then you say "you look at it, its history".............(blank stare from kid), it just doesn't interest them. Maybe its adhd??? Just my 2 cents.......of course kids today could care less about 2 cents also.

Ironically, my son go interested in collecting cards because of video games. He would play all the sport video games and we would open packs of cards and he would get players that he recognized from the games. He was about 5 I think.

He eventually got into vintage. Now he's 20 and much like me at that age, he has lost interest. I believe he will be back eventually. You can still show him stuff and he likes it but he doesn't buy stuff currently.

[vintagechris]

I have often wondered if the reason kids today don't care as much about cards today is the fact that when I was growing up, I opened a pack of cards and thought it was cool to have something with my favorite players on it.

Today, kids can go online and see countless pictures, stories, stats and anything else they want of a player.

As a kid growing up in the 70's and early 80's, I had a limited number of ways I could get info or pictures of Pete Rose, George Brett, Mike Schmidt and Tom Seaver.

I will say this too, Other than the big boom of the late 80's and early 90's, I think there are more people buying cards today than ever. I actually know more people locally that collect than I did when I was a kid.

[slidekellyslide]

Originally Posted by Clark7781

My question to the experts is thus: how do we make the younger generation appreciate the cards of people who died 50 to 100 years ago?

Food for thought and something for discussion

My 10 year old son just recently did a book report on Lou Gehrig, last year he did one on Jackie Robinson...he loves Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris because I let him watch 61* when he was much younger and he watched it over and over. He has an appreciation for the old time players yet he has zero interest in cards or memorabilia of those players. I'm not sure it can be a forced thing.

[Mark]

To my mind, the important thing is that my 10 year old is developing a deep appreciation and even love for the game itself. He played in his first tournament last weekend, and he has been wearing the souvenir shirt I bought for him every day since. Just like others here, I have been letting him know for years that modern players have to be measured against the great figures of the past. I would rather he admired a card because it has a picture of Wagner or Cobb on it than that he knew it was a scarce item in a difficult set.

[mrmopar]

I started buying cards in 1978. Other than a few record breaker cards in 79, the turn back the clocks in 77, the 76 ATGs and a few other subsets that featured retired players, you didn't get much in the new offerings. However, these days if a kid collects cards, he is bound to find Ruth, Williams, Snider or the likes in his packs eventually.

I became a fan of the game and started to study the history of the game somewhat, becoming a fan of a team I could not have possibly ever seen play (Brooklyn Dodgers). Sometimes it just happens. I had a neighbor who influenced me somewhat, but it was me seeking information on the game that lead me to appreciate the older past players.