great nostalgic fun

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Posted By: warshawlaw 

I recently picked up 4 old issues of SCD (1978 and 1979) for a buck a piece at a show and had a blast reading them. The issues more or less bridge the time from the card club days (the issues had numerous notices from the various clubs that formed all over the place and were the backbone of the hobby in the days before the for-profit promoters) to the first national (one issue had an open letter from Gavin Riley to the collectors about the first ever national convention and what it would mean). Here are a few excerpts:

"The West Coast Card Club . . . will hold its regular monthly meeting on Thursday October 18, 1979 at the Northridge, CA Women's Club . . . Twenty-five tables form a swap meet style and you are welcome to attend . . . (SCD, 10/15/79, page 121)"
--This is really what it was like folks, back before the intense commercialization of the hobby. Card clubs met in church basements and rec rooms to buy, sell and trade. A few bucks bought you a table for the night, there were auctions every night, and there was no rule against vest pocket dealers "fraternizing" with the "customers", who were still called "fellow collectors". You took a table because it was fun and provided you with a base of ops for getting rid of your doubles. Yet the winds of change were blowing. In the same issue on page 2 is "An Open Letter to the Sports Collecting Hobby" by Gavin Riley stating that "A national convention . . . is an idea whose time has come." Mr. Riley and his partner Mike Berkus would go on to promote that first National here in LA, and things would never be the same.

"With the soaring rate of inflation, many people are looking for alternate forms of inveetment . . . In a recent edition of our local Sunday paper [a columnist valued] a 1957 Topps Mickey Mantle card for $12.50. . . Everyone who has a batch of 1950's cards now thinks they are worth much more than they actually are!" {SCD, 3/31/79, page 4, "Cartophilic Notes" by Steve Freedman.
--Yeah, I sure hate those overpriced Mantle cards!

"Los Angeles, California . . . Third Annual Memorial Weekend Sports Collectors Show . . . Tables $35.00" (SCD, 3/31/79, page 29 Convention Calendar)
--$35 for a whole weekend show??? There'd better be free beer included or I am OUT OF THERE!! I mean, come on, the year before a table was only 20 bucks (SCD, 2/28/78, page 26 ad). Talk about price gouging!!

I didn't even mention the columnists and advertisers. Wirt Gammon, Gar Miller, Lew Lipset, Don Steinbach, etc. There are also ads for long-dead publications like Card Prices Update at $15 for 12 issues. In 1987 after seven years away from collecting I walked into a store near my home and asked for a CPU. The owner looked at me and said "Boy, have you been away for a long time." He then handed me a Beckett's. Yipes. The hobby became the "Hobby" for me in one sobering shot. On the other hand, I had a hell of a valuable collection in my file cabinet at home, something no grad student objects to.

For those of you who have been at this thing of ours for decades, like me, these old hobby mags are great nostalgia; for those of you who are new to it, they are invaluable historical peeks at the roots of our collective obsession.