Standard Catalog Response from Lemke.

[Archive]

Posted By: Bob Lemke

Some of you seem to have the wrong impression about past, current and future deletes from the vintage section of the Standard Catalog. The only significant deletions occurred between the 2004 and 2005 books when a number of "team picture" type issues were eliminated. These were deemed to be the farthest afield from "real" baseball cards, the least comprehensively covered, and of interest to the fewest book buyers. There were 513 pages in the Vintage Major League section of the 2005 edition. There are 518 in the 2006 book. There will likely be 518 or more in the 2007 book. We could easily produce 600+ pages of vintage coverage if we were to include the many non-card issues (in-store display signs, non-series buttons, team-issue photos, etc.) that we have in our data base, but the book's buyers want it concentrated on cards, including the newest issues. With the latest round of licensing cuts and promised brand deflation for new cards, I expect to be able to get by with adding needed new-card pages, rather than cutting vintage content for the next couple of years. That will likely entail a cover price increase somewhere down the road.

If and when it becomes necessary to cut back on vintage coverage, the likely trims will come from "foreign" listings and picture packs, along with one-card sets. It is my intention to try to list these items at least once when they are "discovered," even if they have to be excised from future editions. That in itself should provide some incentive to buy a new book once in a while.
Take it from me, the big book stores and on-line book sellers who eat up 80%+ of the copies are not clamoring for any new titles in the baseball cards/memorabilia field, especially one that is seen as essentially a subset of the existing book. And as much as I like all y'all, there is no way you (vintage-only) collectors can support me in the manner to which I have been accustomed.

We've talked about a CD or on-line edition for more than a decade, but it is no closer to reality. Primarily because there is virtually nothing that could be done to secure such a presenation from piracy. The day may well come, though, that a ride-along CD of the less-mainstream memorabilia in our data base will be packaged with the big book.

I appreciate your collective passion and your expressions thereof prove you really care about what we do with the Standard Catalog, but be mindful that unless the book is commercially successful year after year it will go the way of the nickel wax pack.