Some National Thoughts

[ChrisStufflestreet]

Rich,

First of all...glad to meet you this year. Had a great time chewing the fat with you and Alan after the Net54 dinner.

Great points. But I'd like to add something the two of us discussed then: even though the majority of Net54 people are concerned with prewar vintage stuff, there's the fact that none of us is getting any younger. What about the future collectors?

My daughter Melissa (10 years old, she stopped in for the dinner and was wearing a Red Sox jersey) had a blast this year because I decided to make the trip as much hers as I did mine. In fact, this year my wife did the yeoman's work of adding to my collection while Melissa and I looked around for stuff, got autographs and enjoyed our time together. It was a major win/win for me: Ellen didn't get to give me her usual "you spent how much?" speech and my daughter got some valuable time with her Daddy (especially since we're nearing those dreaded teenage years and my window of opportunity for Daddy/daughter time is going to close just as soon as she realizes I'm "uncool") that will be a great memory even after the collection becomes a thing of the past.

I've said it in another thread and I'll say it again here: my daughter had a better show than I did (and I had a great time). Several fellow hobbyists commented to me that it was great to see a kid getting involved, and that began a discussion with my wife as we drove back home. Had I been able to attend a National at the same age (in my case, that would have been '83 Chicago), would I have had the same great time?

Sadly, I think it wouldn't have happened the same way for me. That's because when I attended my first show (in 1985 at the State Office Building in Watertown, NY) I sensed that the dealers were a little reluctant to deal with kids. In a way, the most important thing about kids was the wallets their parents were carrying so dealing with those little snot-nosed cardbenders was a means to the end result of earning money. In my case, I was well-versed on 1950s baseball by then and was able to get through to some dealers by talking with them. However, looking at 1985 vs. 2009 may be an apples/oranges comparison; then, 30-year old cards were from 1955 and were valuable enough to make my mother admonish me to be very careful if I picked them up, but today, 1979 Topps commons are tossed without a second thought into 25-cent boxes.

It made me think...when several people stopped by to commend me for simply bringing my little girl along to the show, it made me realize that I don't see the father/son pairs searching for cards as frequently as I did when I was a "weekend warrior" seller from 1989-'92.

Not so much a question as a stray thought I've had since leaving the show...