Biggest changes in the past 5 years?

[ls7plus]

Originally Posted by vintagecpa

*** 6. The infield fly rule now goes back to the warning track. (sorry, just a bitter Braves fan).

Right on! That ball was out in no-man's land, where a lot of "you've got it" "no, you take it" habitually occurs between outfielder and infielder--quite a few of the balls hit there drop, and thus it was ludicrous to contend that it could have been caught with reasonable effort. Secondly, the rule was intended to prevent the fielder from intentionally dropping a pop-fly to bring about an easy doubleplay. There is no way that intentionally allowing that ball to land in that location could have produced an easy double play. The infield fly rule had no application there at all.

But back to the main subject of the thread--I think that what we've seen in the last 5 years, along with the down economy reducing discretionary income, is the fact that collecting trends and the popularity of various cards and sets has and will continue to change over time. The same thing happened repeatedly in coins, which have had an organized market since the late 1850's, far longer than the organized baseball card market has been around. Items that rode the crest of the popularity wave in one decade slipped to a position way down the list in the next! Various issues in coins consequenty waxed and waned in value, and continue to be subject to price cycles (although truly rare and significant pieces in both collecting fields have tended to bear consistently upwards in price, sometimes astonishingly so--1914 Baltimore News Ruth, anyone? And sometimes the shear overwhelming significance of a card alone is enough--see the M101 Ruth rookie, a card that might be characterized as somewhat scarce, but is certainly not rare). Look for emerging significant rarities (I like the T206 rare-back HOF'ers here, although I don't collect T206, along with a number of the rare cards I do own of upper tier HOF'ers but won't tout here) to continute to increase in price dramatically. The only real trick is to spot them before they get out of reach price-wise!

I certainly share your appreciation for the expertise of a vast number of the members of this board, and its good to have you back!

Larry