baseball's falling popularity and its affect on our hobby

[the 'stache]

Originally Posted by EvilKing00

All great points stash, and also lets not forget, the economy has sucked over the last 7 years. People are out of work, less funds to spend on going to games and even less to spend on hobbies. The economy will eventually get better and more people will have more money to spend.

That's true, Steve.

The attendance figures don't take into consideration people like me who can't go to the ballpark, but still subscribe to something like MLB.tv. I watch probably 100 games a year.

Yay for being a Brewers fan living in Texas. No blackouts.

[mrvster]

but the whole time the economy has worsened, the T206 market has been appreciating over that time......the whole time...

The wagner has never declined in value, only steadily risen over the last 100+ years!! T206 stay strong due to the Wagner correlation also .......

This is a strong area of vintage cardboard....a blue chip if you will

[mrvster]

All great points!.. Mike, you will collect these forever

[Shouldabeena10]

Lots of different points of view, and certainly a topic we've all thought about many times.

I lean towards the "there will always be collectors of old stuff", and the fact that sports cards have well defined numbered sets, lots of history, and popular iconic figures, will help keep card collecting alive ... at least through our lifetime.

Although, I do worry that the hobby could see a premature death due to simple corruption and greed.

As much as everyone likes to think that the hobby only has a fairly small percentage of fakes and altered cards in it now ... how many more scandals and "bad press" can it absorb, before the smart money starts to walk away in disgust?

The fact of the matter is that we're all dealing with vary cheaply printed pieces of old cardboard, that really aren't that old, and can be easily reproduced ... by someone with the means to do it.

The U.S. Treasury has been scurrying about for the past 15 years, changing the way our money is printed, because the quality of the forgeries reached a point where no one could tell the difference. The only salvation of our current paper monetary system, is the fact that someone was smart enough, many years ago, to make it almost impossible to acquire the exact paper we used to print our money on. Those little pens that all the cashiers use to see if our $20's, $50's and $100's are bogus, are a slowly failing "last line of defense" because the counterfeiters are that good. The odds are that our grandchildren will not be using any form of paper money.

There's absolutely nothing in our hobby today that could stop a few "quality" forgery rings from slowly slipping bogus cards into the hobby.

The cardboard, ink, printing process, and cutting methods that were used to originally create our cards, can all be reproduced today ... and if done correctly, no one can tell the difference. Not on a new card, and not on a 100 year old card. I don't care how good you think you know cards and cardboard ... it can be done by the right people, with the right equipment.

If I were in the forgery business, and I was looking for a low risk / high reward way to make a living ... I'd get out of the counterfeit money printing business and move into sports cards .. where the only line of defense is a few grading companies and guys with opinions, that can neither prove or disprove their opinions.

Now with that said .... imagine that tomorrow, a story breaks on the news that a forgery print shop was raided over the weekend, and in it they found sheets of freshly printed T206's, lots of Mantles, Ruths, Jordans, and all kinds of new and old valuable cards. The cards had been slowly (and very calculatedly)trickled into the hobby over the past decade or so, in an effort not to flood the market or raise suspension. Investigators have determined that the forgery ring was responsible for tens of millions of dollars worth of fake cards, and estimating that as much as 20% of the higher priced cards in the hobby today may actually be nothing but fake reproductions.

What would a story like that do to the health of our hobby?

- Mike

PS - Sorry if that's too much doom and gloom and conspiracy theory, but I was in the printing industry for years, and it's a possibility that's always fascinated me.

[Cardboard Junkie]

Technology cannot duplicate the half lives of elements. All ""normal matter" particles radiate away at predictable rates. Bottom line is, you can imitate age, but you can't duplicate it.

[marcdelpercio]

I think that with any well-established collectibles market, there will be natural ebbs and flows in interest over an extended time. Was baseball huge in 1890? Not tremendously, but there were still lots of people who collected the cards. Then there was probably something of a lull in the hobby for 20 years as there was little supply of new material. But then a new generation of collectors emerged with the next "golden age" of collecting. Various factors will always divert attention...wars, depressions, changing tastes and technology, etc. But the card collecting market overall has weathered these changes for almost a century and a half and is stronger than ever.

I think that the popularity of baseball as a sport will not have more than a negligible effect on the card market. I am no die-hard baseball fan. I am 36 years old. I live in a major league city (well, technically...I'm a Royals fan ) and have attended maybe 10-15 games in the past 20 years. But I have been a passionate card collector for my entire life and imagine that I will continue to be. Of course, that's not to say that there will not be another 10, 15, 20 year lull in collecting as tastes change, but why would anybody be certain that tastes would not shift again in a decade or two and baseball would be right back in the forefront? Or the next cycle of card collecting popularity is born for whatever reason? I don't think that anything special happened in 1997 (or in 1989 or 1981 or 1952 or 1909) that caused a massive increase in interest in the game of baseball, but new and interesting card releases got many (kids AND adults) into the hobby. I see no reason why such a thing could not happen again and the cycle will continue as it has for generations.

[WhenItWasAHobby]

Not only has football eroded baseball's popularity, but so has soccer as far as a child's participation as a sport. I started my son playing T-Ball and Coaches' Pitch Baseball and he decided to play soccer in the off season when he was 7 and from that point on didn't want to play baseball again and he's now 12 and still playing organized soccer and he's not in a minority.

[Leon]

I am 52 yrs young. In 50 yrs I will be happy to be alive (maybe) and happier if I am not peeing on myself.

As I drove home yesterday I saw some little kids practicing baseball with their teams and parents watching. I think the hobby is fine for the next few generations...after that, not sure I care a whole lot. However, I do try to help collectors and the hobby and my goal is to leave it a tiny bit better than I found it. I do think this is a good and interesting debate. I don't see what we collect as much about baseball as I do about collecting rare pieces of art. I almost never watch MLB today but still love the game (and am about to start playing in a few softball leagues again). And lastly, I didn't get really involved in card collecting until my mid 30s.....

[bigtrain]

An interesting discussion, however, I think that it starts out with a false premise, that baseball has declined in popularity. While more people say that football is their favorite sport, that does not mean that fewer people like baseball. Since the seasons do not overlap too much, one rarely has to make a choice between sports. In a Gallup poll from 1938-39, 40% of American adults identified themselves as baseball fans. In 2006, that number was 49%. Let's say that considering margin of error and that it is now 2014,the numbers are roughly similar. 40% of American Adults consider themselves baseball fans. Comparing the population in 1939, about 131 million to the current population 317 million, it is apparent that there are at least twice as many baseball fans today as in the days when the sport was the American Pastime.

[packs]

I'm not sure if I think baseball is losing popularity either. If you look at the top ten largest sports contracts in history, 9 out of the top 10 are current baseball players (10 is a tie between Mayweather and Mark Teixiera). That money is generated and driven by fan revenue.

[Bocabirdman]

The results are potentially skewed by using percentages. Given the increase in legal residents of the U.S., the actually number of folks who call baseball their favorite sport may have in fact, increased. Yet, the overall "percentage" of the population may have decreased. In addition, an overwhelming percentage of new U.S. residents have immigrated from parts of the world where the answer to the question, "What is your favorite sport?" is likely to not be baseball or American Football, but soccer (football). Ergo, the baseball "percentage" likely suffers. This could very well be a typical case of someone (not the OP) presenting "the facts" in a convenient fashion to lend credence to their point of view. Statistics can usually be spun to support what ever you want them to support.

[teetwoohsix]

Originally Posted by Bocabirdman

The results are potentially skewed by using percentages. Given the increase in legal residents of the U.S., the actually number of folks who call baseball their favorite sport may have in fact, increased. Yet, the overall "percentage" of the population may have decreased. In addition, an overwhelming percentage of new U.S. residents have immigrated from parts of the world where the answer to the question, "What is your favorite sport?" is likely to not be baseball or American Football, but soccer (football). Ergo, the baseball "percentage" likely suffers. This could very well be a typical case of someone (not the OP) presenting "the facts" in a convenient fashion to lend credence to their point of view. Statistics can usually be spun to support what ever you want them to support.

True, I see your point. When I was in the 5th grade, we actively put together football teams during our lunch breaks. A kid from South Africa started attending our school and was in my class, and we became great friends. He actually had all of us playing soccer after awhile, as that was the popular sport where he was from. He also taught me how to play tennis (he was extremely good at it!) as that was very popular there too.

I also remember eating dinner at his home, and thought it was strange how everyone was eating with their forks upside down

Back on topic....I think the hobby will be just fine

Sincerely, Clayton