Narrow-minded Collectors

[tschock]

In 1998, it was a very good year,
Filled with hotdogs and juiced balls and many steroids so near,
It was a very good year.

[Snapolit1]

I don't disagree that a relative handful (or two) of names garner the lion's share attention in the pre-war collecting world. Your point maybe be exaggerated (people talk all the time about Paige and Gehrig as but two examples), but your point is generally accurate. Wait around for an Ernie Banks thread and you might be waiting a while. But have you ever gone to a post war board? Jeez its Mike Trout all day and all night. I think this is just the vagaries of collecting, and would bet it takes place with respect to vintage cars, hummels, Norman Rockwell plates, stamps and everything else. Pecking orders develop in hobbies and are in a way self perpetuating. Why is this plate more desirable than others? Because basically the hobby decided it was because more people talked about it and it got more desirable. Rinse and repeat.

[todeen]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

Pecking orders develop in hobbies and are in a way self perpetuating. Why is this plate more desirable than others? Because basically the hobby decided it was because more people talked about it and it got more desirable. Rinse and repeat.

I'm an English literature major, and we call the top 100 books the canon. Generally it is represented by dead white guys, who were chosen by old white guys. But over the last 20-30 years, more open minded academics have started to change the canon by broadening and redefining what's important. It looks a lot like NET54 organization as they break it up into groups. Post Colonialism. Feminism. Realism/Naturalism. Contemporary. Poetry. World Lit. Victorian Era. Elizabethan. African American Lit. It's a glorious time to be alive if you're a reader as the canon has grown to adopt diversity.

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[Casey2296]

I was hoping to keep my progress on a Gus Zernial master set under wraps so y'all didn't drive the prices up.

[glchen]

Babe Ruth sez: "Sorry, Willie, I think I was the best baseball player I ever saw. Now buy more of my cards!"

[GeoPoto]

Best Pitcher (after Ruth)

https://www.net54baseball.com/attach...1&d=1605641989

[oldeboo]

This thread needs a Ty Cobb card, who has one?

[Huysmans]

Originally Posted by todeen

I'm an English literature major, and we call the top 100 books the canon. Generally it is represented by dead white guys, who were chosen by old white guys. But over the last 20-30 years, more open minded academics have started to change the canon by broadening and redefining what's important. It looks a lot like NET54 organization as they break it up into groups. Post Colonialism. Feminism. Realism/Naturalism. Contemporary. Poetry. World Lit. Victorian Era. Elizabethan. African American Lit. It's a glorious time to be alive if you're a reader as the canon has grown to adopt diversity.

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Not everyone shares the changing of the canon as something positive, Allan Bloom, in his highly influential The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students (1987) argues that moral degradation results from ignorance of the great classics that shaped Western culture. His book was widely cited by some intellectuals for its argument that the classics contained universal truths and timeless values which were being ignored by cultural relativists.

Additionally, defenders maintain that those who undermine the canon do so out of primarily political interests, and that such criticisms are misguided and/or disingenuous. As John Searle, Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, has written:

"There is a certain irony in this [i.e., politicized objections to the canon] in that earlier student generations, my own for example, found the critical tradition that runs from Socrates through the Federalist Papers, through the writings of Mill and Marx, down to the twentieth century, to be liberating from the stuffy conventions of traditional American politics and pieties. Precisely by inculcating a critical attitude, the "canon" served to demythologize the conventional pieties of the American bourgeoisie and provided the student with a perspective from which to critically analyze American culture and institutions. Ironically, the same tradition is now regarded as oppressive. The texts once served an unmasking function; now we are told that it is the texts which must be unmasked." (this was taken from online)

[todeen]

Originally Posted by Huysmans

Not everyone shares the changing of the canon as something positive, Allan Bloom, in his highly influential The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students (1987) argues that moral degradation results from ignorance of the great classics that shaped Western culture. His book was widely cited by some intellectuals for its argument that the classics contained universal truths and timeless values which were being ignored by cultural relativists.

Additionally, defenders maintain that those who undermine the canon do so out of primarily political interests, and that such criticisms are misguided and/or disingenuous. As John Searle, Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, has written:

"There is a certain irony in this [i.e., politicized objections to the canon] in that earlier student generations, my own for example, found the critical tradition that runs from Socrates through the Federalist Papers, through the writings of Mill and Marx, down to the twentieth century, to be liberating from the stuffy conventions of traditional American politics and pieties. Precisely by inculcating a critical attitude, the "canon" served to demythologize the conventional pieties of the American bourgeoisie and provided the student with a perspective from which to critically analyze American culture and institutions. Ironically, the same tradition is now regarded as oppressive. The texts once served an unmasking function; now we are told that it is the texts which must be unmasked." (this was taken from online)

Wonderful response! I in no way disrespect the canon of classics. I have grown more in awe of Shakespeare the longer I am out of college, as well as for the Elizabethan artists. I have read and enjoy some of the classics - Allegory of the Cave by Plato stands out. More modern poets like Longfellow and Robert Frost. I appreciate what they have added, and I respect them for it.

But I also find real value in the new canon of politicized opinions (the world of post modern thought). The women added to the canon - such as Virginia Woolf, and the post colonial authors - like Chinua Achebe, they have all added such thoughtful and thought provoking work that they should arguably have a place at the table. At my liberal arts college....College of Idaho....the canon was moved to a class called Literary Theory I and II.

It makes me think of one of my poetry instructors at college who said - "If you can tell me the rules of poetry and exercise them, then I will let you break the rules. But if you don't know the rules, then you need to practice them and learn them until you understand them." I think the same is true when arguing the canon. If you understand the value of these works, and you can see why they were highly respected, then you have a right to question the individuals choosing who is and isn't in (editors of Norton Anthology, in particular) and ask why other artists (based on gender and ethnicity) are not included.

When I teach Shakespeare to my high school students, I talk to them about what makes Shakespeare so timeless. And I highlight that he knew the rules of poetry so well, that when he broke the rules of the sonnet, he was doing it on purpose and he knew what his purpose was.

Turning this back to collecting baseball - I am particularly fond of some of the SABR and mathematicians who are trying to influence hall of fame voting by showing that player XYZ who is not in the hall of fame is just as good as player ABC, who is in the hall of fame and revered. Today, mlb.com ran an article title "Best players on every team not in the HOF." One of the players they highlighted was Lou Whitaker, and they highlighted his statistics as very similar to Rogers Hornsby and Joe Morgan. So, why isn't Lou Whitaker in the Hall of Fame?

[Eric72]

Some "obscure" players have reached legendary status on this board.

Paging Mr. Large-Ass Herzog

[Goudey77]

Originally Posted by Eric72

Some "obscure" players have reached legendary status on this board.

Paging Mr. Large-Ass Herzog

What's paging?

[mr2686]

Originally Posted by todeen

Turning this back to collecting baseball - I am particularly fond of some of the SABR and mathematicians who are trying to influence hall of fame voting by showing that player XYZ who is not in the hall of fame is just as good as player ABC, who is in the hall of fame and revered. Today, mlb.com ran an article title "Best players on every team not in the HOF." One of the players they highlighted was Lou Whitaker, and they highlighted his statistics as very similar to Rogers Hornsby and Joe Morgan. So, why isn't Lou Whitaker in the Hall of Fame?

Do I like MLB.com? Yes
Do I like and should Whitaker be in the Hall? Yes, but he's lower tier based on watching him his whole career...that, along with his stats.
In any universe is Whitaker equal or near equal to Hornsby or Morgan? No frickin' way. LOL

[Rich Klein]

As a person who is more of a dealer than a collector I get what the OP is saying.

To me, when I saw that, my instinct was I can't tell you how many times over the years I saw newer people immediately gravitate towards the BEST names instead of working on building a collection. Our generation of collectors/dealers did collecting, I personally think it's possible the next generation will mainly focus on names/grades/cards which can be treated like assets and be traded on that level.

Will there be room for the average collector/dealer? Absolutely but it will be a minority of what you see not the majority. I was chatting with one of the dealers from whom I buy a lot of nickel/dime/quarter cards and mentioned how I used to be able to afford the occasional box from him. Now he was doing deals for boxes in the thousands of dollars and said something to the effect of: I preferred those days to what is going on now. Why? He does not know how long he can stay in that game.

It is what it is and we'll survive and there will always be us dinosaurs as collectors and dealers to get through this as well.

[Huysmans]

Originally Posted by tschock

In 1998, it was a very good year,
Filled with hotdogs and juiced balls and many steroids so near,
It was a very good year.

Well done sir!

[jchcollins]

The hobby is in many ways different than the sport(s) from which it's subjects are drawn, and as was insinuated earlier - the history of the hobby and especially the mainstream, self-aware hobby (IMHO, after about 1980) of course exerts its own influence - and in many cases this is based on sometimes random preferences derived from hobbyists - many of whom are indeed old white guys. I digress:

I collect mostly postwar vintage, simply because while I could choose to pour significantly more financial resources into things like prewar or modern speculation - at some point I stop because I can't get past what I perceive as ridiculous prices to pay for single pieces of cardboard, when in my heart of hearts I realize that anything "old" related to baseball instantly seems cool to me and makes me feel like a kid again. But even with postwar, the general theme of the OP's post rings true. If you followed only whose cards were hot, you would miss out most of the time on players like Frank Robinson, Joe Morgan, Steve Carlton, and a host of others. To me this is where it seems my grass roots collecting background was in many cases more helpful back in the day (late 80's, early 90's) - I didn't know much of the organized "hobby" and it's existence outside of each month's Beckett arriving at my door. So I based my preferences for what I wanted to collect in vintage cards (again, mostly 50's and 60's - prewar cards weren't unheard of when I was a kid, but they were more expensive than drugs...) on what I read of baseball history. An example that I think ties in well here - and nothing today against this player - but when I was like 11 or 12, I would have put Duke Snider at the top of the list in terms of famous '50's players. I had his book, met him and got his autograph at a card show. In my mind he was every bit Mantle's equal. Popular sentiment today would say otherwise, of course, and that is very much borne out in the price of The Duke's cards. But that's what you miss if you go only on what is only popular in the hobby vs. what you might have read about history.

[cardsagain74]

Originally Posted by jchcollins

If you followed only whose cards were hot, you would miss out most of the time on players like Frank Robinson, Joe Morgan, Steve Carlton, and a host of others.

Willie McCovey.

Guy was the most feared hitter of the '60s, in a league that had Aaron and Mays. Spent his best years protecting Mays in the Giants' lineup and was pitched around like crazy, yet still managed to hit over 500 HRs. Despite missing an average of a few dozen games per season, too.

And other than his rookie, his cards cost pocket change

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by cardsagain74

Willie McCovey.

Guy was the most feared hitter of the '60s, in a league that had Aaron and Mays. Spent his best years protecting Mays in the Giants' lineup and was pitched around like crazy, yet still managed to hit over 500 HRs. Despite missing an average of a few dozen games per season, too.

And other than his rookie, his cards cost pocket change

Agreed. SF fans respected Mays, but worshipped McCovey. Yastrzemski is another - besides his RC, his other cards even in super nice shape aren't expensive at all. First AL player with over 3,000 hits and 400 home runs - triple crown winner? Seems silly.

Bob Gibson is another at least in comparison to Koufax and Ryan and Seaver. His RC is pricey, everything else not so much. Dude was a certified badass and first ballot HOF'er. Makes no sense to me.

[BabyRuth]

oldeboo was looking for a Ty Cobb card for this thread. My doctor told me to get more fiber in my diet so I've been enjoying this Cobb salad.

[ValKehl]

When I read the OP's title for this thread, I thought he was referring to collectors of this set of cards:

[vintagebaseballcardguy]

Originally Posted by jchcollins

The hobby is in many ways different than the sport(s) from which it's subjects are drawn, and as was insinuated earlier - the history of the hobby and especially the mainstream, self-aware hobby (IMHO, after about 1980) of course exerts its own influence - and in many cases this is based on sometimes random preferences derived from hobbyists - many of whom are indeed old white guys. I digress:

I collect mostly postwar vintage, simply because while I could choose to pour significantly more financial resources into things like prewar or modern speculation - at some point I stop because I can't get past what I perceive as ridiculous prices to pay for single pieces of cardboard, when in my heart of hearts I realize that anything "old" related to baseball instantly seems cool to me and makes me feel like a kid again. But even with postwar, the general theme of the OP's post rings true. If you followed only whose cards were hot, you would miss out most of the time on players like Frank Robinson, Joe Morgan, Steve Carlton, and a host of others. To me this is where it seems my grass roots collecting background was in many cases more helpful back in the day (late 80's, early 90's) - I didn't know much of the organized "hobby" and it's existence outside of each month's Beckett arriving at my door. So I based my preferences for what I wanted to collect in vintage cards (again, mostly 50's and 60's - prewar cards weren't unheard of when I was a kid, but they were more expensive than drugs...) on what I read of baseball history. An example that I think ties in well here - and nothing today against this player - but when I was like 11 or 12, I would have put Duke Snider at the top of the list in terms of famous '50's players. I had his book, met him and got his autograph at a card show. In my mind he was every bit Mantle's equal. Popular sentiment today would say otherwise, of course, and that is very much borne out in the price of The Duke's cards. But that's what you miss if you go only on what is only popular in the hobby vs. what you might have read about history.

Like John, I am a postwar collector. I am absolutely eaten up with the 1950s, particularly the first half or so of the decade, and more particularly still with Bowman. I am a set builder at heart. I have a few graded cards, but I much prefer low to mid grade cards in a binder. Another part of my collecting life is reading. Again 1950s baseball, particularly all things New York, is my focus. My reading drives my collecting, and when I am putting together sets I am pumped when I can add cards of players like Ralph Branca, Bobby Thomson, Carl Furillo, Billy Cox, Sal Maglie, etc. These are the larger than life characters who live on in the books that I read from what must have been such an awesome time to be alive and see baseball at places like the Polo Grounds and Ebbets Field. Sure, I also enjoy collecting cards of Mantle, Mays, Jackie, etc., but that whole era has a flavor that would be missed (IMO) if I only collected those stars.