The Future

[troutbum97]

[QUOTE=maj78;2104374I took my 10 year old to a local card show (his first) two weeks ago. He's normally pretty shy but actually wanted me to leave him alone so he could go make offers on a few of the lower end cards he wanted. Something I learned on here...there's a rear-end for every seat.[/QUOTE]

That’s super duper cool. Thanks for sharing.

I remember being awkward as a 10-13 yr old kid, but feeling in my groove at card shows with my paper route money, trying to find deals and barter with the dealers. Great early life lessons.

A+ to you, sir. Your story made me smile.

[jgannon]

It's really is great to hear about kids being instilled with a love for collecting. Those kids, are no doubt out there. But for years, out on the street so to speak, the only cards I've seen kids interested in collecting and getting into them with their friends, are things like Pokémon cards. I haven't seen kids in the mainstream collect baseball cards in years.

Given what they cost, card collecting isn't really geared toward kids anymore. With the Pokémon packs, while not large boxes of "product" (I really hate that word), you're talking about dealing in dollars, not coins to buy them.

There is a quote by some famous rock musician, "We used to make records for girls. Now we make them for nerds". Lol. In much the same way, you can say that cards used to be made for kids, now they're made for immature adults pulling guns on each other in parking lots.

But of course, that isn't all of us...

Today's kids are of course, more interested in gaming. It's a different world.

[egri]

One of my neighbors used to work for a large toy company. He was telling me how 7-8 year olds used to be the low end of the age range they would market towards, but by the time he left they had become the upper end. Once they started turning 9-10 years old, they were so busy with after school activities that they didn’t have a whole lot of free time, and when they did have free time they were gravitating towards screens instead. I think cards are in the same boat. Topps has priced out kids, and I can’t bring myself to spend money on NFTs or spin the roulette wheel on this years once in a generation prospect who might make it big, or might be out of the league in two years. I think the last time I bought current year Topps cards was in 2007. I think they were trying to channel the 1971 set with the black borders, and fell well short of the mark.

[samosa4u]

Originally Posted by jgannon

It's really is great to hear about kids being instilled with a love for collecting. Those kids, are no doubt out there. But for years, out on the street so to speak, the only cards I've seen kids interested in collecting and getting into them with their friends, are things like Pokémon cards. I haven't seen kids in the mainstream collect baseball cards in years.

Yes, Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! These kids have no interest in collecting sports cards.