What is the one thing that has changed most since you started collecting?

[Snapolit1]

Originally Posted by Rhotchkiss

Your second post (and Adam’s earlier post), answers the question - auction houses. The relative savings that eBay provides a seller no longer outweighs the risk, work, and poor treatment that EBay affords sellers today. I would rather give up that extra 5% and know that my job ends the minute I send my package to the AH (using their account and insurance). And, I think this is exactly why there are so many auctions today - they are absorbing all of the sellers that eBay has lost.

Maybe you are right. Too many maniacs for me to deal with. And when work is busy I have no time to deal with a lot of stupid question, special shipping instructions, sending payment reminders, etc. Much easier to send to an AH. Though I do like selling smaller items myself occasionally.

[doug.goodman]

I agree with, or at least don't disagree with, most of the previous posts, but in my mind most, if not all, of the things mentioned are a part of one over all encompassing change to 'the hobby' :

Very few of us collect for purely the FUN of it anymore.

[G1911]

Originally Posted by doug.goodman

I agree with, or at least don't disagree with, most of the previous posts, but in my mind most, if not all, of the things mentioned are a part of one over all encompassing change to 'the hobby' :

Very few of us collect for purely the FUN of it anymore.

This. Card discourse used to be mostly about cards, now it is mostly about profit margins. Compare money thread and pumper thread replies to research thread replies - almost nobody really cares about the cards themselves anymore. Most of the big changes are the result of this shift in approach.

[Leon]

Originally Posted by G1911

This. Card discourse used to be mostly about cards, now it is mostly about profit margins. Compare money thread and pumper thread replies to research thread replies - almost nobody really cares about the cards themselves anymore. Most of the big changes are the result of this shift in approach.

+1. We rarely talked so much about the money aspect 20+ yrs ago. I think the new age of flippers, big private equity buying into the hobby, and investors in the hobby have all changed it. And it's mostly for the worse for me...
.

[Johnny630]

Originally Posted by Leon

+1. We rarely talked so much about the money aspect 20+ yrs ago. I think the new age of flippers, big private equity buying into the hobby, and investors in the hobby have all changed it. And it's mostly for the worse for me...
.

More money more problems....also the profiteers look at it like this...don't hate the player hate the game. The game is on the side of the profiteer not the collector...now to me that's what's changed the most. The deck has never been stacked more against the collector and less against the machine.

I have accepted it...it's just the way it is.

[MR RAREBACK]

Looking at gemrate
361,000 ja morants graded
271,000 Nolan Ryan’s graded

[Snapolit1]

Originally Posted by MR RAREBACK

Looking at gemrate
361,000 ja morants graded
271,000 Nolan Ryan’s graded

Ja about to get a lengthy suspension. I’d imagine pricey purchases of his bogus gold refractor cards are well under water. For good.

[Snapolit1]

Originally Posted by doug.goodman

I agree with, or at least don't disagree with, most of the previous posts, but in my mind most, if not all, of the things mentioned are a part of one over all encompassing change to 'the hobby' :

Very few of us collect for purely the FUN of it anymore.

A lot of us spend way more for cards and photos, etc. that we would ever have imagined. It's nice at least to sell a few items once in a while at a profit to offset the costs that could have been deployed elsewhere. Unless you are insanely wealthy or don't really care about condition or rarity, it's hard not to have some interest in the economic side of things.

[brianp-beme]

If you don't watch out, Ed is going to Kargerize all your heads.

e90karger 001.jpg

Brian (I suggest more fun, and less doughy residue)

[ValKehl]

Originally Posted by doug.goodman

Very few of us collect for purely the FUN of it anymore.

I'm happy being one of the "very few of us."

[Brian Van Horn]

I'm under the very few of us collector category. Outside of shill bidding, it's a ball.

[Snapolit1]

If you are truly happy, no need to spend any time worrying about what other people are doing.
There are all sorts of collectors. Jay Leno loves cars. So does my brother in law. One has dozens of rare cars. One has a Camaro he has been working on for years. Both are car collectors. But very different types of collectors. To each his own. I would never say Jay Leno is less of a true collector because he spends a fortune of cars.

[Mungo Hungo]

What doesn’t seem to have changed, at least on this forum, is the proliferation of “collectors” who seem to hate everyone and everything about collecting. And they come to a collecting site to tell everyone else all about it.

[darwinbulldog]

I'd say over the next 10-15 years there won't be any changes with nearly as large an impact as the spread of internet access and TPGs have had. If I had to predict something though, I'd say there will be more of a flattening of interest across different sports as in 15 years most sports card collectors will be outside of the U.S.

This, ironically, may be exactly what saves the interest in baseball (o beisbol) cards per se when the first generation of Topps collectors are no longer part of the hobby.

Anyway, stock up on those vintage field hockey and badminton cards while you can still afford them.

[Snapolit1]

Originally Posted by Mungo Hungo

What doesn’t seem to have changed, at least on this forum, is the proliferation of “collectors” who seem to hate everyone and everything about collecting. And they come to a collecting site to tell everyone else all about it.

You could go to any collecting community and hear the same basic gripes. Somewhere right now on the Internet some collector of mid 1930s German S&M porn is bitching about the influx of new collectors who are in the hobby for all the wrong reasons and are ruining it. Seems to be a universal part of the collecting experience for some reason. It's important to some people to establish that their motives are the only pure and righteous motives for collecting. Kind of silly.