Questions About "Modern" Cards

[Hankphenom]

Originally Posted by gonefishin

Funny that I just drafted a reply that said basically the same thing, but deleted it so as not to offend anyone. I never, or very rarely, hear a young, new to the hobby collector, cut down a vintage collector, etc. I read a lot of posts from vintage collector's that either make jest off, or run down the modern collector. It's not right and I don't agree. The truth is, modern collectors are what keeps this hobby alive and thriving. They are the future. We may not agree with the methods or reasons why they collect, but unless it does damage, real not perceived, why should one care? We should be elated that young people have joined the hobby.

A big +1 to that! What a drag it would be to be passionate about a hobby you knew was going to die away with your generation, it might make me wonder what the hell I was doing collecting these things! In defense of my generation, I think a lot of the disparagement arose from the assumption that the "shiny stuff" taking up more and more of the table space at shows would be rendered a fool's quest by the seemingly infinite numbers of those cards produced and the fact that practically none of them would ever get thrown away by moms or put in bicycle spokes or go into paper drives, so the supply would always be more or less unlimited and therefore be only temporarily of collector's interest. And until quite recently, I wouldn't have been able to tell you if I thought the vintage collecting of my boomer generation was a "one-off" based on our nostalgia for the cards of our youth and then trickling down to the older cards of players we had come to idolize from our reading about baseball's long history, or if succeeding generations would have similar feelings about the cards and collectibles of their peers. Now it appears to be the latter case, and to me it is a wonderful thing to behold.