Questions About "Modern" Cards

[jchcollins]

I can’t keep up with modern on the whole these days, but I very much appreciate the fact that healthy new collectors means a thriving hobby - and more shops, more shows, more cash flow. With all those things of course, more vintage comes out as available too.

I will occasionally buy a box of something new like Topps flagship or Heritage, but I’m not spending the $ to do all the parallels, numbered cards, SP’s, SSP’s, and autos and relics. In an age when many new to the hobby actually throw base cards in the trash - I like them. Base cards were mostly all we knew when I started in the height of the junk wax days. One of my favorite modern cards is the ‘21 Heritage Shohei Ohtani (‘72 Topps design). It’s not worth much, but I just like the design and the picture. Base cards can be a cheap way to still have fun with the hobby and keep up with current MLB.


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[Hankphenom]

Originally Posted by jchcollins

I can’t keep up with modern on the whole these days, but I very much appreciate the fact that healthy new collectors means a thriving hobby - and more shops, more shows, more cash flow. With all those things of course, more vintage comes out as available too. I will occasionally buy a box of something new like Topps flagship or Heritage, but I’m not spending the $ to do all the parallels, numbered cards, SP’s, SSP’s, and autos and relics. In an age when many new to the hobby actually throw base cards in the trash - I like them. Base cards were mostly all we knew when I started in the height of the junk wax days. One of my favorite modern cards is the ‘21 Heritage Shohei Ohtani (‘72 Topps design). It’s not worth much, but I just like the design and the picture. Base cards can be a cheap way to still have fun with the hobby and keep up with current MLB. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

There might turn out to be an interesting parallel between the "base cards" of my youth (50s and 60s Topps, etc.) and the base cards of the "junk wax" era
whereby the former were rendered scarce by bike spokes, flipping, basement floods, moms looking to clean out old bedrooms, etc., and the latter being left on the floor or discarded into the trash after the packs were opened and the search for chase cards completed. And maybe that is still going on in different forms of disparagement of more modern base cards that would lead people to toss them when going to college or into the Army, getting married and moving into small starter apartments, and the like. The perception of lack of future value, after all, is what has created scarcity for every one of the cards and other memorabilia that was issued in the millions a hundred or more years ago and now go for millions each in some cases. Not saying there is any kind of comparability between them, but it's interesting to contemplate the potential similarities.

[Seven]

Just chiming in here.

Every so often I'll buy something small from one of the modern sets. I feel absolutely overwhelmed with all the products though. So many different subsets, parallels, refactors, hell there's apparently something called a "tacofractor" with pictures of tacos on the card (I wish I was joking)

It's gotten too complicated, the market seems too over saturated, I'd argue it's worse than the junk wax era. One thing that I love about vintage, is that there were a couple of "main" sets and then a few regional sets sprinkled in.