Current state of the hobby-Modern cards

[OhioLawyerF5]

Originally Posted by Balticfox

Well it's sure as hell different than when I was a kid. We never thought about values. We just opened the packs, dropped the wrappers where we stood, stuffed the gum in our mouths, looked to see who we got in each pack, shoved the cards into our pant pocket and then eventually flung them gaily at brick walls in winner takes all games.



I disagree. That's learned behaviour which has come about in the last 35-40 years or so.

I disagree. Human beings are born coveteous. The desire to have more than others has been passed down from Adam. You don't have to teach a kid to want the most valuable thing. Just because you didn't care about values of baseball cards doesn't mean no one did. I promise you kids interested in card values pre-dates your life. As soon as cards were traded for value, some kid cared about that value. Like I said, it's human nature. You just didn't realize they had value.

[Balticfox]

Originally Posted by OhioLawyerF5

Human beings are born coveteous. The desire to have more than others has been passed down from Adam. You don't have to teach a kid to want the most valuable thing.... Like I said, it's human nature.

Yes on those points I agree.

Originally Posted by OhioLawyerF5

Just because you didn't care about values of baseball cards doesn't mean no one did.

Why would anybody have cared about the "value" of the bubble gum cards we kids were buying from 1959-65 when they had no value at the time?

Originally Posted by OhioLawyerF5

As soon as cards were traded for value, some kid cared about that value.

True. But that didn't happen until many years after I stopped buying cards as a kid.

Originally Posted by OhioLawyerF5

I promise you kids interested in card values pre-dates your life.

I was born in early April 1952. While some adult somewhere may have been willing to pay a few dollars for certain select tobacco cards prior to that, I'd be very surprised if you could identify any kid at the time aware of any of these cards.

Originally Posted by OhioLawyerF5

You just didn't realize they had value.

Those cards had no value because they had no value at the time! You can't transpose future values back into the past. That's a mistake. Any market participant will tell you timing is everything.

I was simply making the point that my/our experience back in the day was very much different than the experience/behaviour of present day kids (or kids since the late 1980's). We happily bought and collected bubble gum cards with no thought as to their value (primarily because there was no value). We did it simply because we liked baseball and the cards looked, smelled and felt cool. You can't say that my statement was incorrect because we would have paid attention to the value had there been any. We simply didn't. I said only that. Case closed.

[OhioLawyerF5]

Originally Posted by Balticfox

Yes on those points I agree.



Why would anybody have cared about the "value" of the bubble gum cards we kids were buying from 1959-65 when they had no value at the time?



True. But that didn't happen until many years after I stopped buying cards as a kid.



I was born in early April 1952. While some adult somewhere may have been willing to pay a few dollars for certain select tobacco cards prior to that, I'd be very surprised if you could identify any kid at the time aware of any of these cards.



Those cards had no value because they had no value at the time! You can't transpose future values back into the past. That's a mistake. Any market participant will tell you timing is everything.

I was simply making the point that my/our experience back in the day was very much different than the experience/behaviour of present day kids (or kids since the late 1980's). We happily bought and collected bubble gum cards with no thought as to their value (primarily because there was no value). We did it simply because we liked baseball and the cards looked, smelled and felt cool. You can't say that my statement was incorrect because we would have paid attention to the value had there been any. We simply didn't. I said only that. Case closed.

Cards most certainly had value in the 50s and 60s. That's a fallacy. Cards had value in the 10s and 20s. This idea that cards didn't have value back then is a recent allegation, not supported by facts. It's usually people who were kids at the time who were oblivious to that value. Kids today just have much more awareness of it. In the 80s, beckett published a massively popular magazine with prices that every kid had. Now, kids hold the internet in their pockets. They have more information than you did in the 50s. But again, you not being aware of something doesn't make it not real. But make no mistake, cards had value in the 50s. And had you been aware of it, you would have cared just the same as kids today.

[Balticfox]

Originally Posted by OhioLawyerF5

It's usually people who were kids at the time who were oblivious to that value.

That concession is sufficient to prove my point. Our childhood collecting behaviour back when I was a kid in grade school in 1958-65 was very much different than the collecting behaviour of kids these days.

You're arguing that our behaviour would have been different had we known about values. Maybe so. But that's beside the point I was making.

[OhioLawyerF5]

Originally Posted by Balticfox

That concession is sufficient to prove my point. Our childhood collecting behaviour back when I was a kid in grade school in 1958-65 was very much different than the collecting behaviour of kids these days.

You're arguing that our behaviour would have been different had we known about values. Maybe so. But that's beside the point I was making.

You missed my point. YOU may not have known cards could have value, but you aren't representative of every kid. Your experience does not prove there weren't kids who cared about the value of their cards in the 50s. It was certainly a smaller market than today. But that's because the world was a smaller place. Not because the market didn't exist.

[1952boyntoncollector]

the value for a lot of these cards as kids was in trade to each other..

you really think many of these movie cards have much value..yeah there will be a website selling some but usually unopened packs...but kids in the past really loved their baseball cards and enjoyed the stats and watching the players every day etc and have grown up and can afford to buy cards of the past... .movies come and go i am going to assume howard the duck raw cards dont have the same 'value' back then or now.. card were treated differently past v present.

[Rich Klein]

But my soon to be 12-year-old great nephew was over for a few minutes so I had him look at the cards I've picked up recently. He loved looking at them especially the ones from 1967 Topps. There is always hope! And they aren't Seaver or Carew rookies either, just cards like Curt Simmons and the Swoboda/Kranepool dual card.

Since his birthday was this month he ended up with those cards and a few modern stars and his friend loved a PSA4 1953 Del Crandell and ended up with that for his birthday last month. Get those kids into vintage early!

I also had a box of used sleeves and some new top loaders to give him


Regards
Rich