Current state of the hobby-Modern cards

[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

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

People who speak in broad generalities are always wrong...

[Balticfox]

Originally Posted by Aquarian Sports Cards

People who speak in broad generalities are always wrong...

[Balticfox]

Originally Posted by BioCRN

I'm personally amazed how well things are holding up for ultra-modern releases considering the cost of the buy-in.

It's been gambling for a long time. Hell, you can't economically put together a base set from packs for at least 10-15 years.

You mean it's been 10-15 years since it made economic sense to put together a base set by buying packs?

[Balticfox]

Originally Posted by 1952boyntoncollector

in the old sets we all loved every card in a set...now its just certain subsets...the level of love is much thinner.

The card manufacturers themselves are to blame for that. Pre-1980 a baseball fan and card collector needed only to complete one (admittedly huge) set per year and he had basically from April to September to do it which wasn't really difficult because the cards were on every convenience store counter at basically affordable prices. And perhaps a food issue or two (e.g. Post Cereal, Salada Coins, Hostess, Kellogg's) which still wasn't that tough because a kid needs something other than bubble gum at times.

But since 1990 or so anyway the amount of product has exploded with several releases per year. And with all the manufactured scarcities, building a master set is generally impossible. In fact even defining a master set is difficult. Is a Jersey card with a red fabric an altogether different card than one with a white fabric? And Patch cards are all completely different of course. Moreover since when is every autograph exactly the same?

Therefore concentrating on certain specific subsets ends up being the viable fallback option for many/most collectors. Other fans resort to collecting only certain players although that to me seems bizarre for an adult anyway. It strikes me as hero worship.