What's hurting the vintage card hobby?

[Exhibitman]

Originally Posted by JasonL

"It's the economy, stupid!"

Upward spiraling asset values cover all the blemishes, get people excited, maintain interest, etc...

+1 on that.

I'd also add that the much-maligned label "advanced collector" has a place in this discussion. It is necessary to differentiate between different collector styles and degrees of sophistication when analyzing the "vintage card hobby"; you can't just toss it all into one basket. When I first started out collecting, the natural place to start was with the leading lights in the modern (at the time) game--Hank Aaron, Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, Pete Rose--plus some well known old timers--Ruth, Johnson, Cobb, Matty, Gehrig--in mainstream vintage sets. As I developed an appreciation for the cards themselves, reads more about their history, learned about variations, etc., I naturally moved on towards older, more obscure and rarer issues. I'd say that advanced collectors lead the way into the more remote corners of the vintage universe and collect very differently from people who are relatively recent to the field. Modern card collectors may never cross over to vintage card collection and when they do they might not ever move away from T206, Goudey, Play Ball, etc., and into Zeenuts, E cards or whatever else there is out there. What's most important, IMO, is making room in the hobby for everyone's particular niche(s) so that no one interested in collecting is turned off from the hobby. That's the best way to grow the collector base.

Oh, and free food and drinks at the National.