What Happened to Card Collecting That I Knew?

[laughlinfan]

Nice thread! I started in 1969 buying packs and always enjoyed the gum, the cards, the cartoons on the back, the inserts - loved the whole experience. Finally stopped buying new packs in 89 or 90, when it was apparent that they were taking down full forests for each of the countless sets that were being produced, and am not a fan of the manufactured scarcity in chase cards.

Since then I have moved over to collecting oddball issues, figural items, display items, orignial art - almost anything that I find interesting but probably not mass produced. I am now as I have always been, a minnow as opposed to a "whale" (and proud of it, although I guess I am supposed to feel inferior!) but I still enjoy collecting and finding the rare bargain for an item I would never be able to spend the big dollars on.

So I would suggest you try to find a way to reconnect with your old feelings of joy in collecting, even if opening packs and stuffing 5 pieces of gum in your mouth is sadly no longer an option!

P.S. And speaking of Kelloggs, one of my all time great days as a kid was pulling not one but THREE(!!!) 3-D cards out of a single box of Corn Flakes in 1970, including my hero Tom Seaver! As a 6 year old, I felt like I won the lottery!

[cdn_collector]

Originally Posted by laughlinfan

...even if opening packs and stuffing 5 pieces of gum in your mouth is sadly no longer an option!

Not entirely true! Although I haven't recently, I used to occasionally buy a box of 'something' just so I could tear open some packs of baseball cards like the old days. About 5 years ago, I ripped open a box of 1986 Topps. And I definitely tried the gum...


Regards,

Richard.

[ALR-bishop]

This Topps issue had a baseball subset within a set of 50 + comics involving all sports. I have a set and some unopened "packs", where the comic is wrapped around the gum. I know from opening the packs that the gum is still green and gooey....very chewable.

[Leon]

I moved this from the post war section to the main section because, well, I wanted to ....that and I think almost all of us, even though we might collect pre-war now, collected new cards when we were younger. These are some of the most interesting threads to me...and the front page does get more views. I hope the original poster doesn't mind this being moved.

And to be on topic... I collected as a kid in the late 60's and very early 70's. I remember all that gum and the smell of it like it was yesterday. Personally, I think the over saturation of the 80's and 90's killed it (and it's sort of obvious too). Happy collecting.

[4815162342]

Originally Posted by cdn_collector

Not entirely true! Although I haven't recently, I used to occasionally buy a box of 'something' just so I could tear open some packs of baseball cards like the old days. About 5 years ago, I ripped open a box of 1986 Topps. And I definitely tried the gum...


Regards,

Richard.

At last year's National, I bought a 1984 Topps wax box, and my buddy bought a 1987 Donruss wax box. It was a great trip down memory lane to open those packs.

[vintagecpa]

Perhaps what really killed the hobby is it went from a kid's hobby to a hobby dominated by adults (at least in terms of money). Back in the 50's and 60's, most of the cards were bought by kids in very small increments. It was rare for a kid to have more than one Mantle or Mays. Although I wasn't around back then, I'm pretty sure very few adults spent thousands of dollars to accumulate cards for some future investment return.

Fast forward to the late 70's and 1980's, many of the baby-boomers started seeing what their Mantles and Mays would sell for at local card shows. All of a sudden, you have more money flowing into the hobby than just allowance and paper-route money and more companies wanted a piece of the pie.

[Fred]

Jay,

I've got to ask... what's up with RLJ as your avatar? That's brings back memories of his better 1975 and 1976 seasons. Any particular reason you use him in your avatar?

Yup, the hobby's changed a lot since the 70's. Enter the early 80's and things were still not so twisted. Around 1984 things started going nuts with the rookie card craze and the 1984 Mattingly rookie. It just got worse from there when Donrus, Fleer and Topps started to compete for everyone's hobby dollars - enter the "chase" and "SP" cards and the crazy people shoveling hout $$$ to get those cards.

Enter Upper Deck in 1989 and the other card companies had to conform to the nice glossy photo style/stock cards. Here was the start of the crazy rookie cards with everyone trying to get that Griffey Jr. 1989 UD rookie card.

Then came grading - now everyone was looking for the "10" and throwing huge amounts of cash at the cards. Then came those stupid OPC cards (I think it was about 1991) that were pre-selling for huge bucks for a case. Then came the greed and the big burns when people presold cases for lower amounts of $$$ and then refused to sell the presold cases because they could get 4x the presold price for them on the "new" inflated market. Greed, $$$, greed, $$$.

Then the crash.... ah, it was funny to watch all those crazy prices come tumbling down.

Anyone remember "Big Bob - the biggest in the business"? The 90's was a crazy time for the hobby. I never really got caught up in the rookie card or chase card craze. I always liked the "old stuff". I remember picking up some pretty neat stuff in those days because a lot of the hobbyist didn't care about the "old stuff". Unfortunately prices since the 90s have really escalated and the grading thing has helped the hobby (in some respects) but it has also turned it upside down. Give me numbers, give me high numbers, no, I don't want any qualifiers.

I figure if you stick to collecting what you like then you'll enjoy the hobby. If you're collecting to make a buck on the stuff then it may not be as enjoyable unless you can continually turn a buck and get enjoyment from that.

[HercDriver]

I distinctly remember going to the gorcery store and racing down the aisle of Hostess cakes with my two brothers. We would grab every box off that shelf looking for a Rick Monday, Jose Cardenal, Rick Reuschel, Bill Madlock, or Steve Swisher! We'd each get to throw a box in the cart, and when we got home, meticulously cut the Cubs off the panel and throw the extras into our baseball card drawer. The Cubs went in a rubber band on our dressers. The rest of the cards were ammunition for "leaners" against the wall at school...

Take Care,
Geno

[judsonhamlin]

Jay - Really good thread.
I started about the same time as you did, but I hit up Renata Galasso in '77 for 500 cards and even got the '76 traded set as a throw in. We lived just a couple of miles from the Hostess Factory Store, so every week I would convince my mom to take me and let me get some cards I needed for the set that year - Big Wheels, Twinkies, Chocodiles, etc...
Throw in trips to Burger King for Yankees cards and various and sundry Kellogg's cereals and I had all the basic food groups covered.

I think the moment that the hobby jumped the shark came a couple of years later when KMart issued their All Time Great set. From there on, the number of companies ballooned and the print runs must have skyrocketed at that point. I believe that the monthly price guides started (with the up and down arrows tracking card prices like futures) around then as well, which, as someone commented in (I think)the 'best and worst' thread, was a large part of the move from hobby to business.

[vintagechris]

I miss being able to go to Antique shows or Flea Markets and finding 25 year old cards from the 50's in coke crates or just stacked o tables.

I still remember going to an outdoor antique show in the early 80's and seeing a seller there with stacks and stacks of football and baseball cards from the 50's that looked like they just came out of packs for a quarter each.

[Big Ben]

Originally Posted by Fred

Jay,

I've got to ask... what's up with RLJ as your avatar? That's brings back memories of his better 1975 and 1976 seasons. Any particular reason you use him in your avatar?

Yup, the hobby's changed a lot since the 70's. Enter the early 80's and things were still not so twisted. Around 1984 things started going nuts with the rookie card craze and the 1984 Mattingly rookie. It just got worse from there when Donrus, Fleer and Topps started to compete for everyone's hobby dollars - enter the "chase" and "SP" cards and the crazy people shoveling hout $$$ to get those cards.

Enter Upper Deck in 1989 and the other card companies had to conform to the nice glossy photo style/stock cards. Here was the start of the crazy rookie cards with everyone trying to get that Griffey Jr. 1989 UD rookie card.

Then came grading - now everyone was looking for the "10" and throwing huge amounts of cash at the cards. Then came those stupid OPC cards (I think it was about 1991) that were pre-selling for huge bucks for a case. Then came the greed and the big burns when people presold cases for lower amounts of $$$ and then refused to sell the presold cases because they could get 4x the presold price for them on the "new" inflated market. Greed, $$$, greed, $$$.

Then the crash.... ah, it was funny to watch all those crazy prices come tumbling down.

Anyone remember "Big Bob - the biggest in the business"? The 90's was a crazy time for the hobby. I never really got caught up in the rookie card or chase card craze. I always liked the "old stuff". I remember picking up some pretty neat stuff in those days because a lot of the hobbyist didn't care about the "old stuff". Unfortunately prices since the 90s have really escalated and the grading thing has helped the hobby (in some respects) but it has also turned it upside down. Give me numbers, give me high numbers, no, I don't want any qualifiers.

I figure if you stick to collecting what you like then you'll enjoy the hobby. If you're collecting to make a buck on the stuff then it may not be as enjoyable unless you can continually turn a buck and get enjoyment from that.

I absolutely loved the times when a person could trade the newer rookie cards for the "old stuff" as the dealers could move the newer rookies much faster and were willing to unload the old cards via trade. 1998 was a great year for me. I was out of the hobby for the most part and sitting on 20+ Mcgwire rookies that I had got on the cheap. Unloaded all the Mcgwire rookies for 1950's hall of famers that were collecting dust at the local shop. The steroid era was very very good for me!

[Vintagedegu]

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[rustywilly]

I can't step into a Target store and leave without buying a few packs - Topps Heritage - or, other vintage-looking modern cards. It brings back the memories of the good ole days.