What Happened to Card Collecting That I Knew?

[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.