History Lesson Please (Sports Collectors Digest)

[Volod]

I have seen Bob posting here, but don't know how recently, or if he checks in regularly. He did edit SCD and its brief sister pub, Baseball Cards Magazine in the mid-80's. What years were you looking for?

[Orioles1954]

Weren't these weekly for a time?

[DaClyde]

Recently Bob has been posting a lot to his blog based on what he's been reading from his microfilmed collection of The Sporting News. Oh, how I would love to see some sort of microfilm or digital (Please! Please!) archive of all of those old Sports Collectors Digests and Baseball Cards magazines. The history if our hobby is somewhat inaccessible to the current generation of younger collectors.

[Griffins]

Bob is tied up on a project for the next week or two and probably unavailable, but I'm sure he'll respond to this when he's back online.

[U240robert]

I have some old SCD's and Baseball Card Magazine. I should scan some of the prices it's great.
I do remember well, $4 for NM commons of '53 Bowman Color.
The Reese was $12 back then.

[Bigdaddy]

Yes, SCDs fo the 80's and 90's were THE place to buy and sell cards. Take away Ebay, on-line forums like this, on-line auction houses, email, and everything that relies on the internet, and what you are left with is SCD.

You could get the normal 3rd class mail subscription, or pay extra for the 1st class mail delivery and get your issue a couple of days early - sort of like the 'sneak peak' Thursday or Friday evening entry into the big card shows.

In addition to the articles and typical buy/sell ads, there were listings for card shows (remember all those?) and the autograph guests.

Things gradually went downhill with the advent of the internet and the loss of advertisers (which was the heart and soul of the magazine) and all that remained was mailer for the latest Roaches Corner auction.

I have not picked one up in quite a while.

[Gary Dunaier]

If memory serves me right, SCD also had a subscription option where you could have your copies overnighted to you via Federal Express. As you might imagine, this was a very expensive option.

Those who only know of today's SCD as a biweekly pamphlet would be surprised to see copies from the late 1980s and early 1990s, when it was a weekly and each issue was in the neighborhood of 200-300 pages.