Who is the biggest culprit?

[Rich Klein]

Couple of things:

I think I have written about this in one of my hobby columns but as a reminder, when I used to go to my favorite card shop in the 1980's (H&H Hobbiies in Garfield, NJ) the kids and yes there were plenty of those then at the store, would buy the 1985 Topps packs and if Mattingly, Gooden, Big Mac, Eric Davis, Clemens, Puckett, etc did not come out then the rest of the cards were left on the counter.

Think of Mattingly as today's "insert" card and yes some things adapt but do not change.

This is a segmented hobby and yes for the most part the only thing most collectors care about are the "hits". Even my wife when we open boxes for the hobby column I write only cares about autographs and relic cards that she pulls. We opened an 1982 Donruss box for my b-day and she was bored in five packs. Of course, I got 5 Ripken Jr RC's out of that box so I enjoyed the rest of the box

As for kids, the barrier for entry to attend events is high. Back in the day the average show was $1-2 with shops in every town. My friend had one of the seven stores in Minot ND during the real hobby peak time.

This board, because of the vintage nature, does skew much older than FCB. At the national i was talking to a fellow dual board member and there is very little crossover between posters. The FCB posters skew younger, probably by at least a decade.