What is the one thing that has changed most since you started collecting?

[parkplace33]

I saw this question on another forum and wanted to get Net54 take on this topic. What is the one thing that has changed the most since you started collecting?

I have collected cards for over 35 years so I thought long and hard about this topic. For me, its information, specifically card pricing tools. I remember the old days of book value and these new tools have helped both collectors and dealers get a more accurate idea of value.

What say you?

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

I think my brother and I were the last two kids to play with their cards. We knocked down the leaner, flipped, covered etc. on top of that we invented games based on statistics and wrote notes on the cards. That stopped around 1985 for us when I saw an issue of Baseball Card Magazine and found out that a Wade Boggs rookie was worth $13. We had dozens of them, we were rich! Until we read about something called "condition"

[ullmandds]

Information for sure is at the top of my list...to be different i'll say "availability" or access to cards has changed the most. Back in the late 80's/early 90's you'd only see the cards that were right in front of you. No internet...no auction infrastructure like we have now. The first time I saw a tolstoi backed t206 I paid up big time because I had already had a Drum back and I thought tolstoi were impossible to find!!!!

[bnorth]

Originally Posted by ullmandds

Information for sure is at the top of my list...to be different i'll say "availability" or access to cards has changed the most. Back in the late 80's/early 90's you'd only see the cards that were right in front of you. No internet...no auction infrastructure like we have now. The first time I saw a tolstoi backed t206 I paid up big time because I had already had a Drum back and I thought tolstoi were impossible to find!!!!

For me it is by far the part I made bold. A card that in the 80s that took months to track down you can now have your choice of 100s of that card in seconds. The other stuff is amazing but to me it doesn't even come close to the availability of cards now to back then.

[bmattioli]

With the available funds, anyone can find and purchase anything they want. Not that easy back in the good 'Ol days..

[campyfan39]

Grading
It has taken alot of the fun and innocence of the hobby away for me

[mrreality68]

I think the scope of collecting has expanded.

First it used to all about Baseball and specifically cards. Now it seems all sports have been on an update with NBA the hottest and then NFL, and even Soccer and hockey has really picked up.

Second. Fringe collections are becoming more main stream. Postcards became Cards, different items like Pictures becoming hotter commodities and now Pins seams to be on the upswing. Even Pokemon Cards, Hugi Go Cards etc are becoming mainstream collectables.

Third. Vintage is steady but Modern is really exploding but it has major swings in prices and focus while the market figures it out

Fourth. Alot of new money is coming in the collectible realm,

[rhettyeakley]

The prices paid for T206 cards. I never could have imagined that THE most common pre 1930’s set in existence would sell for multiple times the same player’s cards in sets exponentially rarer. I get why people like it but I have always valued true rarity over everything else.

I get the back rarities and understand the price on those more than a Common back T206 card.

[darwinbulldog]

Obviously the prices have changed. Used to be a 1984 Topps Don Mattingly was worth as much as a T206 Hall of Famer in similar condition.

Two other things that really stand out are how much easier it is to find almost any card you're looking for now (thanks to the scope of the internet) and how much the hobby cares about centering. It never occurred to me until the 21st century that being off-center would impact the price of a card; and if it had, I would have presumed that very off-center cards would sell for a bit of a premium (as they do for T206s).

[Republicaninmass]

People buying because they are afraid prices will "go up".

[Johnny630]

The whole Gambling Aspect tied to selling

Breaks...Raffles.. from Cases Down.. Half Cases, Boxes, Packs, Modern and Vintage, Teams, Players..and Facebook Raffles on graded and raw cards sometimes as much as hundreds of dollars a chance.


Sellers have many many more ways and platforms for moving cards now as compared to 20 plus years ago.

It's interesting to watch.

[obcbobd]

Got my first T206 in 1973

Biggest change is the move away from collecting to investing in cards.

[darwinbulldog]

The demographics have also changed. Used to be the main collectors were prepubescent kids and middle-aged guys. Now I think it's largely young men collecting modern cards and elderly men collecting vintage cards.

[Jim65]

How I find cards. Some of the 1966 and 1967 high numbers took months and many trips to shops and shows to find. Now they are super easy to find.

[BioCRN]

I was collecting before autograph cards started to be inserted into packs (early 80s), but I can't believe we're at the point where having 5-10+ different colored borders with a number stamped on them is often worth more than an autographed card.

Make something a red border and stamp 1/5 on it, that's generally more valuable by a huge amount than an autographed card (unless it's also got a rare border and a stamp).

I'm not a "rainbow chaser" but I don't got a problem with them. I am a bit shocked at how much people will spend on a 1/5 - 1/10 - etc that's just a border color change and a stamped number.

[brunswickreeves]

Exponential increases in both Supply (digital mechanisms to bring cards to market) and Demand (increased awareness from digital news and marketing, and proliferation from pandemic). Thus skyrocketed prices.

[JollyElm]

How the "valuation" of cards has completely changed...

511. Evolutionary Cardwinism
The incremental change in valuation from, say, a Hank Aaron card being worth, “My friend’ll give me three Mets for it! Dyn-o-mite!!!” when you were a kid, to putting it under a blacklight to root out any unseen flaws, using calipers to measure centering, and so on, to formulate a specific monetary dollar value for it today.

[Vintagecatcher]

The creation of grading card companies and their slabs and their associated card registries changed everything...but not for the better. The internet and eBay especially has made access to cards and memorabilia easier to find.

Patrick

[Fred]

The number of buttheads that are trying to screw the collecting public. 100X increase in population of these dirt bags.

Ok - a couple of things:

INTERNET - You can find anything you want on the internet - doesn't mean that T206 Wags is real.

TPGs - Without them, some collections may be worth 100X less than they are today.

[Rhotchkiss]

I have been collecting on and off since the early 1980s. So much has changed. Yet in so many ways things are the same.

The two largest changes I have seen is (1) card grading and authentication / TPGs, and (2) the internet, which has fundamentally changed how we buy cards, exchange information, interact with other hobbyists, etc. Without the internet, I would know at least 50 less people, many of of whom I consider legitimate friends.

At the same time, much has stayed the same. Cards have value, rookies are most desirable, and people still collect, trade, and sell cards. I also remember when there was Topps, Donruss, and Fleer and where 1984 Donruss was preferred, but 1985 Topps was preferred, and 1987 Fleer was preferred (1986 just sucked all around). Then there was Sortflicks, and Bowman, and Upperdeck - just like today with so many (too many) options. In 1983, we bought boxes looking for Gwynn, Boggs, and Sandbergs, and we threw away all the commons, and then in 1985 We would buy boxes looking for the Gooden, Clemens, Puckett, McGuire, etc. The only difference is we did not call these “hits”. At card shows, the modern totally outweighed the old old stuff in volume, by miles, as it does today.

It’s the same hobby, just different

[ValKehl]

#1 change is Third Party Graders (TPGs).

[theshowandme]

My access to $

6 year old me was broke and not a kid smoker in 1909 unfortunately


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[LEHR]

Two of the biggest thing are the internet like many have said, and the price paid for packs.

I bought my first computer in early 1997 and the world immediately opened up. Suddenly I had opportunities to buy things I'd only ready about, and certainly never seen for sale. Up until 1997 my collecting was limited to buying out of the SCD mags (which I did a lot), buying from one of the two "local" card shops I had within 30 miles of me, or buying at the 1-3 local/reginal shows I would go to. I didn't attend my first National until 2002.

The price of packs: I bought more packs in 1984 as a 10 year old than any other year. Between baseball and football I probably ripped through two cases of wax, and did so buying 3-20 packs at a time, never a full box. Packs were $0.30 each so for $1.00 I could get three packs, pay tax, and get a couple pennies back. In the last ten years I've paid as much as $500.00 for packs I've ripped. I never imagined doing that back in the day.

[judsonhamlin]

I think there are a few big changes that play a significant role:
-the relationship between players/teams and the kids who followed them as opposed to now is a big part of it. When I was growing up in the ‘70’s in central NJ, kids were either Yankees or Mets fans for the most part because that was what was on the radio and tv. If you wanted the score of a Twins-A’s game, you’d need to rely on the post-game show of the local game or wait until the paper the next day. And given that local favoritism, a pack with Chris Chambliss or Fred Stanley was better than a pack with Willie McCovey or Dave Concepcion. And,
-those packs were cheap and plentiful. Local deli had wax packs behind the counter. Woolworth/McCrorys/Two Guys/KayBee and Toys R Us always had rack packs and even a 12 year old could afford them. In part, that’s because there were no
-parallel sets, chase cards, intentional errors, autographs not to mention multiple releases every year which have rendered ‘base’ cards essentially worthless.

I think without exposing kids to baseball in that manner (and not even mentioning the relative rise in other sports), you don’t get kids interested in learning more about Goudeys, T206 or even Bowman.

[lumberjack]

Money, of course, but I've been in and out of this since I was a child. What I remember best about, say, 1958, is that you couldn't find people who did this.
Conrad Anderson, who sold autographs; George Husby, cards; and Goody Goldfadden, who sold EVERYTHING, advertised thru TSN and Baseball Digest, but that was it.

There were hobby papers, like The Sport Hobbyist (that was Charles Brooks in Detroit), but they mostly looked like they were printed on the grade school mimeograph machine and you never knew when they were going to come out.

You started having regional conventions in the mid 1970s and the hobby papers got better and actually came out on time.

And with big money, serious auction houses became involved.

I think about those weird old guys who started all of this 90 years ago and wonder how they ever found one another.

You can find more information from five minutes of looking at Net54 than you could have discovered in ten years of nosing around in 1965 or '70.

[jingram058]

Originally Posted by parkplace33

I saw this question on another forum and wanted to get Net54 take on this topic. What is the one thing that has changed the most since you started collecting?

I have collected cards for over 35 years so I thought long and hard about this topic. For me, its information, specifically card pricing tools. I remember the old days of book value and these new tools have helped both collectors and dealers get a more accurate idea of value.

What say you?

Money. Graded cards. Either/or. Neither one good, unless you're using the hobby as an investment and have deep pockets. I've come to realize that there are WAY MORE raw cards people than I could ever imagine based on the majority of threads here.