And yet
real money comes from the "new" cards. With the licensing fees MLB gets from Topps and MLBPA gets from Topps, Upper Deck and Panini, we are about one percent of the collectors.
Barry, it would be nice to get people right to vintage but you got to start somewhere and Wally World and Target are now our front lines in many locations.
And there is the "hope" factor, for example -- (as a plug here) -- read my revioews in Sports Collectors Daily and my editor now puts all my stories on Facebook. Talking about a product like Topps 2 Baseball got about 40 likes, talking about The Trader Speaks got about 10 likes and talking about some other topics got maybe five likes. In other words, lots of people like the new stuff and it's not going away any time soon.
As for the lady's store, I think at this point, if I remember the article correctly she is 89 years old and the store gives her something to do and frankly keeping up with all the new stuff is hard. You have to keep up with both players and products.
Rich
|