Quote:
Originally Posted by jingram058
Well, I am totally not surprised by the responses. I would expect the regular posters to respond the way they have. net54, while I love it dearly, is what I would call "the palace of graded cards". That's how I see it. We had a saying in the Navy, "perception is reality".
There are only 2 reasons, and 2 reasons alone, for having your cards graded: you are concerned about condition, which equates to monetary value, and/or you are concerned about authenticity.
I like having my cards, and I like handling them from time to time. Likewise, the memorabilia that accompanies them. They are a direct link to both the era they come from, and to my very happy childhood.
I don't care about card grading. I am not worried in the slightest about my cards value, condition, or authenticity. They are fine for me. I doubt seriously if they are fake, but if they are, they were so well done that I can't tell. My wife and daughter will be fine if I pass away. For personal, selfish reasons, I hope and pray I go first. They will be financially fine, from my converted Veterans Group Life Insurance to real estate to health care. Not from baseball cards. They know their potential worth, but beyond that, very little interest. They both love modern day baseball, but aside from Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth, the rest of baseball history beyond the 1970s is lost on them. So you guys can get my cards and other stuff from them if I up and croak. Feel free to have them graded.
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I just don't see this population you are describing. There are plenty of pure collectors here. I have never submitted a card for grading. I have cracked out probably north of 1,000 by now. There are several OBC low grade raw guys here. There are plenty of other raw or not-money focused collectors posting. I email, call or text at least 20 from people here regularly about pure collecting of raw cards. The most viewed thread of all time, by far, on the post-war board here is about print variants in which 90% of the cards shown cost less than $7.
I also hope the market will have a true collapse, as it will make cards cheaper for collectors like me. I understand a couple of the more intense or immature investors throw a very public tantrum any time it's said (50/50 odds we'll have a new thread tomorrow whining a collector isn't putting someone else's investment portfolio first) but most seem to understand collectors and investors are doing two different things that are advantaged by different market movements. Most people have to care at some level though; most of us don't have a guaranteed retirement and families who are fine no matter what happens to our stuff. Maybe I will have to care someday if things change or if I get really sick - 99% of the population is just one run of very bad luck away from having to scrape by or is scraping by already. I am conscious it is a position of financial privilege that I have been able to collect some cards at all in my life. Not all of us have that fortunate guaranteed future you seem to have. That's a wonderful thing, good for you, but most of us are not in that boat.
Most investors still know their stuff. I haven't come across anyone in card land who "knows nothing about the ballplayers" as you claimed. As a 100% collector and 0% investor, some of my favorite people in the hobby are in the investor class. A person need not have the same goal I do to not be "stupid". In fact we can usually benefit each other - they want money more and I want cards more, so we can usually work a deal out that leaves us both happy and satisfied. I even, dare say, have probably had more help and aid from the investor class in my boxing research projects and surveys than I have had from the true-collector class.
People can have different ends in a hobby and still be decent folk. My way, which seems to effectively be the same as your way, is no better than X or Y's way. There's just a couple extremists on each 'side' that can't stand to hear anything done differently from them. One of the nice things about a hobby like this is you get 100% free choice of how to do it. You can collect, invest, do both, be social and active, or just quietly do things your own way. What another person chooses to do, while interesting because it's my hobby, doesn't really affect me much.