[majordanby]

starting in the 1950s, baseball card collecting was largely something children and youth did. adults rarely ventured into card collecting as it was marketed towards and culturally accepted as a kid's hobby. baseball card collecting dramatically changed in the 80s as it became more of older young and middle aged men pursuing junk wax to make a profit. cards became more like assets - and as adults infiltrated the hobby, the card industry adapted - more companies were created to appeal to different tastes, rookie cards became the craze, and in came the insert era of the 1990s. The insert era basically took the idea of the rookie card craze and magnified it 100 times - it was basically a form of gambling. Unless an adult figure in the household collected cards, kids generally didnt collect - or at least didnt do so in the same way kids collected pre 1980. the advent of video games and a vast array of child and adolescent centric forms of leisure/distraction also became big factors, as did the increased popularity of other sports that had less "roots" in card collecting, such as football and basketball. as this was happening, pre war cards became much more prominent. with online auctions, which increased the ability to purchase vintage cards, pre war card collecting became a much more viable option of card collecting for a contemporary male adult seeking to reenter the hobby, but with no interest in collecting today's cards and mild interest in collecting cards of his youth.

collectors born in the 70s, 80s and 90s typically reenter the hobby after an extended period off, which usually corresponds to college, young adulthood, the establishment of a career, starting a family, and, most importantly, the accumulation of personal income. they start to look at cards of their youth - collect the rookie cards of their era that theyve always wanted - but, eventually find little satisfaction with the general mass availability of these cards. they eventually find their way into post war cards - and then finally into prewar, which "feels" more like a hobby rooted in intrinsic rather than purely financial value (as modern card collecting may feel like) since it's vintage, rooted in americana and the history of the sport, and generally looks like art.

the hobby isnt dead. but, it sure aint hell what it looked like 30+ years ago.