Leon I think there are two very easy answers for me. When I was led to Ebay it meant that I could find things in a week that used to take months or years. Back in the mid-70s if you were collecting E-90s you might see three offered in a six moth period in any of the magazines.
You might buy three an hour now. Even when I found great people who had vintage cards in their inventory you might still have a 4-6 week turn around on a transaction. I used to send Gar Miller a check for $25.00 and then wait two weeks for a package full of cards I had never seen. There were not many people as honorable as Gar on the quality of their cards so that brings me to the second real plus of the net. We can now see what we are buying, there a still a few surprises but not many.
The net still can offer you a little bit of a persons personality too. We form friendships that can last a long time. After saying that I have to also add that one of the reasons that I quit collecting around 1990 was that I really did not like going into that new wave of card shops that sprang up over night it seemed. Very few of those dealers knew what a T206 card was and most could not even name the teams in the major leagues.
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