The internet makes so much information available to anyone. Back in the late 80s/early 90s, as a fairly isolated collector, I had three places to look for information on vintage cards. One was a major price guide. Beckett was the standard, but I had an early SCD version. This wasn't much of a read. The second option was the latest issue of SCD. While SCD did have ads for pre-WWII material, at that time most of SCD seemed to focus on the prices of 52 Topps high numbers. The third option was Larry Fritsch's one-of-a-kind catalog. That thing included sets that weren't in the price guides and seemed to never appear in SCD ads. I thought the prices were high, but I really wasn't informed enough to know the market.
Today, eBay alone has far more information that all those sources combined. Just look at the current auctions, BINs, and completed transactions. Throw in the websites that people have put together, and even a casual collector has more information than a typical dealer did back in the day.
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