[theseeker]

Jay sent me on a mixed emotions trip down memory lane. I happen to agree with everything he said. Those brown and yellow (and they were yellow, definately not gold) Padre's uniforms were ugly in a good way. Not unlike Rottweilers. And God do I hate the pants down to the soles of the spikes look. They look like pajama footies. What a generation.

With Arod and Puljos over 30, where is the next-in-line genuine superstar? Please note I didn't use uber instead of super and won't use sans in the place of without, another of my generation gap hot buttons. It's now somehow become chic to replace common, simple words with German and French equivalants to an established language already strongly influenced by both? Errrrrr.

As for the lack of a true superstar in his twenties, doesn't really matter on a card collecting website as there is clearly no longer any collector interest in new material. Anyone who takes issue with this can point me to a forum devoted to new card issues. A stark contrast to the card collecting bubble of 1988-1992, where greed dictated and cases of new cards and promising RC's sold in lots became investments in an industry where any card scarcity was a manufaturer's creation. The tail was waging the dog. MLB licencing was as much at fault as anyone. They're now down to only Topps, but it's way too late. The card collecting age of childhood innocence is lost for good and with it the future of the hobby.

While the reason for the increased interest in the hobby was all wrong back then, I do have to admit to missing the mainstream interest that came with it.

Ironically, it wouldn't take much for Jay to now fill in all those years with NrMt sets from ALL those manufacturers. Fittingly, they're practically giving them away. And still nobodies buying. When talking of the hobby's good-ole-day, you have to begin before this period, period.