Posted By:
davidcyclebackThe traditional reason to have a hobby is to have something to do to fill the time or relieve the stress, away from the stress of work or whatever. If a hobby doesn't have a serious purpose beyond enjoyment and relaxation, that can be it's purpose.
Collecting vintage memorabilia, one's learns at least a bit of history-- and that is a good thing. Some people learn a lot of history, reading books about the whos and wheres. If a collector is an expert in a certain era, or about a certain type of material, they are experts about a bit of history. Most tobacco card collectors have at least some idea of how the tobacco companies works, how the advertised with cards in packs of tobacco, who were the major brands of tobacco, that there were suits that broke of the monopoply. This history is not not common knowledge. A business professor writing a historical paper about the tobacco industry marketing asked me how tobacco cards were distributed and how the tobacco companies otherwise advertised using famous baseball players and celebrities. I explained to him how it all worked, and this was knowledge I picked up as a collector spending weekend money on T206s and T205s.