Who is the biggest culprit?

[bn2cardz]

There are many great points. I just wanted to add to the kid collecting aspect of the conversation.

I am 29 years old so when I was collecting as a child it was already a business. Destroying cards was popular prior to the 80s amongst children but i was still living in the past as a child doing it in the early 90s. Non like the older generations before me though I did have the option to go to card shops. I used price guides as a way to know what level I could expect to trade cards, not to buy them or sell them.

If we want to grow the hobby to the children we need to remember that the way they go about things can be a lot more simple than adults go about it. So the adults that do it as a hobby need to be on their level when dealing with them and treat them fairly.

There was a card shop that as a child I HATED going to. They always made me feel like I was inconveniencing them when I would ask them questions. Sometimes I would go in and see a ripken card that I wanted for my Ripken collection. I would offer to trade with them and they wouldn't even look at my cards. Living in St. Louis they were never going to be selling Ripken at a high value and I was willing to trade them dollar for dollar anything else I had (including Cardinals cards that are a hot commodity here). To this day when I see them at shows I don't even stop at their table. My wife even knows who they are and knows my disdain for how they treated children in the hobby as being a waste of time.

On the other hand there were many great collectors who helped me and taught me many things. Some shop owners were open to trading with me on my sub $10 cards to help out my collecting. I am sure there were times that looking at my cards was a waste of time and they knew it, but they still would do it anyways. These are the guys that are now getting my business as an adult with a steady income.