Modifications to Vintage Baseball Card Sets' Year(s) of Issue

[bcbgcbrcb]

One other thing to consider is the advantage that an on-line baseball card catalogue/database such as the ones maintained by OldCardboard and VCP have in that they can update all of their information at a moment's notice as they are not limited to a once-a-year time frame for updates. It appears that this concept is really the wave of the future (and maybe even the present with blackberries, etc.).

[Brian-Chidester]

Originally Posted by bcbgcbrcb

One other thing to consider is the advantage that an on-line baseball card catalogue/database such as the ones maintained by OldCardboard and VCP have in that they can update all of their information at a moment's notice as they are not limited to a once-a-year time frame for updates. It appears that this concept is really the wave of the future (and maybe even the present with blackberries, etc.).

No doubt. But it is very hard to keep internet updates long-term. History has to dictate something more concrete, otherwise we lose so much information.

When I was researching the 1966 unreleased Beach Boys album "Smile" during the early years of the internet, tons of new information was emerging from inside the walls of the long-closed Beach Boys world. In many instances throughout my life, I have just thought such information would always be available and I did nothing, but in this instance, I must pat myself on the back for printing out literally hundreds of pages from emails and internet sites now long-gone.

And I suggest that that will be the same with much of this baseball card knowledge should nothing concrete find its way into libraries.

[barrysloate]

Didn't Brian Wilson release "Smile" just a few years ago?

[Brian-Chidester]

Not to derail, but, yes and no. He did not release it as it was originally recorded during the psychedelic era. He re-recorded everything and released it as a 2004 solo album.

The original tapes remain unreleased.

I was a writer and researcher on a documentary about the album produced by Showtime in 2004, but the film was more of an homage to Brian Wilson's efforts to finish it than a true look at its place in the context of '60s counter-culture.

Anyway, with regards to baseball card info online, I think it is an excellent resource for the collector. You can type any question into a search engine and get answers quickly and pretty accurately. That helps immensely in the process of buying and selling. However, long-term information pertaining to a card's history must be printed in some format that can be collected by a library or historian.

I enjoy web information tremendously, and count on it to make decisions about purchasing. But since I don't plan on writing a book about cards anytime soon, I rarely print anything from the internet out. I suppose it's up to those who are writing or documenting any one subject to take the time and weed through the internet information, and to document what they consider important new information about cards.