yanksfan09,
See, it is people like YOU who are going to have to become "whales" to keep the hobby alive and the prices going up. People who have "loved" cards since they were young and who continued to collect them.
How many of your friends still collect cards? If they don't collect, how many do you think might want to start again? If there are any, how many of those would go into vintage cards? Of those, how many have the incomes or other assets to become "whales"?
I am not saying people my age and younger wont still collect cards, I am just saying that there aren't going to be as many of us and with the smaller demand, the prices wont continue to go up as fast and will probably actually decrease because of the supply that is going to be hitting the market over the next 20 years (with the deaths of the Boomers who have the large collections).
Also, if the younger kids DO collect cards, they are ONLY going to want to collect Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs and Dodgers cards. That is because ESPN, Fox and TBS basically only show televise games of thsoe teams on a regular basis.
When I was young, I lived in a small town in Indiana and didn't have cable TV. I had to rely on the NBC Game of the Week or box scores from the newspaper to follow players on a national basis. The local TV station out of Louisville would occasionally show some Reds games and I would try to listen to as many games on radio as possible.
Because of all of that, I grew up a Reds fan and have continued to be one (hard to do these last nine years LOSING years).
Over the last 20 years, that hasn't been the case. If you had cable or satellite, you could watch more games and become a fan of a team OUTSIDE of your local geographic area.
Over the last few years, with the major networks shoving the Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs and Dodgers down the throats of viewers (I have basically STOPPED watching baseball on tv because of this, even the World Series) young kids living in rural Indiana are NOW just as likely to be a Yankees fan as a kid living in Manhattan. That is if they are watching baseball on TV at all.
So, there is ANOTHER reason why I am pessimistic about collectors in the future - they will only know and care about just a few teams and players who played for those teams.
Joey Votto is a REALLY good player for the Reds BUT, unless he is traded to or signs with one of the LARGE MARKET TEAMS, he will remain virtually unknown. That means unless his cards are made out of pure gold, he isn't going to have many people interested in collecting him.
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