baseball's falling popularity and its affect on our hobby

[DerekMichael]

It is just my opinion, but based on MANY people whom I have actually spoken to in person, a lot of people feel they were driven away from the hobby, and I am not referring to Net54 board members.

Pretty much everyone I know constantly asks me questions about my card collecting, and a common theme which I have sadly come across during conversations on MANY different occasions with MANY different people is the following:

"I spent thousands and thousands of dollars in the 80's and 90's on new cards, and was told by many dealers that they were a terrific investment, and now they are literally worthless and I cannot give them away." ... or something along those lines.

I can recall going to card shops when I was younger, and I would hear dealers saying things to their customers like: "This Mark McGwire-Olympic rookie card (85 Topps) is only going to sky rocket in value, and I will give it to you for only $150 because it has (x) wrong with it etc.".

So, many of these people, when telling their story, which is usually more or less the exact same story, clearly feel hurt by the look in their eyes. Others tell me they have tried to resell the cards back to the very dealers they bought them from, only to be laughed at and offered pennies on the dollar. They do not get happy when they think of baseball cards. They think of a bunch of sleeze bags trying to rip them off.

I have heard the same story from different people over, and over, and over, and over, and it makes me angry, because so many people were ripped off by crooks in this hobby, they feel they can never return, or when they do return, they do so with great reservation, and are always looking over their shoulder.

For any dealer to ever have claimed that 80's or 90's were a great investment means either 1.) They were fools and actually bought into the absurdity, or 2.) They knew exactly what they were doing and that these cards were never, ever going to be worth anything, and that most likely, because of the massive amounts produced, which were obviously treated as a "collectible" from the day they hit the open market (the main problem with the logic of them maturing in value), were only going to collapse in the worst kind of way. They just did not care and were more than willing to keep lining their pockets while they ripped off the masses.

Naturally, their kids will not be getting that "warm and fuzzy" feeling when they think about baseball cards.

Again, these are not Net54 people I am talking about. They are the other hard working people whose attention and interests have gone a very different direction over the years, for what I consider to be very obvious and justified reasons.

Derek Hogue