The First Baseball Card?

[bn2cardz]

Originally Posted by z28jd

If you were buying a painting you liked and someone said it might be a Picasso, you would probably want to know it is before you paid what they go for. You wouldn't just say eh I like it so I'm buying it anyway and if it is a Picasso, then great. Other people made great paintings during his era, why are his worth more? It's the name attached to it and if you attach "first baseball card" to this, it becomes historically significant

I still don't get why it being a card makes a difference. What you call it doesn't change the size or the way it was distributed. So you are saying that it needs to be called a card by your peers before it is worth a certain amount of money? Again it comes down to semantics. Who is the official that gets to make the claim of when it is a card or not and how did that person get the authority?

Your example of Picasso here doesn't work. If you collect Picasso and you aren't sure it really is a Picasso that would be a better comparison to whether the person on this piece was really Harry Wright. Whether the Picasso painting was really a painting or sketch may be a better analogy, but even then it is more about the looks of the piece some people prefer paint over sketch. Or maybe if you were to discuss what phase of Picasso it was. That would be a better comparison. Though I would still say it doesn't matter what phase it was, if you like Picasso and you like the art, then buy it.

What you are talking about is whether something is worth your time because someone else told you it was. Again you are debating semantics to decide your collecting tendencies instead of enjoying the piece for what it is in cold hard facts. We know what the item was used for, you know who is pictured, you know what year it was distributed. If you can't decide you want it in your collection until someone else designates it with a certain word to describe it then so be it, but that doesn't make any sense to me.