Hobby history: The hobby 50 years ago, July 1967

[trdcrdkid]

The last of the hobby publishers mentioned by Nagy was Steve Mitchell, who had actually not yet launched his publication at the time Nagy was writing. Steve, who is a member of this board and another extremely nice guy, graduated from high school in the spring of 1967 and decided to launch his own hobby publication to compete with The Ballcard Collector. He called it Sports Collectors' Journal, and launched it in July 1967, almost exactly 50 years ago. Below is the front page, with Mitchell's editorial and the list of four writers he had recruited, two of whom appeared in the debut issue.



Below I've posted the next five pages of the issue, including a full-page want list from Gene Lebo (who started out co-publishing The Ballcard Collector with George Martin) and articles by Mike Wheat and Mike Bondarenko. I didn't scan the full-page ads by Frank Nagy and George Martin (Nagy's has the same content as his Card Collector's Bulletin ad posted above), but I did scan the Mail Bag, with encouraging letters that Mitchell had received from people he wrote to for help. Sports Collector's Journal would keep going for two years, publishing some quality material, before Steve was forced to suspend publication in 1969 when he was drafted. He attempted a brief revival in 1971-72 before becoming one of the founders of Sports Scoop, a great publication that unfortunately lasted less than two years in 1973-74.

July 1967 was a low point for the hobby in many ways, but things were going to get better, of course. In 1968, two long-running hobby publications made their debut: in March, Mike Bondarenko launched Sports Collectors' News, which lasted for the next decade (except for a three-year break from 1970-73), and in November Dan Dischley started The Trader Speaks, which he would publish for almost 15 years before selling it in August 1983. Of course, the early 1970s saw a major boom in the hobby after the doldrums of the 1960s, as baby boomers started getting enough money to try to recapture their youth through baseball cards. (It's more complicated than that, but demographics play a major role in any explanation.)