Thoughts on 1950s cards over the next 15 years?

[Brianruns10]

Cards, any commodities for that matter, are like stocks, and you have to act like that sometimes when you are concerned with profit and loss.

And the big lesson of the stock market is that it is the stupid person who panics and sells when the prices start dropping. The smart ones buy up everything the stupid ones sell at at a savings.

Hang on to your cards. They're not apple stock that are going to explode in prices, but they DO hold their value, and they'll trend up. Right now I'm buying all the 52's my budget will allow, because I'm convinced they're going to go up in the next 10 to 15.

As for the idea that these cards will lose value as the baby boomers start to sell off their collections and pass away, I completely reject that notion. If that were true, then the t206 cards should be within anyone's budget to collect, because all their original owners are dead, as are those who would've remembered seeing them play.

But we all know that's not the case, and the t206 set is the unquestioned Mount Everest of ball card collecting.

And why else to I believe these cards will retain, even gain in value? Because of people like me. I'm 28. I played all of four years of little league and quit, and I've been to three major league games in my life. I care nothing for today's steroid fueled game, filled with players who have NO sense of team or community loyalty, who gleefully sell themselves to the highest bidder.

Yet I'm ENDLESSLY fascinated with the old days of baseball. I quiz my dad about it all the time (he collected Topps 57-63), and agrees that baseball he knew growing up is gone now. Baseball was every boy's life in the 50s. It really represents the best of America (at least, once baseball integrated). It is pure.

And what I adore about these cards, especially the 52s, is that they are not the ready made, instant collectible crap I see being hawked at the booths for 50 cents a piece. They were made for kids, to be loved by kids. They are full of these players who are athletes, gods and your big brother all in one. Hell, some of the players in the 52 series have halos! I love thinking about how each card I own was bought by some kid who used his allowance or lawn mower money. Some kid loved that card, adored that player.

I even think baseball cards play an subtle, unspoken role in the civil rights movement. The black players in the Topps set are just like the other players. All that matters are the stats. Who made up the first four players of the legendary 52 High series: Mantle, Robinson, Thomson, Campy. Two whites, two blacks. Equal. The first card of the 53 set was Jackie Robinson. THAT is saying something. You can't tell me that didn't have a subtle impact on impressionable kids.

And I gotta believe there are others my age who feel the same way. So many of my generation are really switched on to vintage. Vintage vinyl, vintage consumer goods. We want that quality of manufacturing before it was all outsourced, that longevity (my parent's frigidaire from the 70s is still cranking), and that beauty of art and design. I restore tube radios and soda fountain milkshake mixers, and they simply don't make things of that quality or beauty any more.

There are 300 million people in this country. Of those more than 100 million are under 30. Only a few thousand of them need to be like me, to love these cards like me. Those are good odds I think.

The hobby will be just fine.

[RobertGT]

Originally Posted by Brianruns10

Cards, any commodities for that matter, are like stocks, and you have to act like that sometimes when you are concerned with profit and loss.

And the big lesson of the stock market is that it is the stupid person who panics and sells when the prices start dropping. The smart ones buy up everything the stupid ones sell at at a savings.

Hang on to your cards. They're not apple stock that are going to explode in prices, but they DO hold their value, and they'll trend up. Right now I'm buying all the 52's my budget will allow, because I'm convinced they're going to go up in the next 10 to 15.

As for the idea that these cards will lose value as the baby boomers start to sell off their collections and pass away, I completely reject that notion. If that were true, then the t206 cards should be within anyone's budget to collect, because all their original owners are dead, as are those who would've remembered seeing them play.

But we all know that's not the case, and the t206 set is the unquestioned Mount Everest of ball card collecting.

And why else to I believe these cards will retain, even gain in value? Because of people like me. I'm 28. I played all of four years of little league and quit, and I've been to three major league games in my life. I care nothing for today's steroid fueled game, filled with players who have NO sense of team or community loyalty, who gleefully sell themselves to the highest bidder.

Yet I'm ENDLESSLY fascinated with the old days of baseball. I quiz my dad about it all the time (he collected Topps 57-63), and agrees that baseball he knew growing up is gone now. Baseball was every boy's life in the 50s. It really represents the best of America (at least, once baseball integrated). It is pure.

And what I adore about these cards, especially the 52s, is that they are not the ready made, instant collectible crap I see being hawked at the booths for 50 cents a piece. They were made for kids, to be loved by kids. They are full of these players who are athletes, gods and your big brother all in one. Hell, some of the players in the 52 series have halos! I love thinking about how each card I own was bought by some kid who used his allowance or lawn mower money. Some kid loved that card, adored that player.

I even think baseball cards play an subtle, unspoken role in the civil rights movement. The black players in the Topps set are just like the other players. All that matters are the stats. Who made up the first four players of the legendary 52 High series: Mantle, Robinson, Thomson, Campy. Two whites, two blacks. Equal. The first card of the 53 set was Jackie Robinson. THAT is saying something. You can't tell me that didn't have a subtle impact on impressionable kids.

And I gotta believe there are others my age who feel the same way. So many of my generation are really switched on to vintage. Vintage vinyl, vintage consumer goods. We want that quality of manufacturing before it was all outsourced, that longevity (my parent's frigidaire from the 70s is still cranking), and that beauty of art and design. I restore tube radios and soda fountain milkshake mixers, and they simply don't make things of that quality or beauty any more.

There are 300 million people in this country. Of those more than 100 million are under 30. Only a few thousand of them need to be like me, to love these cards like me. Those are good odds I think.

The hobby will be just fine.

----/
Very well said indeed.
I hope you are right.

[ALR-bishop]

For those of us for whom it is strictly a hobby, it has and will always be just fine

[Samsdaddy]

Originally Posted by ALR-bishop

For those of us for whom it is strictly a hobby, it has and will always be just fine

Amen!

[theseeker]

Sorry to have to say it but, the demographics are what they are. Since the decades of steady rise in hobby interest hit its frenzied peak in the early '90's, hobby interest has been in a steep decline. This has always been a hobby with its roots steeped in childhood experiences. Unfortunely, the exploding interest in the hobby, back in the early '90's, was so badly managed that the generations that have followed have not grown up with those cherished memories. The shortsightedness, shift in the collector/investor matrix focus, and overt greed led to a bubble that largely turned off the last generation (individuals now in their late 20's and early 30's) that grew up with the hobby "bug."

The change in hobby focus from collector to investor, lead to kids treating their card collection as investment portfolio. This manipulated market is what led to all the bad feelings towards the "worthless shiny crap," after the inevitable bursting of the bubble. The hobby is headed to where stamp collecting is at today-- where the rarest of examples still fetch huge dollars from the "I bought it because I can" crowd, while the true collector market has all but dried up.

Great to see a 28 year old with such genuine passion and pure interest in the hobby. There won't be enough of them to keep prices from plummeting, IMHO.

To the true collectors that remain, that won't be an entirely bad thing. And there will always be some value in the cards that were made when it truely was a hobby. That's more than I can say for my other leisurely interests.

[Brianruns10]

Again, I disagree. Young people like myself are more and more getting passionate about these kinds of these. We're more selective about our tastes is all.

There are really two halves to the hobby: the REAL collectible, and the READY made crap. The REAL collectibles are the vintage stuff. Talking 40s and 50s and sixties. Some might go further, I frankly have no interested in stuff after the mid sixties. The artistry doesn't compare to the sheer artistry of the early to mid 50s stuff. With a few exceptions, yes, the stuff made the last 30 years or so will plummet. It's worthless crap to my eye, made to be hawked by obese dealers whose idea of vintage is stuff so beaten up it doesn't deserve to be called PO-1, yet is priced for a PSA 5 or 6. But the true, classic stuff will gain in its appreciation by a generation of which I include myself which is growing to appreciate the quality and artistry in American manufacturing before it all got outsourced and planned obsolescence became the modus operandi of big corporate manufacturers.

Also, realize that vintage baseball cards have appeal beyond baseball fans. There are also those who appreciate the artistry of the cards themselves, and the quality of the printing methods. Heck, that's what draws me to the 52s. I simply adore those hand coloured, flexichrome images. They are utterly gorgeous, candy colored works of real American ingenuity and craft. And then there are those who appreciate them for their place in Americana, what they represent: a far less cynical time, when cards were made for boys to trade and put in bicycle spokes, not to be transferred straight from the pack to the plastic. I love these cards because I know some kid held them in his hand and loved them, treasured them.

Lastly, I would not be so quick to compare them to stamps, speaking as someone who collected stamps, coins and now cards. There was no comparison to my eye. What killed my interest in stamps was all the fine detail. I couldn't have cared less how many perforations a stamp had, whether it was from a roll or a sheet. Didn't give a care about a slight difference in the cross hatching on the engraving between type 1 and type 2, the different watermarks, the size of the z-grill or the tint of blue.

I collected coins for a decade, but ultimately fell out of the hobby because there wasn't enough variety. I put together complete sets of just about every 20th century coin, yet the thrill faded because apart from the dates and the mint marks, they were all the same.

What thrills me about ball cards is each card is different, each card has it's own character, it's own challenges. I love that, in the 52 series, there are some cards, like the Mathews, that are damn near impossible to find well centered, or the Yvars, who always seems to come diamond cut.

I also think there is a different persona involved when you're talking about the collectors. What largely turned me off to stamps and coins were the collectors/dealers I came upon were largely assholes. Old curmudgeons who whipped out their graysheets and didn't seem to love the coins, so much as covet them and what price they would fetch. They were not particularly friendly or cheerful or enthusiastic, and not ones I'd want to hang with.

But ballcard dealers, the ones who deal in legit, quality vintage, have all been wonderful to do business with, wonderful to chat with, and do what they do because they never quite lost the kid in them. They really do adore the hobby. So many of the ones I encountered do it part time, or they've retired, and now they're revisiting something they love.

And that is the big lesson. You think the hobby is dying? Well with that attitude it will. It's all in the hands of the old guard, to work on their outreach. To smile and be cheerful and interact with the young and get them excited about the hobby. If you just grouse and make gross generalizations, grumbling about "Those kids these days, they just want to download everything and they don't care, and they're gonna let this hobby die," well of COURSE you're gonna prompt those kids to do just that, and go off to somewhere else, because who wants to be dismissed or lumped in with the rest of their generation.

I intend on building one of the finest baseball card sets ever. Going to finish the 52s, then the rest of the 50s Topps. Then the Bowmans. Leafs. Goudey's. The t205s, Crackers Jacks and, yes, the t206.

So the hobby will last at least as long as I do, if I have anything to say or do about it.

[ValKehl]

Briansrun10, you have made some excellent points. Personally, I believe that true collectors are born with "a collector gene." I collected stamps and coins as a youngster, before I started collecting cards. And sports card collectors are almost always also sports enthusiasts, which greatly enhances the collecting enthusiasm and interest. IMO, Stamp and coin collectors don't have something comparable to fuel their collecting enthusiasm and interest. Hence, I believe that sports card collecting will thrive in the future much more than coin and stamp collecting.
Val