Welcome to our community

Be apart of something great, join today!

What's the worse thing to happen to this hobby?

Disclaimer: Links on this page pointing to Amazon, eBay and other sites may include affiliate code. If you click them and make a purchase, we may earn a small commission.

mchenrycards

Featured Contributor, Vintage Corner, Senior Membe
I may be one of the few members of this board that started collecting when there was only one manufacturer and remember how cool it was to get new cards as the summer progressed as cards were issued in series and not all at once. Fleer and Donruss came around in 1981 and we were all blown away by the innovation especially with the Fleer offering. Most of us who collected were fine with one maker and when the other two came to the table there were murmurs that overproduction was going to kill the hobby. By the mid 80's there were so many other brands and makers of cards that collectors were turned off to this hobby as their "investment" went into the toilet. Collectors were weeded out with many leaving the hobby or others turning to vintage cards which in turn jacked up the values of all vintage offerings which sent the prices out of reach of many collectors. So on one side we have worthless modern cards and mostly high priced vintage with little in between worth collecting.

In my opinion overproduction caused so many issues for this hobby that this is the worse thing that ever happened to it.......now lets talk about what card grading has done to our hobby..........or is that another thread altogether.
 

death2redemptions

New member
Feb 4, 2016
12,488
0
The Carolina on the Southern side
Indeed, I'm the same way. I can see VERY, VERY, rare premium memorabilia cards going for over $100 but only because they're produced to be expensive and are only produced for those with fat money burning a hole in their pockets.

I'm talking about from modern boxes and packs that your average collector has a shot at off of the shelf. Those are just never going to be worth money. I do like some of the auto/jersey cards but I'd still prefer the straight auto.

Yeah, that's pretty much all junk. The $100+ memorabilia cards are almost always inserted in the high end stuff ($350+ per box/pack) or like 1:10,000+ packs of low-to-mid end products.
 

death2redemptions

New member
Feb 4, 2016
12,488
0
The Carolina on the Southern side
And to add on to that comment, when the lower end products like Topps S1/S2/Heritage are now charging $80+ per box with only one hit per box, the guaranteed hit should be an autograph. Honestly, nobody gets excited when they hit a plain color swatch from a box anymore unless it's some retired HOF player from way back in the days (you might only get one of these in every 50+ boxes or the high end products).
 

Jjoey52

Member
Feb 12, 2017
80
0
Too much stuff, the advent of traded sets, and general overproduction since the mid 80s.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 

chriscford

New member
Sep 2, 2017
10
0
And to add on to that comment, when the lower end products like Topps S1/S2/Heritage are now charging $80+ per box with only one hit per box, the guaranteed hit should be an autograph. Honestly, nobody gets excited when they hit a plain color swatch from a box anymore unless it's some retired HOF player from way back in the days (you might only get one of these in every 50+ boxes or the high end products).
Also, with the prices for boxes being what they are, kids today don't have a chance to collect top notch cards. The average kid isn't going to buy an $80+ hobby or jumbo box. He's spending his few dollars on some packs off of the rack.

A hobby built for and by children has been stolen away from them. What's worse are sellers who call themselves collectors, when all they really do is corner the market.

Sent from my SM-G930P using Tapatalk
 

JVHaste

Well-known member
Jun 22, 2015
4,751
270
Vancouver WA
I slowly lost interest about the time Topps pushed UD out of the market.... which is interesting considering I wasn't a big box buster, trader, or flipper. I just bought old Crusades. There's something that happens to a community when the pipeline dies so to speak. Less buzz, less excitement, more realizing how shtty 90+% of Topps releases are.
[MENTION=2442]mchenrycards[/MENTION] is right though, grading was quite bad for the hobby. When I was more naive I was pumped to get ALL my Crusades graded... wooooo!!! ... until I starting looking objectively and realized they don't give 2 shts or 3 fcks about centering on a non vintage, non rookie, non 1/1 card. So many of these cards were graded just plain wrong. Secondly, it makes the holder the star and the card an afterthought sometimes, turning collector into flaw inspector. Not sure at all why very old vintage would want grading at all, I know in the coin collecting world a coin with nice aging discoloration might be worth more. Seeing a T206 without some corner ware just looks strange.

Where the community will grow is the growth in the game of baseball itself, large market teams are doing good the past few years and also there is international growth.
 

Brewer Andy

Active member
Aug 10, 2008
9,634
21
To add more honest thoughts to the thread, yes over production was bad. Too many choices indeed made it difficult to "collect". I actually liked the one big series releases of my youth more than multiple Series and Updates (other than a small boxed set). As a kid you had all summer to buy packs and build those sets. It can still be done though and set building is an underrated joy. A blaster a week should easily build a complete base set over a year. How is set building so underrated as a form of collecting entertainment? It's the "hit" mentality IMO. "Collecting cards" meant to be collected in sets until completion became impossible to complete.
I didn't leave the hobby as a kid because of overproduction. I liked collecting as many cards as I could. I left because of the "big hits". And it started and exploded FAST. The early Upper Deck autos, the Donruss Elite cards, the Fleer Rookie Sensations.......cards of players I collected were unobtainable to an 11 year old and I recall being so angry at card manufacturers over it. What was the point of collecting if I could never get them all? I can't imagine I was alone in leaving for that reason.


Sent from my iPhone using Freedom Card Board
 

TwinsRube

New member
Jan 29, 2011
99
0
To add more honest thoughts to the thread, yes over production was bad. Too many choices indeed made it difficult to "collect". I actually liked the one big series releases of my youth more than multiple Series and Updates (other than a small boxed set). As a kid you had all summer to buy packs and build those sets. It can still be done though and set building is an underrated joy. A blaster a week should easily build a complete base set over a year. How is set building so underrated as a form of collecting entertainment? It's the "hit" mentality IMO. "Collecting cards" meant to be collected in sets until completion became impossible to complete.
I didn't leave the hobby as a kid because of overproduction. I liked collecting as many cards as I could. I left because of the "big hits". And it started and exploded FAST. The early Upper Deck autos, the Donruss Elite cards, the Fleer Rookie Sensations.......cards of players I collected were unobtainable to an 11 year old and I recall being so angry at card manufacturers over it. What was the point of collecting if I could never get them all? I can't imagine I was alone in leaving for that reason.


Sent from my iPhone using Freedom Card Board

Can I get an amen! Nodding my head the whole time I was reading.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

death2redemptions

New member
Feb 4, 2016
12,488
0
The Carolina on the Southern side
Also, with the prices for boxes being what they are, kids today don't have a chance to collect top notch cards. The average kid isn't going to buy an $80+ hobby or jumbo box. He's spending his few dollars on some packs off of the rack.

A hobby built for and by children has been stolen away from them. What's worse are sellers who call themselves collectors, when all they really do is corner the market.

Yeah, the prices of wax are absurd these days. Going off the prices of 2017 wax at Blowoutcards, outside of Opening Day & Bunt (which you only get like 1 auto or relic per case) the only other licensed *hobby box* product available for less than $80 is Topps Series 2 and that's only because it's on sale. The normal asking price is $80. Everything else is $100+. I know this has a lot to do with the hype of super rookies Aaron Judge/Cody Bellinger but regardless, kids can't afford stuff like that so it's pretty much just retail packs or blaster boxes for them (where most hits are plain relic cards).

But then again, when I was a kid back in '93-'96 we didn't have autograph or relic cards (well in very few products I couldn't afford where they were incredibly tough to pull) and I was stoked when pulling shiny insert cards with neat backgrounds. When I returned to the hobby in '05-'06 most all products had them, some were even one per box. The hobby suddenly became refocused on trying to get that big money hit to sell on e-bay rather than actually collecting. There was certainly a big shift in the hobby somewhere between the time I was a kid ('93-'96) and when I returned in '05-'06.

Where the community will grow is the growth in the game of baseball itself, large market teams are doing good the past few years and also there is international growth.

Wise words of wisdom & truth. You must be one of those artsy fartsy intellect types who graduated high school, huh? :D

 

gt2590

Super Moderator
Aug 17, 2008
38,657
3,246
Near Philly
The over production era killed the general public's interest in the hobby and turned off a lot of potential hobbyists...
 

BBCgalaxee

Well-known member
Sep 9, 2011
6,475
59
As a kid of the 80s, I loved opened packs but never liked making sets although everyone else did.

Then, once over production really hit, companies had to come up with a new idea to get back customers they lost
and inserts were the answer.

So once collectors started chasing inserts, set collecting started to fall.

And then once inserts got old, companies came up with jerseys and more autos and once those became old, well, that's where we are now.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Freedom Card Board mobile app
 

chris19978

Active member
Aug 30, 2011
978
25
I can't get into the new cards and wish I stopped buying packs on the earl 2000's. Though inserts got a little crazy in the 90's it is no where near what it is today. You can get multiple 1/1 cards of the same player. Then that's not even counting the other 10 numbered color variations normally numbered to 5, 10, 25, 50, 100, 250, and 1000. 90% of the cards I bought from 2000 on that are not 90's cards I will take a loss on. At this point I might just say oh well get rid of them on auctions starting at 90 cent and where they end will be fine with me. The huge sellers who buy tons of cases and sell sets and everything right away at premium prices have killed the hobby for me. You know if you wait 6 moths to a year most of the base sets you can get at a fraction of the price you get it when it's first released. This is why I only collect a hand full of cards of my favorite player now. I would hate to player collect now because it is impossible to get all his cards every year now.

Sent from my SM-N920V using Freedom Card Board mobile app
 
Top