Hobby Magazine

rather then a certain price guide, is there any other publications? i would like to see a magazine that would talk about the card collecting and also memorabilia collecting hobby's. i remember tuff stuff back awhile ago.

why is it that magazines specific to the sports collecting hobby don't make it?

TwinsWin said:

why is it that magazines specific to the sports collecting hobby don't make it?

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1. The Internet.
2. Card shops died so advertising went away.
3. Card companies died so more advertising went away.
4. Collectors stopped collecting, investors stopped investing, magazine circulation shrunk.
4. eBay. Why pay high prices to advertise in a magazine when you can sell on eBay?

In the '80s and early '90s, there were tons of magazines:

Beckett
Tuff Stuff
Sports Collectors Digest
Baseball Cards Magazine
Baseball Hobby news
Baseball Card News
Sportslook
and several more smaller publications

I sill have dozens of these magazines/newspapers from the '80s and they're fun to look through.

Sports Collectors Digest is still around as far as I know, I had a subscription about a year back. It's 90% ads and ads disguised as stories, but they do have some interesting stories on cards and memorabilia in there, especially older stuff.

Don't know why, but I loved "Baseball Cards". Maybe it was all the free reprints.

Brewer Andy said:

Don't know why, but I loved "Baseball Cards". Maybe it was all the free reprints.

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In the 80s, Baseball Cards had some outstanding articles and series about the hobby. That pretty much died by 1989 when all of the magazines became mostly about hyping product, hot/not lists and prospects. Sports Collector's Digest is almost like the hobby's version of Computer Shopper. These days, blogs, forums and Youtube videos basically replace all of that.

This is exactly why I collect these magazines.

Sent from my HTCONE using Freedom Card Board mobile app

Austin said:

1. The Internet.
2. Card shops died so advertising went away.
3. Card companies died so more advertising went away.
4. Collectors stopped collecting, investors stopped investing, magazine circulation shrunk.
4. eBay. Why pay high prices to advertise in a magazine when you can sell on eBay?

In the '80s and early '90s, there were tons of magazines:

Beckett
Tuff Stuff
Sports Collectors Digest
Baseball Cards Magazine
Baseball Hobby news
Baseball Card News
Sportslook
and several more smaller publications

I sill have dozens of these magazines/newspapers from the '80s and they're fun to look through.

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I don't think the above can be explained any clearer. Spot on. I do miss that big SCD

Anyone remember Cartwrights Magazine? I have a bunch of those! Also, Legends Magazine... Those things were nice, too!

Beckett was and remains so knowledgable, up-to-date and spot-on in their pricing that all other pricing magazines yielded to their magnificience. When they developed the most sophisticated online store and user-friendly web forums to augment their print presence, they became an unstoppable media triple threat. MLB then awarded them a singular license, so that only they could print price guides showing players with logos and team names - the final death blow for all other hobby mags.

I hope you're being facetious.

You know, if they actually took the time to print a magazine that had no price guide(since it would be useless anyways) but just articles about different sets, rare cards, errors, variations, autograph collecting, opinion pieces, etc., I'd buy the damn thing every month and be willing to pay $10 or so. In fact, I'd probably just get a multi year subscription. I really would. I'd even say a lot of folks on this very board would be quite capable of writing pieces for said magazine.

But the biggest thing I want is an actual print magazine that I can hold in my hands, take with me to the doctors office, the crapper, or anywhere else. Not an online version. I like using online sites but maybe I'm just old school. Hell, I don't even like kindle or nook. I want an actual magazine. The real question is, are there enough people out there like me?

predatorkj said:

But the biggest thing I want is an actual print magazine that I can hold in my hands, take with me to the doctors office, the crapper, or anywhere else. Not an online version. I like using online sites but maybe I'm just old school. Hell, I don't even like kindle or nook. I want an actual magazine. The real question is, are there enough people out there like me?

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No!
-From Seattle PI, Rocky Mountain News, San Francisco Chronicle, Dtroit Free Press, San Diego-Union Tribune, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Boston Globe, Washington Post, etc, etc, etc...

Dilferules said:

Sports Collectors Digest is still around as far as I know,

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yep, and a waste of $10 that I paid for a year. In my younger collector days, SCD was more about cards, ads for cards and less about game-used stuff. When in recent years I got a teaser price to get SCD for a year, I thought I'd check it out for a year but became quickly disappointed when it was so little about cards and more about game-used stuff that I dont' care as much about. Obviously I did not renew my subscription because the mag had changed so much over the years.

I agree that a magazine about collecting would be great. There was a Beckett Vintage magazine, something like that, that came out I think in the late 90s, and it was excellent. Some great articles about really rare, pre-WWII stuff. Sadly, it only ran a couple issues, AFAIK. I guess it's really the price guide that sells Becketts, and it's tough to monetize a small number of scholarly articles. If Grantland, ESPN, or even MLB picked ran these kinds of articles, it would be great. Even just aggregating some of the great serious blogs about the hobby would be a useful tool, and probably draw in a couple more new collectors.

But yeah, the hobby is in a long period of contraction, far too few people to support even the one magazine we have. I can't believe they charge $10 or whatever for a single-sport price guide. Many mainstream magazines have disappeared or gone online only.

smapdi said:

I agree that a magazine about collecting would be great. There was a Beckett Vintage magazine, something like that, that came out I think in the late 90s, and it was excellent. Some great articles about really rare, pre-WWII stuff. Sadly, it only ran a couple issues, AFAIK. I guess it's really the price guide that sells Becketts, and it's tough to monetize a small number of scholarly articles. If Grantland, ESPN, or even MLB picked ran these kinds of articles, it would be great. Even just aggregating some of the great serious blogs about the hobby would be a useful tool, and probably draw in a couple more new collectors.

But yeah, the hobby is in a long period of contraction, far too few people to support even the one magazine we have. I can't believe they charge $10 or whatever for a single-sport price guide. Many mainstream magazines have disappeared or gone online only.

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The reason Beckett isn't really needed anymore is because the whole thing the magazine is based on, the price guide, is worthless. So in order to make something viable, the price guide isn't even part of the equation. It needs to be left out.

Gwynn545 said:

No!
-From Seattle PI, Rocky Mountain News, San Francisco Chronicle, Dtroit Free Press, San Diego-Union Tribune, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Boston Globe, Washington Post, etc, etc, etc...

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Hey, I still read the actual physical newspaper.

If beckett REALLY wanted to, they could easily have a few more articles every issue WITHOUT adding to paper/ ink costs.

I know many here don't read the monthly baseball but there's probably THOUSANDS of cards listed and priced every month which has no reason being so.

Just by moving guys like bonds, Clemens, mcgwire, pizza, nomar out of the listed section and into "unlisted stars, etc" will save a lot of space since so few collect them and they rarely ever see listed prices.

Plus also the occasional (but frequent) head scratchers like the multiple Ben grieve, Travis Lee listings in "dugout access" and one time good Rc's like magglio and giles, will add more available space.

But, the biggest space/ink/paper wasters are the prospect listings of failed or out of baseball which are still priced separately.

Case in point comes from 2004 sp prospect which lists NINETY CARDS separately of out of baseball or failed. MATT BUSH IS STILL LISTED!!!!

And that didn't count all other failed guys who are still listed in other sets.

If beckett purged the price guide and realistically listed what should be in it, there would be enough space for more articles.

Sent from my HTCONE using Freedom Card Board mobile app

I think the only way the print idea will return is if someone assembles a hobby newsletter and people print it out themselves. It would likely just end up being something akin to a "best of the blogs" in any case.

Something that might be interesting would be a sort of to-do list for the blogging community where collectors put in requests for certain topics to be covered. A lot of that kind of thing is already done on lots of the more popular hobby blogs, where one prominent blogger either issues a challenge or question and other bloggers run with it, or someone just posts something particularly interesting and others expand on it. But I think the days of a fully researched, edited and printed hobby magazine are gone.

That said, I wish F+W Media and Beckett would give blanket reprint approval for content from their publication archives. Maybe put a caveat such that nothing published within the past 5 years can be reproduced, so as not to complete with sales of their current titles, but essentially crowd-sourcing the publication of their archives. I'd gladly help out with a project to scan their back issues to make them available online, sort of like how Baseball Digest and Sports Illustrated have done. A searchable archive of The Trader Speaks, Baseball Cards, Beckett Baseball Card Monthly, Baseball Hobby News, Tuff Stuff, Baseball Card News, Sports Card Trader, etc., would be wonderful!