The world needs more young collectors!!!

Are there any groups/organizations other than the big names that help cater to the younger population of collectors? like maybe a place where collectors who are "better off" can send or donate their base cards, larger serial numbered inserts, and even low game used and autograph stuff?

STRASBURGMANIA (that little kid member) !!!!!!!!!!!!!

:lol:

I'm 24... does that count? I'd be more than willing to be the recipient.

yea, a young collector who gets hooked on highend stuff is definitely not a good start.

hoominaga - are you a beginning collector? id be more than happy to give you stuff, although your age doesnt matter much. especially since i am 24 as well

lol blowout tried doing that for a 13 year old member and he turned around and traded them to his lcs for $40 in packs, he then proceeded to post a thread about it :benson: . I've noticed over the last few years that I've been on cards sites that sending free cards to kids doesn't generally end well.

yea, thats the downfall that i am afraid of as well. theres just no love in it anymore, not like when we were kids. what is the world coming to? haha

Topps Opening Day is a cheap set to build for the youngsters on a tight budget.

very true.

what does everyone else do with all their base? just leave it sitting around in cardboard boxes?

bscook86 said:

very true.

what does everyone else do with all their base? just leave it sitting around in cardboard boxes?

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A good question but kids are going to do the same thing with their base that they see adults do with their base... so if adults don't respect base neither will kids.

Many here say they don't care about base

I get very stoked to pull base of a player I love, or a Reds player! Then again I've only been collecting for a few months

base is quickly becoming what late 80's - early 90's commons are to almost everyone in this hobby. maybe somebody should find a way to put them to good use. worlds largest 52 million card pickup? lol

bscook86 said:

yea, a young collector who gets hooked on highend stuff is definitely not a good start.

hoominaga - are you a beginning collector? id be more than happy to give you stuff, although your age doesnt matter much. especially since i am 24 as well

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I'd have to say yes and no, my dad got into it when I was probably 3-4 and I was always there with him every step of the way. We both stopped when I was probably 12-13 and I just recently got back into it again. Bought my first few packs since then 1-2 weeks ago and I'm hooked once again. It makes me really wish I had kept at it, it makes me nostalgic more than anything.

bscook86 said:

very true.

what does everyone else do with all their base? just leave it sitting around in cardboard boxes?

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ive sent a couple care packages to player collectors here and there

Hoominaga said:

bscook86 said:

yea, a young collector who gets hooked on highend stuff is definitely not a good start.

hoominaga - are you a beginning collector? id be more than happy to give you stuff, although your age doesnt matter much. especially since i am 24 as well

Click to expand...

I'd have to say yes and no, my dad got into it when I was probably 3-4 and I was always there with him every step of the way. We both stopped when I was probably 12-13 and I just recently got back into it again. Bought my first few packs since then 1-2 weeks ago and I'm hooked once again. It makes me really wish I had kept at it, it makes me nostalgic more than anything.

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who do you collect? certain player, team? maybe i can put a little care package together.

magicpapa said:

bscook86 said:

very true.

what does everyone else do with all their base? just leave it sitting around in cardboard boxes?

Click to expand...

ive sent a couple care packages to player collectors here and there

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too bad you wouldnt "care package" one of those sick griffey crusade cards haha. im going to eventually get me one, or two, ok maybe three.

bscook86 said:

very true.

what does everyone else do with all their base? just leave it sitting around in cardboard boxes?

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I work with several single mothers that have children between 5 and 12 years old. I give these kids all my base cards/inserts that i don't want and they are always very happy to get them.

i added you to the list bscook86

Now more than ever...I think its almost bad for kids to get into this hobby. I didn't used to feel that way but I do now. First of all its so damn expensive that grown men with well paying jobs who aren't even married have problems keeping their head above water with all the new products and the money they cost. Secondly, kids always seem to gravitate towards whats hip or whats the cool thing to do. And right now, I'd say there are more people who sell in this hobby than not. A kid would find it cool to pull a $200 card and be able to trade it back to a shop just to open another box that he would normally never be able to afford. He'd most likely never even care about the actual card or player or the odds he beat to make the pull. And most adults do it because its a way to feed their addiction. Two different reasons, same outcome.

When I was a child, kids collected cards and while we liked the fact that some of them were valuable, we actually liked the game and the players. Now, I don't see that as much. Add in new avenues like ebay and the extreme amounts of money tossed around on cardboard, and its a bad concoction.

I saw it with autographs too. When I was in my teens, I would have been stoked to be able to get autos of superstar athletes. I've been doing IP autos for about 4 years now and have personally met and seen kids who used to go because they loved to meet the players and get their autos. Now all of them have stuff to get signed to sell. All of them. To them, that is whats cool. Not meeting the guy or landing an auto of a guy that is hard to get. It's the fact that they stood waiting for a guy for 2 hours and can now resell the item they got signed for $50-$200. With little to no effort. For some of them I'd say its probably a full time job or close to it.

So you get kids into this hobby now, and its more about money now than its ever been, then all you are doing is turning them into robots who pull and sell, pull and sell, pull and sell. Buy and flip, buy and flip, buy and flip. Then in 50 years you can sit back and wonder, if everyone is selling and buying to resell...who the hell is actually collecting. By then it would really be like the stock market. And people don't collect stocks.

I was a member of Sports Card Kids. They had fairly cheap GU, auto, #'d, and packs/boxes. They even had 6 contests and giveaways per week. Too bad they went belly up last summer!

bscook86 said:

very true.

what does everyone else do with all their base? just leave it sitting around in cardboard boxes?

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I've donated stuff to the Phoenix Children's Hospital...