Collectors of baseball cards striking out

[bill977]

I used to collect baseball cards, not at all, anymore!..

 

To me The joy was building the complete set , team by team, almost every player, and the mngr. (There was only 1 maybe 2 rookie cards of a player) .. Going to con's to try and find the 2 or 3 cards that you havent gotten yet, then waiting till the end of the year to buy the "traded set" to finish off that years set!.. ( there was only topps! at least for me!).. Now , no one cares about completing the year(s) sets, in fact they basically throw away the cards from the pack that arent "rare". They only go for the insert cards

.Also there are way to many different co. mass producing these cards. there's a million different variants of each player. and the baseball card pack themselves are just to expensive. its a total mess and it is just sad IMO. The way of the baseball card will never be what it once was

sad but true. the open and collate a set are long gone.........

[arexcrooke]

And what are y'all basing this on?

There is an active trading community to complete modern sets on the PSA boards.

Let's try to not paint with too broad of a brush there fellas.

 

[bill977]

And what are y'all basing this on?

There is an active trading community to complete modern sets on the PSA boards.

Let's try to not paint with too broad of a brush there fellas.

i bemoan the fact that you cant buy a couple of box's and have fun building a set.like we did in the 70's and eighties. yeah,i am a dinosaur (thumbs u

[arexcrooke]

I can understand that.

One thig I've done is go on eBay and find lots of whatever year you want and start set building like that.

I've done that quite a bit with my 66 set. In fact if you are patient and find sellers that have decent gradin you can build a set rather cheaply while selling of the spares

[arexcrooke]

I love busting vending boxes. 1982-84 especially. I've had great success getting nice cards and pulling a Ripken or a mattingly or boggs etc is great.

And in the grand scheme of things it's cheap fun. A vending box of 84 topps for $20? Yeah that's fun and cheap stuff there

[kidcolt]

As a kid in the 70's we collected opc hockey, that's all we had available. Collecting was a huge part of our childhood, every young boy collected hockey cards (I am in Canada). We would collect to complete the set, then our favorite team, star players and then our doubles. Back then rookies were guys you really didn't know much about, completing your favorite team and pinning them to your wall with a thumb tack was the goal. Every Saturday night after playing street hockey all day we would get in front of our tv and get ready to watch hockey night in Canada and we would pull out all the players they were playing that had cards. It was great fun. We used the cards to connect us with the game and to gain information about the players from the info on the back. I miss those days of collecting. Collecting now is all about big business and geared towards adults and not kids. The boom of the early 90's changed collecting forever.

 

I used to collect baseball cards, not at all, anymore!..

 

To me The joy was building the complete set , team by team, almost every player, and the mngr. (There was only 1 maybe 2 rookie cards of a player) .. Going to con's to try and find the 2 or 3 cards that you havent gotten yet, then waiting till the end of the year to buy the "traded set" to finish off that years set!.. ( there was only topps! at least for me!).. Now , no one cares about completing the year(s) sets, in fact they basically throw away the cards from the pack that arent "rare". They only go for the insert cards

.Also there are way to many different co. mass producing these cards. there's a million different variants of each player. and the baseball card pack themselves are just to expensive. its a total mess and it is just sad IMO. The way of the baseball card will never be what it once was

[bill977]

I love busting vending boxes. 1982-84 especially. I've had great success getting nice cards and pulling a Ripken or a mattingly or boggs etc is great.

And in the grand scheme of things it's cheap fun. A vending box of 84 topps for $20? Yeah that's fun and cheap stuff there

thats the fun i'm talking about. would love to be able to do the topps heritage cards that way,but it is cheaper to buy the set than try to build!! there went my fun,if i do it that way

[comicwiz]

As a kid in the 70's we collected opc hockey, that's all we had available. Collecting was a huge part of our childhood, every young boy collected hockey cards (I am in Canada). We would collect to complete the set, then our favorite team, star players and then our doubles. Back then rookies were guys you really didn't know much about, completing your favorite team and pinning them to your wall with a thumb tack was the goal. Every Saturday night after playing street hockey all day we would get in front of our tv and get ready to watch hockey night in Canada and we would pull out all the players they were playing that had cards. It was great fun. We used the cards to connect us with the game and to gain information about the players from the info on the back. I miss those days of collecting. Collecting now is all about big business and geared towards adults and not kids. The boom of the early 90's changed collecting forever.

 

Very similar memories and sentiment toward the difference between the days of collecting as a kid. and now.

[kidcolt]

I still collect but its very different. Base cards now are only in the packs to fill them and to protect the over produced game used and autographs. Packs now can cost as much as $500-800 a pack and the resell value on them suck. People invest so much now they dont want to trade it all about selling and trying to break even. Very few people except a few older collectors still collect vintage, its really not very popular. The days of games of knock downs are long gone....

 

 

[B-Smooth]

Only asking this here because cards were already brought up - a friend of mine has some baseball cards that are curved up a little and was wondering if he could somehow straighten them out. I jokingly said "PRESS THEM" and gave the impression that one could press many cards at once due to their smaller size.

 

Now, I am not actually endorsing this, but was wondering is it possible? Is/has it actually been done? Go easy on me, I have been out of the loop for a few years now, in case this has actually been asked before.

 

 

 

-slym

You can press cards. Ive had a few done myself. I had a 57 Drysdale RC that had a small wrinkle in it. I had it pressed and it is extremely hard to see now.

I will tell you that I dont know how PSA or SGC would treat that or if they could even tell. If, like comics, then they cant unless the wrinkle is still there under magnification.

 

Hey arex, I can tell you that grading cards is a different animal from comics; if you have a card with a very minor paper wrinkle front or back, as made or not, even if the card is very flat and true, if they catch it the grade will be hammered, from perhaps an 8 down to a 5, etc.

Or they'll just send it back ungraded. Like if they detect color touch.

[B-Smooth]

I love busting vending boxes. 1982-84 especially. I've had great success getting nice cards and pulling a Ripken or a mattingly or boggs etc is great.

And in the grand scheme of things it's cheap fun. A vending box of 84 topps for $20? Yeah that's fun and cheap stuff there

Oh hell yeah! That was my era, and sifting through unsearched vending boxes is a great joy in life. It's still fun to buy a case of '86 topps, and sift away looking for that elusive PSA 10 Ryan.

[B-Smooth]

And what are y'all basing this on?

There is an active trading community to complete modern sets on the PSA boards.

Let's try to not paint with too broad of a brush there fellas.

Yep. The whole registry thing is huge, too. This has the same effect on collectors as it has in the comic world. Genius. People pay good money for a PSA/Beckett 9.5/10 '87 Donruss Ellis Burks, or Bryan Clutterbuck? to get that top set.

[arexcrooke]

Yeah they hammer wrinkles terribly.

How up close and personal do they get with wrinkles and stuff? I mean do they use magnification to look at the corners?

It's interesting watching people on card message boards vs here. They seem to be not as free with info as many here. I can remeber asking about resto and how it was accepted and thought of and then they shut me down.

Said they weren't going to talk about it because I was going to use it to doctor cards.

[Jeffro.]

I love busting vending boxes. 1982-84 especially. I've had great success getting nice cards and pulling a Ripken or a mattingly or boggs etc is great.

And in the grand scheme of things it's cheap fun. A vending box of 84 topps for $20? Yeah that's fun and cheap stuff there

 

That does sound like fun but where are you finding these for $20 and how can you be sure they haven't been searched?

 

It's been many years since I cracked a vending box and as I recall, they weren't sealed shut.

[B-Smooth]

I love busting vending boxes. 1982-84 especially. I've had great success getting nice cards and pulling a Ripken or a mattingly or boggs etc is great.

And in the grand scheme of things it's cheap fun. A vending box of 84 topps for $20? Yeah that's fun and cheap stuff there

 

That does sound like fun but where are you finding these for $20 and how can you be sure they haven't been searched?

 

It's been many years since I cracked a vending box and as I recall, they weren't sealed shut.

You have to get them from a trusted source. There are only a couple of places I trust. And yes, I too would like a box of '84 Topps vending for $20. For the Mattingly alone.

[B-Smooth]

Yeah they hammer wrinkles terribly.

How up close and personal do they get with wrinkles and stuff? I mean do they use magnification to look at the corners?

It's interesting watching people on card message boards vs here. They seem to be not as free with info as many here. I can remeber asking about resto and how it was accepted and thought of and then they shut me down.

Said they weren't going to talk about it because I was going to use it to doctor cards.

It's too easy to doctor cards. I can sort of understand the need to keep that info secret. It is an interesting question on whether or not cards can be pressed, or not. Can paper money be pressed without detection?

[Old Fashion PB and J]

Yeah they hammer wrinkles terribly.

How up close and personal do they get with wrinkles and stuff? I mean do they use magnification to look at the corners?

It's interesting watching people on card message boards vs here. They seem to be not as free with info as many here. I can remeber asking about resto and how it was accepted and thought of and then they shut me down.

Said they weren't going to talk about it because I was going to use it to doctor cards.

And that logic can be applied here with the pandoras box of pressing. I am not against pressing, but how many noobs have there third post asking where to get books pressed. And how many members are pressing large quantities of books on the regular. This message board has played a pretty big role in pressing in the hobby. So I can honestly agree why they decide to keep mum, look what it did to these boards alone.

[Hepcat]

i bemoan the fact that you cant buy a couple of box's and have fun building a set.like we did in the 70's and eighties. yeah,i am a dinosaur

 

(thumbs u

 

Hah! If you had the scratch to buy a whole box or two of the cards, you're no dinosaur. You're just another young whippersnapper. In my card buying days from 1959 to 1965, I could never afford any more than one to four packs at a time, and more often than not just the one.

 

 

 

 

 

[Hepcat]

As a kid in the 70's we collected opc hockey, that's all we had available. Collecting was a huge part of our childhood, every young boy collected hockey cards (I am in Canada). We would collect to complete the set....

 

Absolutely!

 

I trace my love of cards to a certain snowy, cold day in the late fall of 1958 when I found four hockey cards on Cathcart Street in London a few doors down from my house - three Detroit Red Wings and then a Blackhawk (I can't remember which one though)! When I saw that big Indian I knew that was my team, even though I couldn't read yet. Here are pictures of some of I have these days:

 

1958-59 Topps

 

 

 

 

The Hawks swiftly rewarded me with a Stanley Cup in the spring of 1961 - but who could have guessed that a Blackhawk team with Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita, Kenny Wharram, Bill Hay, Eddie Litzenberger, Tod Sloan, Pierre Pilote, Elmer Vasko and Glenn Hall wouldn't produce another Stanley Cup for 49 years?

 

Nonetheless, I remain a big Blackhawk fan to this very day:

 

 

And they're looking very good indeed this year!

 

With respect to collecting "modern" hockey cards, I'm still plugging away at master sets of the 2003-04 Pacific Titanium:

 

2003-04 Pacific Titanium

 

 

The last four Giguere cards are patch parallels.

 

 

The last three Miller cards are patch parallels.

 

And the 2003-04 Upper Deck Black Diamond cards. Given that there's a semi unlimited variance in different jersey cards and the production of the Black Diamond Clarity Parallels is limited to ten of each card, I'll still be working on this task for at least the foreseeable future.

 

 

 

[Chaseman210]

I have a ton of cards in my collection. I used to buy packs and boxes, but then I realized that I didn't build sets and I was always looking for my favorite players. Then I wised up and started buying singles for my PC. Saved a lot of money and got cards I actually wanted.