August 04, 2005
A Handful is Plenty
within the rss feeds i monitor out popped a non-technical article i just had to read. the short description indicated that the article was about the rise and fall of the baseball card industry and was titled An industry reshuffles to recapture its youth so i gave it a read. there were a few brief glimmers of hope that may they "get it", i'm simply not convinced.
like many boys at the time, i collected sports cards as a kid. i acquired the rookie cards of favorite players, made sure i had all the cards of my favorite teams, they were organized and tracked (if not memorized), and they provided yet another view into the sports world. i eventually began to outgrow it giving away parts of my collection and at 20 foolishly selling off all but a little of what remained. there were some i kept -- my wayne gretzky rookie card being the most notable, followed by the same for ken dryden, brian trottier and a handful of other players.
despite that exit, i eventually got hooked again. i think it was those cool new upper deck hockey cards. the photos were so much better. more details, no gum stains, and at the time those high tech holograms. i traded cards with a number of other adults and each of us relived a bit of our childhood i guess, but then the greed hit and this is were the article i read seems to miss the boat.
why did the card industry go down hill? greed. sure, it made it more difficult when it went from two brands (topps and opc) to many, many more. but they also added in so many "special" cards that people that wanted to be complete felt compelled to chase down. then there were the extended sets, the special order sets, the special embossed versions, and on and on and on. each vendor realistically had a half dozen little sets in their sets. it became all but impossible to get all the cards you wanted. well, without dropping the equivalent of a monthly mortgage to get them.
and then there is the price jump without the value. as noted in the article, upper deck (UD) introduced cards at the crazy price of $1.00 pack. as an adult, i didn't see a problem with that. i thought it was a bit limiting for them since it ruled a lot of kids out, but then thought that perhaps they were marketing themselves to be the adult's baseball/football/hockey card. and for the price you got a much better looking product, so it seemed fair enough. unfortunately, other vendors began to follow that trend while not necessarily improving their product. i look back now and think about getting a pack of cards at the store for a quarter and now i get the same back for $1. actually, now that same pack is $3 and instead of getting 10-12 cards and a piece of [crappy] gum, you get 6 cards and a marketing insert to try and get you to buy (or win) other things.
i would have to look, but somewhere in the mid-90's i simply gave it up. i just couldn't -- or really wouldn't -- pay the price. it wasn't worth it. i found that card collecting went from pleasantly reliving a childhood to becoming an exercise in frustration. and one whose cost to continue rise without providing any more pleasure. this time; however, i have kept my cards and will eventually sort through them and get them back to the handful i want to keep.
Posted by ac at August 4, 2005 11:41 AM