You know how comic books have Gold/Silver/Bronze/Modern ages? Let's try to do the same with basebal

Estil

Okay, those of you familiar with comic books know that they divide it up into Gold/Silver/Bronze/Modern ages as follows:

Platnium Age: pre-1930s
Golden Age: 1930s-40s
Silver Age: 1950s-1960s
Bronze Age: 1970s-early 1980s
Modern/Iron Age: Mid 1980s-present

Well, I was thinking how could the history of baseball cards be divided like this? Now, IMO, the modern/bronze ages are easy to figure out. The tricky part is figuring out where to draw the line between the gold and silver ages.

Platnium Age: pre-WWII
Golden Age: 1948-1969
Silver Age: 1970-1980
Bronze Age: 1981-98
Modern/Iron Age: 1999-present

Basically the periods are divided by the times that a major ground breaking change was made in the hobby. Post WWII started the Golden Age and what is classically refered to as the modern age.

The major change from Gold to Silver is that by then Topps no longer did nickel packs and marked the end of Mickey Mantle cards. For as long as baseball card collecting has been a mainstream hobby (since late 70s or so), the Mantle cards were always the ultimate post WWII cards to own and the 50s/60s cards/sets have always been very popular and sought after.

The Bronze age starts when Topps loses its monopoly, Traded sets begin, and the hobby is now a full fledged mainstream hobby up there with stamps and coins (which until this point were the two main adult collector hobbies). It is also at this point that collectors take better care of their cards resulting in (to this day) much more plentiful cards in top grades than those in the Silver and especially Golden Ages (not to mention mothers knew by now not to just dump the cards in the trash when their sons/daughters "outgrew" them).

The Modern Age starts after the "Big Five" is reduced to the "Big Three" again and after 1/1's and memorbilia cards really begin to take off.

PS: Yes, I know I made a similar topic like this before but this time I put a slightly different "spin" on it.

fkw

To many (including myself).......... Modern = Topps/Bowman etc.., Post 1948.

Vintage is Pre1948 (or Pre1941 to some)

Then you have a large group that only collects cards from the 19th Century, ie. "N cards"........ If anything that would be Platinum


Usually its just 19th Century, PreWar, and Modern

IMO This is how I would break it down if I need 5 categories

19th Century 1868-1899
DeadBall 1900-1919
PreWar 1920-1945
PostWar 1946-1969
Modern 1970-Now

VitoCo1972

Just my opinion, but I would only use 4 ages and sort like -

Golden Age - 1934 and prior (34 Goudey or 35 Diamond Stars being the main cutoff point)
Silver Age - 1935 - 1955 (The end of Bowman and competition ends this age)
Bronze Age - 1956 - 1980 (Basically the Topps monopoly age)
Modern Age - 1981 - present (The reintroduction of competition age)

mtcards

Same as post above, would add these

The Dark Ages 1988-1993
The "New" Modern Age 1993-present