Tiny, good-vibe anecdote re: future of hobby...

MattyC

Posted this on the mini thread but thought it speaks just as much to the hobby at large, and the occasional discussions of its future with kids collecting...

So I swung by the SoCal show yesterday...and saw the most awesome sight...

There I was browsing at a table when I look next to me and see two boys, around 10-12 yrs old I'm thinking, buying raw 1975 Minis. It didn't compute at first, seeing kids that age selecting Cedeno and Twitchell. So I asked if I could join them in looking through the raw set from which they were buying and began talking to them. Turns out they were building the set, because, "A friend said this was a good old one to build, with the colors and HOFers." So it wasn't even their fathers who got them into it, but a peer.

Needless to say, I congratulated them on their shockingly good taste in cards.

I then helped impart whatever knowledge I could about the set (basically wrote a book for them right there, going over each card in the set and its nuances, lol).

Anyways, just a really good vibe and shows the hobby is quite alive with some of the kids today.

It also seems that lately I'm meeting so many guys just returning to the hobby. When one keeps it about the cards it really can be an oasis from the daily sh1tshow and grind.

Juggs

I saw a similar thing......a kid, probably 14, was walking table to table asking if the dealers were buying. They would look in his stuff and see fairly current cards and say "no", eventually the kid started explaining to one dealer that he was looking to get rid of his new stuff so he could start buying HOF guys from the 60's and early 70's. I thought that was pretty cool.

emar

Thanks for sharing! The hobby isn't going away...after 100+ years of collecting & trading, as some people have argued on this board before.

Look around...M.L. & L.L. games. Kids still love the game!

lightningboy

Great little stories. Any time the kids are away from the video games and at a card show, buying vintage, no less, is a great sign. Thanks for sharing

Griffins

Juggs, and Matty C, you're talking about the same kid. Asher is a neighbor of mine, and I coached him and his brother in little league on my sons team.
Asher is a baseball fanatic, and every Sunday comes over to go thru binders. Since the beginning of the year he's been researching his next set to start, and decided upon '75 mini since it had a collision of old stars (Brooks and Aaron) along with new (Yount and Brett). He's been counting the days until the show like a kid counts the days till Xmas, and was beside himself when the day arrived.
At the same time I'd given him and his brother a copy of Boys of Summer, and they've both read it. His older brother started on a set of Brooklyn Dodgers, and has been doing odd jobs and chores to be able to afford the '53 Reese and '56 Robinson he had his eye on and picked up at the show.
It's great to see kids so excited about something other than video games, and I loved the fact there was so many kids at the show yesterday.

Exodus

Is Asher's mom's name Allison or Dorit ?

Griffins

nope, sorry it isn't.

ThoseBackPages

Great stuff fellas! Thank you for sharing.

MBMiller25

This is great stuff right here. What you guys did for those boys is great!

DetroitSquirreL

VERY cool...I started collecting cards in 1978 ( Burger King Tigers) and was hooked, I leave and come back off and on...modern cards really bother me sometimes but I just decided to collect my older stuff. Its great that kids have not just a appreciation of the older cards but the first thing out of their mouths wasn't " we were told we can make lots of money off a high grade set!". Thank goodness there is still hope for the youth and this hobby...I collect to collect. Good to see the young ones are as well

tsalems1