then vs. now
galaxy27
Posts: 9,944 ✭✭✭✭✭
i ruminated about this the other day, and i was curious as to what everyone else's take is
think back to when you were a kid. your own personal golden era as it pertains to this hobby of ours. if it were humanly possible to transport yourself back to that specific time and leave everything you currently own and everything you know behind, would you do it? in other words, did you experience more gratification when you were none the wiser as compared to collecting in the year 2026 and all that it entails? for me personally, the answers to those questions are hell yes and unequivocally yes.
i think back to the summer of 1980 and visiting my grandparents who lived 7.5 hours away. i'll never forget the feeling i had when i saw the bricks of 80T baseball packs that my grandmother brought back from the grocery store. unadulterated euphoria. in the midst of the destruction that ensued, not once did i ever think about what a particular card could be worth, yet i treated each one of them like it was a sliver of gold. from the 34698072450987524687907 Jerry Garvins i pulled to the tough-looking guy for the Reds (Foster) to the dude on the A's with the cool batting stance, every single one of them meant more to me than life itself at the time.
would i relinquish all of my collectible assets to relive those cherished moments? in a nanosecond
would you?
Comments
hobby-wise? I dont think I would. perhaps that is because i entered the hobby a little later than you, around 1987-88. by that time, Beckett was a thing and everyone talked about "values" so even as a youngster, I was concerned about condition. I remember reading all the hobby magazines as that was where ALL of my hobby info came from. no web, no message boards, no socials. information was hard to come by. it was also MUCH harder to find the cards i wanted. I could only purchase what the local card shops had in stock, if what i was looking for were singles beyond current year.
I can vividly remember going into card shops in the early 90s with money in pocket and wanting/wishing for certain cards to be there, but some never were. I had money to purchase, but not the opportunity.
today, information is both wide and deep and at our fingertips. we can also pretty much find most any card we want to acquire with a little searching. I remember in 93 or 94, when the NNOF Thomas was first listed in Beckett for around $35.00 having the money in hand and wanting to purchase, but never ever could find one. it was only well after the proliferation of the internet and online marketplaces that I was able to acquire one.
I would rather hobby now than then.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
You mean go back to the 60s? Hell yeah, we were busting wax packs with no guilt whatsoever. Hanging out at the toy store, or begging Mom to pull over at the candy store on the way home from school so I could get my fix. Those places were my dispensaries. 😂
Hell hath no fury like a Northside slump.
I would. My greatest hobby moments were spent ripping packs from 1985-1991 and setting up at card shows with my Dad. I would easily trade in my entire collection for one more show with my Dad who passed away suddenly in 2021.
Thanx for the nteresting topic. I’m probably coming at it from a slightly different angle since I was buying packs in the 1950s, but I honestly didn’t think of myself as a “collector” at the time.
The cards were just part of being a kid. We flipped them, traded them, stuck them in bicycle spokes, carried them around in our pockets, and occasionally actually looked at the stats on the back.
What strikes me reading posts like this is how little value entered into the equation back then. Not because we were noble or pure — we just didn’t know any better. A card wasn’t a commodity or an investment vehicle. It was simply connected to baseball, friends, summer, and whatever player happened to catch your attention that day.
Would I trade everything now to go back to that feeling? Emotionally, there’s a part of me that says yes, because there’s something irreplaceable about experiencing something before the adult world starts assigning prices, grades, rankings, and population reports to it.
On the other hand, I also appreciate what comes with time. The older I get, the more I enjoy the history, the artwork, the photography, the printing methods, the stories behind the issues, and very much the hunt itself. As a kid, I saw “cards.” Now I see artifacts and memories tied to different periods of life.
Maybe the real trick is not trying to go backward, because you can’t unknow what you know now. Maybe it’s just holding onto enough of that original wonder so the hobby still feels personal and not merely transactional.
@Stone193 My thoughts exactly!!!
My 5 and dime purchases got me schoolyard “status” if i landed a rarity!!! But value?? Who cared, I’d swap it or flip it for any player on the Red Sox and thought it was the greatest day of my life!!!
I wouldn’t trade those memories for anything of value today!
Live long, and prosper.
Thats what it is supposed to be all about and certainly not aging boomers seeking and pumping diamonds stickers thingys
It's the singer not the song - Peter Townshend (1972)
Not even a minute do I buy the whole buh buh buh I'm a man-child japery - Me (2025)
My first year of really collecting was 1980 too. Remember going to the store with my mom and talking her into getting some grocery packs. One thing I remember was the amount of rack packs and cello and grocery packs all lined up on a huge rack at Wollworths and going home with hundreds of cards. It seemed to me even then that they were starting to overproduce as card collecting took off around that time.
I think that the only "pure" collecting i did as a child was the original garbage pail kids cards. when i was buying/collecting those, there was absolutely no thought about condition/value etc. just playing with them, sticking them all over the place. Man, I loved those cards!!
I believe that would have been 1985? so just a couple of years before i got into sportscards.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
In a heartbeat.
My card collecting consisted of ripping packs for the gum from 1979 through 1982 mostly, I was more into playing sports than buying cards but the ones I did have I never took care of
I'd prefer to go back to. When I first got into. "Collecting" back in the early 2000's since I can honestly say I don't have a single fond memory of baseball cards as a kid
I wouldn’t relinquish any collectible asset to relive those days. 1970-71 were the first years I opened packs and it was fun. But we lived in an old farmhouse without central AC or heat so no thanks on going back.