I fall into this trap of unspoken moping about the length of time that it takes me to complete sets.
Sometimes I whine publicly: Ebay shoppers are snapping up all my cards. The prices online are increasingly ridiculous. Waah! Waah!
But objectively, when emotion is taken out of the conversation, we've got it pretty good in a lot of ways.
Do you ever think about how it used to be? Before the internet?
If you wanted to collect a set 30 years ago, you relied on card shows, mail-order catalogs and magazines or trades with friends, relatives or acquaintances. You also bought lots and lots and lots of packs in hopes that 1 of the 12 cards inside would be one you needed.
Twenty years ago, I was not online. I had just gotten back into the hobby a little. I discovered there was a person downstairs in my work office that collected 1970s cards like I did. And I knew another person in my office who had cards, but he was more interested in selling what he had.
That was it. But I wasn't frustrated about it. I was thrilled I found someone near me who collected. I hadn't been in the game for years and it must've been a good dozen years since I had traded with someone.
I actually did complete a 660-card set at that time. Two of them. I finished both 1975 and 1974 Topps. But I had a head-start on both, since I had accumulated some of the set years earlier. And I was clued into a place not far from work that sold old cards. A couple years later, still not online, I tried to complete the 2006 Topps set, simply through buying relentlessly at Walmart.
That's what you did before the internet. A lot of word of mouth. A lot of waiting 4-to-6 or 6-to-8 weeks. A lot of playing with the cards you had, over and over and over and over again.
The internet has made the concept of finding cards in your mailbox all too common. The mailman dropping off cardboard used to be a once-a-year treat, when I had cash to mail through a catalog. Now it happens a couple times a week, or more. There is no need to wait months for a card show, although card shows are still very vital to what I do.
Today, between card shows, I pick up cards for the sets I'm chasing online ... when there's cash. There are so many options, too.
I've made progress on my 1970 Topps set by finding buys on Twitter. I grabbed a few more recently from one of the regular sellers I shop from, Trevor, aka @Tec872.
Wonderful stuff and I couldn't resist ending with the grand finale of the batting cage scene behind Frank Quilici, complete with man in a towel.
All of these cards are high numbers or semi-high numbers and if I think about how long it would take for me to land these five cards 30 years ago, it would probably be at least a year or two, unless I got lucky at a card show and found all five.
I also landed another key 1970 Topps card from @CardsCTB who always has some great stuff for sale.
I really need to start chasing some of the higher-number Hall of Famers in this set and this makes me feel like I made some progress. I believe this card gives me the career run of cards for Rollie Fingers, unless there's some Donruss card I'm not thinking about.
While shopping for some 1970 Topps needs, I found something else I wanted to bring home, which is a very card-show experience.
I have no plans to try to complete the 1957 Topps set but I now have what's got to be one of the 10 best cards in the set, and that's saying something with '57.
Shopping online is one of those First-World Collector benefits that we take for granted. It's phenomenal. Sure , it's not perfect. I would much rather be able to look at the cards in person because you can never be perfectly sure when viewing stuff on your screen, no matter how great the pictures.
But, you know, shows aren't perfect, too. I've been foiled by bad card show hall lighting more than once.
The point is, I can collect sets -- large sets -- at a pace that I never could before, thanks to being online and having abundant options. And those folks who say they don't have the patience for completing set?
You should've been there in 1979. It would blow your mind.
Comments
Unfortunately, old Rollie's 1969 rookie card is one of the last 6 cards I need to finish that set. The prices they go for are outrageous.
That does seem quaint by today's standards.
On the other hand though, I think we are a few years past "peak internet usefulness" at least from the perspective of people who have a pre-internet mindset of what collecting cards is supposed to be like.
When I got back into the hobby about 2009 I was blown away by all the cards I could obtain via ebay - stuff that I would never have been able to find back in the day. Want a 1965 Topps Whitey Ford (or some other random card)? You've got a shop with like 50 different copies of it in your own living room now. Wow. And the amount of competition assured that it was mostly a buyer's market, which made everything except the truly top end stuff quite affordable.
I got a bit addicted to that and gobbled up a lot of cards for a few years there (in retrospect I'm quite glad I did), but we seem to be on a sharp downslope these days as the benefits of that system have slowly (and sometimes rapidly) been eroded.
If I was getting back into the hobby for the first time in 2023 instead of 2009 I think my reaction would be quite different. More like "Oh, you can buy cards online now? Gee, they all seem quite expensive, all the good ones come encapsulated in plastic slabs that add a huge amount to what they cost and there seem to be quite a few rules and transaction fees on top of all that. Meh, no thanks."
I haven't bought cards off of ebay since about 2016 and (living in Japan) I've mostly shifted my collecting to focus on Japanese cards that I can get over here. This is about half driven by my interest in Japanese cards, and about half driven by my disillusionmnet with the online buying experience with respect to MLB cards.
As it turned to 1979, the buying of packs ramped up, we got closer to completing the set, and the next thing I knew, I had enough cards for 3 sets, but still didn't have the 1 complete.
My mom found an ad in the newspaper for someone selling singles, and I got my 8-10 cards needed for the 726-card set. For 1980, my parents simply bought the set from the same guy and that was pretty much it - no packs.
1981 wasa different story - a guy my dad worked with was into cards, and they got talking, and the word came down about the 2 new companies, and all the mistakes that were in those cards/packs. Lots of 1981 packs were bought.
Turned out, the guy my dad worked with was a bit of a business partner with a guy who was a photographer (wound up doing a lot of the work for Fleer - 99% of the photos taken in Philly on 1981-1988 Fleer was his) who also ran a card shop. Dad's co-worker asked if I'd sort a case of cards for him into sets, I did, he liked it, and he got the shop owner to try me out. So three years into the hobby, and I already had a job in the hobby. That lasted about 5 years (darn those factory sets!).
Thankfully, that "job" gave me access to a shop - where I basically could have anything at the owner's cost (or at the absolute most reasonable price around). Also gave me access to sets or singles (or both as my collection evolved into something pretty similar to what I still do today).
I was an early adopter of the internet and was involved in buying/selling on the newsgroups before joining ebay in 1998 (I have a hard time finding people who have been on there longer than me). Bought a ton more than I have sold on ebay, but my ebay sales in 1999 and 2000 sure helped a lot.
It is pretty remarkable how the hobby has changed over the years. For me, I never "left" the hobby - yes, there were a couple of periods where buying was low to nothing, but I never packed it all up saying "I'm done" or anything like that, so I have never had that "shock" of coming back to huge changes. Plus, I've kind of embraced the leading edge of these changes.
I have thought, during these past 25 years, of how convenient things have gotten for the hobby. It was even better 20-25 years ago when shipping rates for bubble/padded mailers were 45 cents (not $4.50) and even shipping large boxes of cards was a couple dollars, not the $12-15 that it is now.
It's also nice having card shows in the area here again. They really started going away around 2000, and when I started trying to fill in some of the baseball gaps in 2012 (when the finances allows it again), the shows in the area were non-existent. The double-edged sword is that the "pandemic pricing" brought out so many collectors (old and new), that the shows are back (but in many cases, with inflated prices). Thankfully, we have some "old-school" collectors/dealers here whose tables I frequent.
It's very different today than it was 45 years ago in 1978 when I started. The ease of obtaining cards, and the ability to get localized products in areas never before possible are the benefits. What the card companies are printing these days, however, is a different story. Do we really need (or want) 10 different sets by the same manufacturer, with 25-40 parallels of the same cards (including the parallels of inserts)? I don't. And most collectors I've talked to don't either. I don't get why they do it, but that's where we're at.
Collecting in 2023 vs. 1978 - simpler yet more complicated, both at the same time. :)
As I type this comment I have a Saitama Seibu Lione - Chiba Lotte Marines game at the Tokyo Dome streaming on my phone - the internet is an amazing thing!
Yes, I too have discovered wrinkles in vintage after I got them home from a show. Luckily none have been too shocking - at least not enough to make the purchase regrettable.
The best thing that happened for me was going to large shows with dealers from across the country. Built relationships where they knew what I needed and price I would pay. By then I had most sets close to being filled from mid 50s minus a few of the big ticket items (57 mantle, 67 Seaver hi num rookie, etc.)
By mid 90s often bought via mail from these trusted dealers. Best pickup was actually football. Bought the full incredibly rare 72 high number series for about 750 from a guy in KC whom I met and bought from during Thanksgiving weekend national show in Detroit. He sent me the set via insured mail. Those cards are like gold in the NM mint condition (some centering issues though). Rarely see these on ebay.
As for filling sets in the late 70s and early 80s, this is where the cello packs and rack packs were great. Would memorize the final 20 or 30 players I needed and look for them in the big stores. Still remember finding Mariners Bob Stinson 1979 card on a cello when I needed him and a few other guys. Turns out Topps collated a lot so when I opened the pack, I found the other 3 or 4 I needed.
Turn 60 this month but am interested in going to shows if any are nearby and probably setting up someday to start the bit by bit sale of my collection. Also, probably ebay, which I was a seller on 1999 to 2002 or so but left after the kids were born and needed to be a dad more than a dealer.
Paul t
It wasn't until 90s that I really got into the late 50s to late 60s. Unless you went to a large show with dealers from across the country, it was a real bear to find 61 highs, 62 sp highs, any 66 highs (even the non sps) and 67 high sp. Even 63 semi high was a pain. The 63 Mets team card (1st year as a team card as they didn't have one for 62) as a semi high was a royal pain to find in exmt. And you paid full high beckett price because if you didn't buy them someone else would gladly snap them up.
The definitively toughest finds in exmt or better was and probably still is the 1961 topps high number all star cards that finish the set. Good luck finding those period and if you do it will cost full price
Paul t