General Forum

Great comments everyone.  I saw an opportunity for a new topic and jumped on it.  I believe our current collecting/accumulating habits are individually shaped by various experiences/circumstances that influenced our interest in this hobby over time. 

I think mine was heavily influenced by my generation and era of introduction into the hobby.  I started collecting as a 10-year old in 1987 during the peak of the baseball card "stock market era".  Beckett Monthly was the bible back then.  It'd often feature articles about how card collecting was a good educational tool to teach you about investments, stocks, accounting, finance, business, etc.  People really thought that sports cards would someday put their children through college, or provide for a good retirement plan. 

Now, I know that perspective might be different from people who started collecting in the '60s when packs were still 1-5 cents, and card condition and value wasn't a really a concern, and fortunes weren't wasted on them.  Many people from that era also experienced having their collections thrown away by their parents only to find out years later that the cards were worth a "fortune".

Then there are the people that started collecting in the '00s, where parallels, inserts, short prints, and other gimmicks keep people buying packs like casino gamblers looking to score big.

Many people from my era of new collectors got burned big-time, and can probably still feel the burn on their behind from money wasted on fire-starter cardboard.  I left the hobby for 10 years, but kept those same business principles when I came back to it--without the false illusions of value for cards that were supposed to be collected for fun.  That's probably why I talk about cost efficiency in collecting today. 

I'm still buying packs; they're just 700-card packs of modern cards instead of 5-10 card packs, I guess.  Vintage still makes sense to purchase individually, or in lots.  Wax from the late-'80s to early-'90s is cheap, so I'll grab those from time to time too.  As far as the 2017 Topps insert sets?  I'll let you collect them, and then I'll buy them back from you in a couple years deeply discounted after you've felt the burn from investing a horde of dollars into a worthless product due to some type of gambler's fever.  People end up quitting the hobby because of the guilt they feel looking at their worthless piles of junk.  It ends up being a rude awakening for some people.  You know it when you see it because they're selling large lots of random incomplete product for deeply discounted rates just to get rid of it. It can be sad.

I really enjoy opening packs and seeing what's inside.  Because of this, I have accepted that completing a set is a rarity for me.  I guess I also like the feel of a brand new card out of a pack as well.  I have bought a few cards at card shops and a small amount online, but nothing can beat pulling an insert or parallel or favorite team/player out of a pack.

Also, I am certainly a collector vs an investor.  The only time I would even think about selling a card is if it was some lottery ticket I would be stupid not to sell.  Like that 1/1 LeBron James auto patch RC or something.  I collect because I love basketball and baseball and it reminds me of when I was a kid..  

And maybe I'm an accumulator.  I am organized in the fact that I only collect standard sized MLB and NBA cards, but anything that falls under that I will pretty much like to buy packs/blasters of.  I am finding though that there are some sets I don't really care for.  Not interested in Topps Archives this year, I don't like getting chrome sets that are just the exact same thing as the normal release, I don't like unlicensed stuff etc.  I also don't really care for the high end NBA sets, Prizm is the highest I will go.  So who knows, I still think I am a collector though.  

Well now that was an interesting read. =/

I consider myself a middle-aged man doing something I enjoy. My wife sees me smile when I open something good, I catch my daughter looking at something she never said she would and I have a 7 yr old boy who now feels the same thing I do when ripping a pack. That is why I do it. Yes the Ranford's and Oiler RCs serve a purpose, its the same one as my comics, books, action figures, LPS, Trashies and whatever else I have accumulated ovre the past 15 years. They are things that a fairly poor farm-kid of the 17% interest 80s that my parents survived through. One present for your birthday, two at Christmas years, of wearing my sister's had-me downs and one new outfit every year for the start of school. My point is I enjoy it because I couldn't as a kid, so many here talk about what they did as kids, I couldnt ........... now I can ............ that is why I do it. So accumulator vs collector to me is a silly topic and one that I truly don't even grasp, even after reading every post in this thread. Always remember people do things fo thier own reasons and sometimes simply don't give a rat's ass what other people think. Just sayin! =)

Two thoughts...what are trashies? And I hope for your sake the hand-me-downs were not dresses! (Although it worked for Weird Al)

Though some would say I am an accumulator, I consider myself a collector.  I collect sets, all of them, and I collect HoF and my favourite players. So I really have 2 collections.  I don't buy packs as to me, I rather spend my money on something that I know what I am getting.  I have bought large lots without knowing exactly what I am getting but knowing there is enough there to either increase my collection or to trade with others.  What I do like best though is the trading on this site.  This is bringing back the childhood days where school friends spent their allowance on packs and traded to complete their sets.  But I do all of this for the enjoyment of it, never as an investment or for any other reason that someone else may think.

V3 - when I get the idea of going for a run, I lie down till the idea passes.  God only gave me so many heart beats, why waste them running.

Farmkid = jeans and t-shirts Billy ..... even for girls hahahaha. Trashies are small rubber toys of all sorts of weird and wonderful designs, think shopkins gone bad. Just type Trashie into eBay and you will see them. My boy just LOVES collecting them. And the LPS were my daughter's just FYI. LOL

Oh sandyrusty,

For every extra heartbeat I expend while running (or am I jogging?), I gain two at the end of my life. Every extra heartbeat jogging (or am I running?) also takes away one step my knees can take at the end of my life. So the conclusion is that I'll have a nice strong heart while being in a wheelchair at 95 years old. That, of course, doesn't take into account the years I've lost due to the stress of 20 years of operating a free legal clinic, which is partially offset by the destressing activity of collecting (or do I accumulate?) baseball cards.

v3

  In the stamp community there are those who posess a psuedo-superiority idea about themselves by distinguishing between stamp collectors and philatelists. They claim one merely collects stamps and the other studies them. Postal history collectors laugh at them, and the list of reasons used to make some feel they are more important than those around them goes on and on.

Collect what you love. Love what you collect. What others 'think', does not matter in the slightest.

it's disapointing to me that there is no actual term for trading card collector.  a stamp collector is a philatelist, a coin collector is a numismatist, they even have a specific name for people who collect flies and beer mats!

We are just card collectors...

Or accumulators? really?

Here's my challenge.  Pick a card out of a suspected "Accumulator's" collection.  The defendant announces his start time and finish to determine how long it took to find said card.  (there is an honor system here of course... could do a youtube vieo, still honor system...)  If it were me to be asked, I am 99% assured that if it is listed on this website, I can find it in under 5 minutes.  That to me puts me in collector status.  accumulator would have no idea where to begin looking... let alone update 50k+ cards on a website.....

...just my thoughts...