One thing that has become very clear to me over the past year is that my method of card collecting — the method that has been the established primary method of collecting for as long as I have been alive — is being phased out.
There are several reasons – and forces at work – for this. Every time I attend the monthly card show I think of one of them.
Over the past year, the show has shifted from primarily sports cards to primarily RPG/TCG cards. I have less than zero interest in it. When I paid my entrance fee at the table, the man there asked if I wanted to enter the lottery and gestured to a gift basket filled with TCG stuff – don’t ask me what it was, I couldn’t tell you. I gave the man a flat ‘no’ that sounded like ‘of course not’.
My point this time is that us vintage guys need to stick together. Because apparently we’re slowly dying out.
I found the only vintage guy in the area – the guy I’ve been going to since before the show turned to the dark side. He’s about the last vintage dealer left here, the last dealer that was 100% of every show I went to, the last “my kind of dealer”.
At many of these monthly shows he was left out by a few other dealers who had mostly vintage cards, but other things as well. I would buy some things from them every now and then. But none of those guys were there on Saturday.
“Where are your friends?” I asked. He shrugged his shoulders and said they didn’t want to come anymore. He said they had some slow shows this summer. He shrugged again and said he was doing well on the show. ‘Thank God,’ I thought. “Because you’re the only reason I still come to this thing.”
I was actually hoping that my late former coworker’s family would be there as I was ready to buy up some of their stuff. But they weren’t there. Oh well, I guess the vintage man gets my money again!
With extra money because my former colleague’s family wasn’t there, I looked at all the cards under this dealer’s case, but none of the expensive stuff appealed to me (or I already had them). So it was time to dig through the discount bins, which I always do.
I’m in a strange place and have no real sets to build. There is the freedom there to just take what is interesting to me. And that’s what I did yesterday. I would say this 1959 Topps Marv Thronberry card is definitely interesting.
All Curt Flood cards are interesting. I’m apparently on a career run off his cards, with only a few high marks left.
Okay, this is for a set chase. Another card with the 1969 deckle edge was landed.
The freedom to pick up the cards that appeal to me has ensured that certain sets have emerged as favorites. The 1961 Topps set continues to surprise me as one of my instinctive favorites. This would never have been the case during the first five years of this blog.
However, 1965 has always been a favorite, and if I ever decide to pursue another 60s set, it will be this one.
Now 1968 has never been a favorite (where have we seen that Rusty Staub photo before?). I’m sure if I had collected in 1968, the fact that the edges from the first series are different from the edges of the rest of the set (see Reggie Smith compared to the Alou and Staub) would have been very annoying.
But ’68 has more household names than the early ’60s sets, and I also saw some of those cards (along with ’69) when I was young and first noticed older cards.
I already own this 1956 Topps Don Newcombe, as well as the 1963 Jim Gilliam at the top of the post. But they are both extras worth adding. The ’56 Newcombe in my Dodgers folders had a huge crease (the nicer one is with my complete ’56 set). This one has some text on the back, but that’s fine.
I found some vintage football cards in the bins and started picking out a few 1976 Topps that I like but don’t want to complete. These are the first football cards I bought. I probably bought a pack or two, but I can’t remember the copy. But as soon as I saw that Chris Hanburger card, I knew I was the owner – how’s that for a callback? I hadn’t thought about that card in almost 50 years!
Meanwhile, Ed “Too Tall” Jones was a hot topic on the schoolyard as a kid, and I had to get the Ron Jaworski rookie card just because I never knew he started with the Rams and he doesn’t look anything like Ron Jaworski!
Running low on interesting cards from the bins, I looked up at the shelf display in front of me and saw a card I needed – a set filler, actually.
Not my idea of vintage, even though the set is over 40 years old, but this is the last key card for my 1983 Donruss set! The handful of remaining needs are easily obtained commons.
A year ago, around this time, I got the 1969 Topps Reggie Jackson card from the same dealer at the same show. The Boggs card isn’t exactly a rookie Reggie, but I like the idea of getting a key card every year before Christmas as a new tradition.
Just before I handed out my cards for the addition, I noticed a few rows of modern cards. I quickly looked through it and saw a Dodger.
My problem with the current monthly show situation is not only that there are almost no vintage dealers left, but no one wants to release even a box of discounted baseball. If I really looked, I could probably find an example or two of dollar boxes, but they’re buried in all the shiny, cobblestone, Panini-fest NBA/NFL cards. It’s quite discouraging.
Still, thanks to one table, you wouldn’t be able to tell if there was just one vintage table or several different tables if you weren’t there. So kudos to that dealer who is still hanging in there.
In these changing gathering times, we must stick together.
#vintage #guys #gotta #stick