A very good question

Last night Sports Card Collectors asked a very good question- Is Collecting as much fun today as when you first started? I wrote up a huge reply but exceeded the character count, so instead of breaking it up into multiple comments, I'm getting a whole post out of it. 

Very good question. In some ways, it's more fun, but in a lot of ways, much less. I began in 1988- the start of the glory years- and most of my formative years, cards were everywhere. Seemingly ever shop had them, and there were card shows in one of the 4 local malls every week, it seems like. I REALLY miss those. I have not been to a card show of any sort since 2005, and I had to drive 4  hours one way to attend it, and I didn't find a single card for my collection, a sad ending.

I miss my first local card shop, which I went to many times. He was right across the street from the doctor- you could see his building from the doctor's office- and every doctor's visit resulted in a card shop visit. And since I was never really healthy- they never figured out what the problem was- I was going just about every week. I'm lucky in that I still have multiple local card shops, plus Target and rarely Wal-Mart. My main current card shop, I began shopping at in 1999. They bridge multiple eras for me. I never photographed my original shop, I do have a photo of my current shop but I can't find the image. I tend to put all my efforts into my cards and not anything else, something I'd like to change.

The cards themselves, that's not as fun now. Exclusive licenses are the worst thing that could have ever happened to the hobby, and now all 5 major sports have them...ugh. Non-sports cards are mostly all movie related now, with occasional comic sets. The fun and whimsy of the 1990s and earlier is gone. The ability to build sets now is mostly gone, with 95% of all releases just memorabilia delivery systems, at $200 a pack or more. That's not really card collecting, but since the licenses are exclusive....nobody cares, except the real collectors who continually get the short shrift.

But what's better is....myself. I appreciate them more now. Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, I was all about the acquisition. I didn't even read the card backs 99% of the time. Now, I appreciate them much more. I study each and every card.

The ability to scan my collection and being able to pull up and see everything with just a couple of clicks is a great thing for me. When you have as many cards as I do, I sometimes go years without seeing them, but the scans? I'm always looking at them. And when I finish scanning my collection sometime in the 2020s, I will sort them all back into sets for the first time since 2004. 

all of my scans, roughly 88 thousand cards, are contained in these folders! And growing nearly daily.

 I'm actually NOT looking forward to completing the scanning process. While it would be GREAT to have it all at my fingertips, I am worried about what I am going to do with my time when I finish. It is what I have spent most of my time doing since 2009. I already have another project lined up, but that won't take me anywhere near as long...even though that collection began before I began collecting cards, the size of my collection is much smaller.

My documentation is much improved upon the glory years. I began documenting my collection in 1998, and I'm still working on that, and forcing the evolution of it. I fear I may be attempting too much but that's something I will determine over time- and will eventually write about.

I have access to far more cards then I ever did in the 1990s. I remember thinking that I would never own a tobacco card. Now, I've not only gotten over 100 of them, I've completed a set from 1922, and my collection dates back to the 1800s now! I never thought that would ever happen. If the internet resources didn't exist, that wouldn't have happened. (The completed set from 1922, though...that I got locally!) 

1922 Lambert & Butler Motor Cars #13

My interactions with fellow collectors could only happen in the modern era. I got internet access at home in 2000 and by the end of that year I was already on message boards for cards. I don't know the exact number of trades I made, but I remember that I was over 200 on Trader Retreat. I'm pushing 100 on the Trading Card Database, and would be on NUTS if I could get my computer to log in there. That's all cards I would never have gotten if not for the internet. Without the internet, half the sets I've completed, or more, would still be incomplete. Heck, some of the sets I've completed- I didn't even know they existed until I found them on the Internet! 

If it wasn't for the internet, I would never have become a fan of the NHL. I tried to watch in 1995, but couldn't figure out what was going on, so I gave up. In 2016, I read a thread on the Golden Knights debuting their logo on the Trading Card Database, put on NHL Network, and got hooked on the sport within an hour. Now it's a big part of every day of my life. I'm watching hockey as I write this.

I also have an appreciation of cards that I wouldn't have had access to back then- IE, Benchwarmers and their less clothed friends. Although I did appreciate the female form by the end of the 1990s, during most of the time I was oblivious. 

this counts as a Basketball card

OK, I'm still mostly oblivious to anything that's not cards.

Blogs didn't exist in the 1990s, and that's a big part of my life- and the hobby- now, as well. 

I couldn't imagine my life without Cardboard History anymore. I've only been doing this since 2014 but it's become so integral to me; I will keep going for years, I suspect the rest of my life, however long that may be.

The Trading Card Database is my favorite website in the history of the internet, even more than my own. I built my life around it for the past 6 years. COMC is the best way to buy cards, and has opened a world of cards up to me that I wouldn't have ever gotten otherwise. 

 

There are definitely plusses to modern day collecting. Yet at the same time, I miss the 1990s...not just in cards, but in every day life, but that's part of a greater issue that cannot ever be solved. Things...and more importantly people...have been lost, that cannot be changed.

What I'd really like is a mixture of the two eras in the hobby. I want 90s style cards and card prevalence, but 2000s and 2010s documentation and interaction capacity.

Just to prove that it's actually a thing, and  I hit it- 

But that shouldn't be too much of a surprise, as I tend to go long-form in my posts here more often than not. And I did once write a message board post that when copy and pasted into Word, ran 11 pages...