[giantsfan]

Anyone just miss the old days. By, the old days.. I am talking about 94-99 collecting years. The years without all of the jersey and auto hoopla. The time where getting an insert (where the odds were 1:36 or higher) mattered and actually had a value on it. And when card companies seemed to try more. Like putting cards in cans, cards in tins, holograms, and really hard to get autos and jerseys (97 first year for jerseys i believe) and they seemed to be more creative with their base cards and print them on plastic, metal, and different materials. And when collecting low end brands like Collectors Choice were fun. And when packs were much cheaper for the higher end also. And putting a set together was easier and finding short prints were challenging but yet not too overly hard to get and they werent numbered. Dont get me wrong...I love getting a jersey or auto...but seems like rest of pack doesnt matter as much. I still collect it all...but doesnt have the same feel of those days.
Seems like the base cards to a set now are bland with white backgrounds, inserts come one per pack with little or no value and you can pull a jersey pretty easily and it could only be worth 5 or 6 bucks. What do you guys think and feel? Am I the only one?

[osujeffrey]

You are speaking my language!
It is not that I miss the old days as much as I do not like the whole numbered/parallel/colored versions of the same card.
I love the quality of the modern card, the design, and the artwork. However, I miss base cards meaning something other then being a waste of paper.
Modern Auto/Jrsy cards are the way of the future. And as much as you may dislike the hobby, I can not deny that most are beautiful pieces of mini art.

I know how you feel and figured out a solution that works for me.
Although I will get jealous every time I see a multi colored 5 star unrivaled Auto/Patch posted I am going back to what I love and only collecting vintage 67-85 topps.

I have a binder for each year. And about 500+ commons and 100 semi/stars I need to either purchase/upgrade.
This is affordable for me, allows me to get rookies of the players I grew up watching, and build an amazing vintage set run.
My favorite set every is the 79 Topps football, it is the first year I really remember being a football fan. I am working on a full run of high ends for it too!

I guess the bottom line for me is, I wish I could afford the new stuff, but I also think the old stuff is undervalued, and appreciate collect it more then ever now.

[bostonsports1]

I agree, the problem is the demand for jerseys/autos is so high that card companies would have been idiotic not to supply them. They realized they had a gold mine when they first started making them and people continued to thirst for more, thus companies made it easier and easier to obtain one. Now with the proliferation of jerseys and autos they are so cheap and extremely common that you need a super low numbered one or a superstar to have any value. Because of this I focus only on RCs as I feel like those are the only thing that will hold some value, I also love vintage, and agree with OSU that it is underpriced. I have been thinking of starting a top 50 NFL players RC PC, I know it will cost a ton, but would be awesome, especially the older stuff.

[rgf17]

yeah used to it was cool to get an insert (and some still are mind you) but now they just seem like decoys to make you feel like you were that close to getting something good. and i'll keep it short but something i miss is actually getting a rare card. now they have all the 1/1's and others numbered out of low numbers but do people not realize that card is still mass produced and just given a number because it has a different color on the front? you have sets with /999, /750, /500, /250, /100, /75, /50, /25, /10, /1 with the same picture just a different colored border. thats still almost 3000 of the same card essentially. whats rare about that? anyways, sorry. had to throw it out there.

[aviat0rshades]

I hear ya! I stopped collecting around that time. When I got back into collecting last year, I was overwhelmed with all these cards floating around with jerseys and autos in and on them. I had no idea they were doing that with cards now a days.

[alanch]

I miss those days too. Not that I don't like getting jerseys and autos of the players/teams I collect, but back in "the day" inserts meant something and usually had great designs. I still have a few of the cans that they packaged cards in (1997 Donruss I think for some Packers promotion at Shopko). I absolutely loved getting cards made from metal and plastic.

Back then it seemed like a wider variety of players made it onto cards too. Now every set usually has the same five or six guys on each team in every card set. You rarely see an O-Lineman and don't come across many defensive players either and forget about pulling a backup/special teamer unless they are a rookie.

I know alot of folks don't get excited about pulling a base or insert of a veteran 3rd string QB or a backup DT, but I always loved getting those. I like to have variety and on top of that, they are great for getting TTM Autos of obscure players. 1997 Pacific Philadelphia, 1999 Pacifc, and the early 2000's Topps Total were good sets for those type of cards. I have a 99 Pacific Corey Bradford/Michael Blair (Who?, lol) with both players in Packers uni's. Took me forever to find it back then and it was a huge deal for me when I actually landed it because it is the only shot of Blair in a Packers uni that appears on a card.

Now days jersey and auto cards are so common that they are less valued than base/inserts in some cases. In the old days, you were stoked to get a jersey card no matter who it was because they were so rare. Crazy how things have changed.

[soccerscrub]

Shoot, them were the simple times right there! In all honesty, I can remember being absolutely stoked when I pulled my first serial numbered card. They were so elusive at the time! The hobby is kind of like a self licking ice cream cone---we are doing ourselves in. Everyone wants the auto and/or jersey piece so bad that the hobby has supplied it. It cracks me up to see people all upset about not getting the amount of "hits" they thought they were entitled to in a box. It's funny to me, because I just think about what it was like to only get base cards -period- in a box.

The first auto I ever pulled was in '95???? I bought a retail upper deck box of baseball and the box topper was a Griffey Jr auto!!!!! That's when you almost never saw autos though... I do miss those times.

[420ramsfan]

yeah, as a kid it was all about who you pull, not what kind of card it was. always thrilled to pull a favorite player or team. and the trading with friends or schoolmates was way cool. teams and players were more loyal then too, you could get a favorite player in the same uni for his whole career. i still collect the "old stuff" but i must admit the mem/autos are awesome, but too common to be meaningful.

[superynaldo]

yeah used to it was cool to get an insert (and some still are mind you) but now they just seem like decoys to make you feel like you were that close to getting something good. and i'll keep it short but something i miss is actually getting a rare card. now they have all the 1/1's and others numbered out of low numbers but do people not realize that card is still mass produced and just given a number because it has a different color on the front? you have sets with /999, /750, /500, /250, /100, /75, /50, /25, /10, /1 with the same picture just a different colored border. thats still almost 3000 of the same card essentially. whats rare about that? anyways, sorry. had to throw it out there.

yeah I totally agree on the same card variants... these have to stop... not just because it costs you way more to have virtually the same card, but mainly for me its near impossible to keep up with what I have and don't...

[sconnienation3]

The best part is you can now find a lot of those old cool inserts on the cheap!