The story itself is inaccurate for many reasons — for example, the Internet’s presence isn’t addressed fully. Plenty of cardboard — old and new — gets sold online.

This story was dead-on accurate and extremely sad to me.

Most of the dealers that still work the shows are morons and trailer park trash.

The fascination and growth of the card-collecting hobby came about from many people in the late 70′s and early 80′s revisiting their youth and buying cards that they had become familiar with in the 50′s and 60′s. It snowballed to where it became more than “collecting” and was fueled by the same kind of opportunistic approaches that appeared for dot.com stocks in the late 90′s….Greed, speculation and the “greater fool” theory. There also were a variety of more visible “gurus” and publicatons promoting “rookie cards”, “error cards” and focusing on the financial rewards rather than the true collecting aspect.

The TV piece was pretty much on the money with respect to what it was tracking….namely the baseball card collecting “craze” of the 80′s and early 90′s…which is now DEAD.

Yes, there may be innovations and neat products, and if they are priced so that kids and young adults can buy them and enjoy them for what they are (souvenirs) rather than really believing that they will ever be worth more than they paid (99% will be worth MUCH less) then all is good. However, when I hear the Panini toutman pushing 8000% increase in the value of a Jeremy Lin card….sounds like the pump and dump of a penny stock boiler shop. Terrible to try and lure in people with that line.

kids can’t afford high dollar prices. They are more interested in games, girls, clothes, music, ect… Most people I know in today’s society are not thrilled about cards. None of my friends collect cards. I collect, because it was my passion growing up in the 90′s. I stopped off & on throughout the years. I’ve seen a whole city die… there were tons of baseball shops in Santa Barbara, Ca in the early 90′s. Lots of competition. Lots of cardshows… today, there is on standing cardshop & the owner has thrown in the towel & is trying to sale, only problem, nobody wants to buy.. because it is hard to make money in a card shop.

I have lived in San Diego now. I’ve seen a few card shops go under. When I did call them or walk into their store.. they have no wax.. or hardly anything new. Even big shops, like Centre, in down town San Diego has limited wax & millions of old cards that nobody wants… you can hardly walk down the only isle, because it is filled with boxes and/or collectibles… that nobody wants to pay for.

Most collectors that I’ve talked to online or at my favorite LCS in Chula Vista, named PJ’s Sports Cards, want to buy/trade for cards & flip them for profit. It is very hard for small collectors to make a profit.

The turn around money is just not there, unless you open up tons of cases & are a huge dealer or powerseller on ebay… Why do I spend $2,000 on a case of 6-10 boxes of cards, that hold a small amount of cards… is it to get a chance of owning an autograph card of my favorite player? yes. I buy wax for the thrill. I buy it, even though I know I should not spen my hard earned money on cardboard… at least not that much. My wife gets mad at me for wasting my money. But I do it for the hobby, for the love of the game.

I collect only basketball, because I can not afford everything. Packs of cards have sky rocketed over the years.

Take a look at SPX basketball… packs were $4-8 in 2006-07 (before they dropped), then in 2008-09, they were $18-25 a pack.. that is a huge jump in price. Why did they jump? it is because Upper Deck was greedy… they wanted every penny they can squeeze out of us collectors… they throw in, that you get a GU or auto in every pack, that is why the price jumped… so what! GU come a dime a dozen now.. they are as common as an insert in the early 90′s, if not more.. yes, all those autos can be expensive, but that is part of the competition between manufactures of releasing good card products… everybody wants the autos!!

With NBA only having one manufacturer of NBA cards….. card collecting lost competition & the NBA created a MONOPOLY…. it made a lot of collectors stop collecting or go back to collecting older cards.. looking for those rare inserts and/or autos..

Go to your local elementary, junior high, or high school… even colleges… ask those kids if they know what a baseball card is (any sport)… or ask how many of them collect cards? I bet if you go to Santa Barbara, Ca… the answer you will get is NOBODY.. maybe a small handful of college students, but they are not super collectors…

How much does an average collector spend every month? Where do they spend it? More likely, they buy on ebay. Tons of collectors today are overseas, for basketball, especially asia. If you look back to the early 90′s or before… overseas collecting was none, or very limited… now it’s huge… I think that is what is saving the card industry today… all those overseas collectors with big money, spending like crazy!!

Card manufacturers are doing very limited advertisement, except online, throughout the sports card forums… I don’t think I have every seen an advertisement online… very little in sports magazines if any at all… go to a sports game, ya, you might get a free card or pack of cards… but those usually get given away or tossed for those non collectors…

collecting will never totally die, but the type of new products being released will change over the years… card companies are trying to limit certain players autos, to make them harder to obtain…. just to try to keep value… or they will over produce them, like Kobe… you can get his auto for under a $100, because Panini releases a few hundred if not more in every product.

STICKER AUTOS KILLED PEOPLE WANTING TO BUY WAX… why spend tons of money to open up a pack or box of cards, when I can log onto ebay & get the exact cards I want for a fraction of the price… ??