It comes down to this. Can one make a living or get rich from the hobby. In
which case I'd say, please, get out of the hobby.
Ron A

"Dave C." wrote in message
news:V6T3c.2878$C51.36165@attbi_s52...
From the looks of this ng, is the hobby suffering an agonizing death?
Anyone
care to offer suggestions?

As I've predicted before, card collecting cannot survive the fact that
cards
become less and less identifiable with each new set and insert subset. The
massive offering of cards is drowning in its own anonymity. It defies the
rules of collectibility. You can't offer 200 different cards of Jason
Giambi
each year and expect anyone to care about any single one of them. Set
collectors have no steady medium by which they can "build" most of the
sets
available, other than buying massive box quanitities all at once. You
think
you have a nice card? No one cares because by the time others can learn
what
it is, it is old news. True collectibles maintain their interest for
years.
How many cards in the last 10 years have held our interest for an extended
period? Very few.

When cards within a single set became overproduced in the late 1980's, the
shift was to sets of smaller production runs. That worked for a while. But
now the problem has become too many sets, too many parallels, too many
inserts, too much game-used. In order to try to create identity, the whole
concept has become one giant gimmick-fest. There are so many gimmicks
(clever subset set naming, fancy printing techniques, etc.) that it's an
embarassment to participate without feeling like some kind of sucker.

There needs to be a new structure within the hobby. One manufacturer needs
to say enough! and have the guts and self-discipline to print only THREE
sets per year:

1) An 750-card set similar to the pre-1995 Topps sets. The set should
focus
on the 25-man roster players, and have very few "special" cards. The cards
should be released in 3 series, and late enough to limit the number of
traded/freeAgent players showing up on the wrong team. Series 1 in
February,
Series 2 in April, Series 3 in July. Each series can feature ONE unique
novelty insert set featuring all-star caliber players: stickers, booklets,
coins, etc. You should be able to buy a pack of 10 for one dollar. This
set
should be generously produced. The target audience would be the
nostalgia/vintage crowd, the younger crowd, and the parents who want to
appease their kids with cards at a reasonable price. I know that this
sounds
like sacrilege, but these cards would have NO INTENDED INVESTMENT VALUE.

2) One super-premium set featuring the top few players on each team (about
100 cards), plus the top dozen or so rookie prospects. Extremely limited
one-of-a-kind inserts. Limited edition, expensive. One pack of 4 for $5.
Inserts seeded as the 4th card in 1 pack out of 100. Target audience: the
most serious collectors and investors.

3) A moderate-premium "season review" set of about 450 cards, including
the
starting players and new/rookie players that emerged during the season. It
should include a limited insert set of the top two dozen players and the
top
5 rookie/emerging stars from the current season. Released in September,
prior to the playoffs. One pack of 10 cards for $3. Inserts seeded as the
10th card in 1 pack out of 10. Complete base factory set available for
purchase in November (for Christmas sales season) at a significantly
higher
per unit cost (to maintain motivation for set-building at the lower
per-unit
cost).

Important: Resist the tempation to produce too much, and too early. At
first, this will cost the manufacturer market share, which will make them
nervous. But once established, it will become the manufacturer of
identity,
which is the only thing that will rescue the hobby. With this standard,
across the 3 sets the top stars would have at most 5 different cards
(exluding the "novelty"inserts") of varying scarcity, from very common to
extremely rare.

The ultimate objective for the manufacturer would be that essentially
EVERY
collector would have one or more of these three sets in their collection,
regardless of whether or not they also collected any of the dozens of
other
sets/manufacturers on the market.