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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28108 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 18, 2023

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Another example from my youth: Baseball Cards were something kids were supposed to care about. My dad bought me baseball cards and sort of informed me that little boys were supposed to like them. But whenever I actually played with them, he’d yell at me for ruining their collector value. I wasn’t allowed to flip them, shuffle them, make fake lineups, trade them: they were worth something. Because from the time my dad was a kid, his generation had made them collectable, made them valuable. As a result, I have no connection with baseball cards, really. I’m aware they’re collectibles, but I have no emotional attachment to them the way his generation did. The capitalist urge to create something special and market it, to make "collectibles," erodes and destroys the human meaning behind those collectibles.

I love the irony that baseball cards from your father's era are valuable because kids played with them (and ruined them) and Moms threw out the collection later, while baseball cards from my era are still totally worthless because everyone from my childhood saved them in archival quality protetive materials (I still remember kids arguing about the merits of various cardboard boxes and plastic pockets sheets) for long term storage. All of our 1989 Ken Griffey Jr Upper Deck #1 were going to be worth a fortune because they were perfectly preserved.

Now I think sports collecting is driven by gamblers hoping to find ultra rare lottery prize like chase cards.

I love the irony that baseball cards from your father's era are valuable because kids played with them (and ruined them) and Moms threw out the collection later, while baseball cards from my era are still totally worthless because everyone from my childhood saved them in archival quality protetive materials (I still remember kids arguing about the merits of various cardboard boxes and plastic pockets sheets) for long term storage. All of our 1989 Ken Griffey Jr Upper Deck #1 were going to be worth a fortune because they were perfectly preserved.

They are worthless because also too many were made and there is no community around them. MTG and Pokémon have a large community/fandom and utility in that they can be played. Powerful, rare cards are valuable for their in-game utility. baseball cards and comic books are static things with a much smaller community and no utility.

I love the irony that baseball cards from your father's era are valuable because kids played with them (and ruined them) and Moms threw out the collection later, while baseball cards from my era are still totally worthless because everyone from my childhood saved them in archival quality protetive materials (I still remember kids arguing about the merits of various cardboard boxes and plastic pockets sheets) for long term storage.

The exact same thing happened to comic books, of course. At least that has the advantage of it not being too expensive to read old (but-not-too-old) series.

Part of this is that anything sold intended to be a collectors item is generally made in too large quantities to be really rare. Think of that Beanie Baby divorce photo from 1999. On the other hand, I've heard that those originals are actually starting to trend up in value, so who knows.

I try not to collect things without specific uses, but I appreciate that others enjoy doing so. Sometimes it's actually valuable to historians.

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