What happened to Baseball cards?

[giant squid]

I was at an amazing town wide garage sale and thought i stumbled upon a brick of gold, only to find that the brick was more like a stick stumbled upon in the forest. An unopened box of 1989 fleer baseball cards, and for a meer $12. I thought if i could find at least one or two rookie cards in the box, it would pay for itself, or even better, the famous cal ripken card with the f**k face written on the end of the bat.

I take it home and open each wax packet feeling very nostalgic, and ultimately as i check the Beckett's pricing book feel much more like an incompetant idiot.

I remember a guy from my youth who invested in what would have seemingly been the gateway to his financial freedom by filling his basement with pallets full of boxes of cards, and now you virtually can't even find a card shop in the phone book.

Have the role playing magic cards taken over a favorite pastime?

What happened?

[mister crabs]

the problem is that the only cards worth money are the hot rookies and they are only worth money til they suck. And the stupid card companies took a good idea like insert cards and produced it to death by making the packs 80 percent inserts and having mutiple levels of base sets forcing people to buy 10x as many packs to complete a set. So now people just rip open packs looking for jersey cards and memorabilia cards they can put on ebay. Collecting cards was killed by the very people who depend on it for a livelihood. morons.

[mister crabs]

I'm not bitter or anything tho....LMAO

[R-3]

The reason behind cards no being worth anything anymore is that the market is flooded with them. My dad used to tell me stories of using Mickey Mantles rookie card as a noise maker for a bicycle wheel. Not many people kept cards like that. Especially in the pre-depression era. You kept only what you couldnt live without. Later Ryan

[andy]

Yup. Supply and demand, with the balance blown out by speculators.