Guess I never should have made that zippy hand-flicker movie using my 30 or so ‘62 Mantles.
It is five o’clock in the afternoon and “Mr. Mint” is sitting at his desk in his office in Mahwah, N.J., looking longingly at the telephone.
“I need this phone to ring,” he says. “I need to hear from somebody — anybody — with a treasure trove in their attic. It’s been too long. I need one more big find!”
...In recent years, however, Rosen has seen his sales decline to around $2 million annually because of what he says are the changing times. “Because of the Internet, eBay and all that, people stopped coming to card shows — which is where I did most of my business,” he said. “Real collectors like to touch and feel the cards. You’d see 200-300 dealers at shows. I used to do 45 shows a year. Now I’m down to five. At the same time, it became progressive — the hobby publications all dried up because the show promoters who all supported them with their ads, went out of business and the dealers now all do their advertising on eBay.”
Leaving Rosen as pretty much the last “in-person” baseball card dealer — the guy who will still go anywhere with his briefcase full of cash — to buy cards.
“I’m fortunate in that, because I took out all those ‘million dollar dealer’ ads in the hobby publications every week, people still know me,” Rosen said. “I just don’t get the volume of calls I used to get.”
...“If you’ve got old cards, I want them,” he said, “but please no more Cal Ripkens! If I see more Cal Ripken rookie cards I’m gonna throw up.”
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1. dejarouehg Posted: April 22, 2012 at 10:30 AM (#4112911)Looked at cards at Modells yesterday to buy for my son....just had no appeal.
Since then, I decided to only collect things that matter to me.
I bought a box of the 2011 Topps set because I thought the set was beautiful and the chase cards were fun. I don't think I will make anything off them, but I like having them around.
I'm a nickle-n'-dimer who collects sporadically. To try and keep the fun/surprise element I like bidding (ebay) on lots and unopened packs/boxes. The kinds of unopened stuff where you'd find Don Newcombe cards would be way out of my price-range, though.
I am a pretty nostalgic guy when it comes to baseball and my youth, and my cards tend to be a problem for me. On the one hand, I love going through my 1969 cards in the binder and having all of the memories swarm over me. On the other hand, what I really need to do is take them out of the ####### binder, sort them by teams, make starting lineups within each team, sort out all the cool Latin names, find all the guys with over 2000 hits, etc.
I don't do this because of some ridiculous notion that the cards are "valuable" and should not "played" with. What actually drew me to baseball cards in the first place was that they were a fun toy, on the one hand, and also a tool for understanding the game. I watched or listened to games with my cards, and learned the teams that way. Once they became "valuable", I stopped "playing" with them, and started putting them in binders. Once the dreams of riches died out (they are worth thousands of dollars, which is not life-changing, and it would take a bit of time and effort to sell them).
My son is 10, and I have bought some sets in recent years for him. I miss the days when Topps (or whoever) would have a set where nearly everyone (about 25 guys per team) would get one card (and only one card). We sort his cards by team, but I will not allow him to put them in a binder.
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