“The Happy Highways Where I Went”

“That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.”

– A.E. Housman

Nostalgia is a strange beast!

An affliction usually affecting us ‘older’ folk, nostalgia is something that just creeps up on us. We never truly see it coming until it’s there, right in front of us, when all of a sudden we find ourselves transported back to past times! Reliving those ‘happier’ moments of our youth that we recollect with a wistful fondness, a smile etched onto our faces as we remember what it’s like to gaze at things with a child’s eyes once again!

It doesn’t necessarily mean that things were better ‘back in the day’, but nostalgia often fools us into thinking that they were. Our younger lives weren’t tempered with the knowledge and experience that we have as adults – the cynicism and pessimism that invade our lives today simply weren’t there as children, so we looked at the world and experienced it completely differently than the way we do now. And THIS is what nostalgia taps into!

Columnist and editor Doug Larson described nostalgia, rather aptly, as “a file that removes the rough edges from the good old days”.

Growing up in the 80’s in the UK I learned to worship ALL things American! I lived my life stuck to the TV screen, absorbing anything that the US could throw at me – The A-Team, Knight Rider, Airwolf, even Streethawk goddamnit!! Great comedies like M.A.S.H, Cheers and The Cosby Show! Later came a steady influx of US movies to keep me going through my late teens and into my student years! I completely fell in love with America and its culture!

It was only natural that a love of US Sports would grow organically from this! And while this was true to up to a point, it was only really the NBA that grabbed my attention at the time!

I remember watching highlights of the NBA Finals in the latter part of the 80’s, loving the hard, work man-like graft of the Celtics over the flashier ‘Showtime’ ball played by the Lakers!  I remember booing at the brutish behaviour of the Pistons! I also remember being pretty nonplussed by the early exploits of a pair from Chicago by the names of Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. “What’s the big deal about these guys?” I recall thinking to myself… Neither of them could hold a torch to Larry Bird! “What are they ever going to achieve with their careers??”.

I was young!!! Gimme a break!!!

But this is what nostalgia is all about for me!

Baseball didn’t come along for another decade! I moved away from Basketball as I got older and started to appreciate what the MLB had to offer. Over the years I steadily immersed myself in Baseball folklore and history. Thanks to the exemplary documentary making skills of Ken Burns I started to appreciate where Baseball came from and why it means so much to the American people, why it’s so ingrained in American culture!

Unfortunately, the one thing that all this reading and documentary watching couldn’t do  was give me a sense of context! For instance, I could never truly appreciate what it was like being a Dodgers fan and seeing a creaking Kirk Gibson hit the walk-off home run off Dennis Eckersley to win Game 1 of the 1988 World Series. I could never truly appreciate being a Red Sox fan and seeing that slow roller pass between Bill Buckner’s legs, allowing Ray Knight to score the winning run for the Mets in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series!

Sadly this ‘lack of context’ has also spilled over into my collecting!

I’ve written in the past about the “geographical twist of fate” that had me born thousands of miles away from the home of the sport and Hobby that I love so much today! As a result I don’t have any real collecting stories from my youth. It’s difficult for me to look back on Baseball card collecting with a sense of nostalgia as I wasn’t around to experience it when I was a child!

So now I have to relive these times by lapping up the writings, stories and experiences of other collectors! One such story came to my attention over the weekend by The Idaho Statesman sports columnist, Brian Murphy.

Brian’s piece looks at the evolving and changing nature of Baseball card collecting, comparing  the Hobby as it is today with the one he remembers as a young boy. For me it encapsulates the whole notion of Baseball card nostalgia and the nostalgia of collecting!

Brian doesn’t go out of his way to preach about a Hobby ‘gone bad’, but merely points out that the Hobby has changed. But it’s interesting to see through his eyes just how it has changed and what his thoughts on this are.

Please give it a read as it’s a great piece that may well resonate with a number of you who have collected Baseball cards in the past and continue to do so today.

Baseball cards’ value not all about the money

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I feel that Baseball card collectors are often amongst the worst affected by the misty-eyed machinations of nostalgia. As we collect the cards that are produced today I always get a strong impression that there’s a constant need amongst certain collectors to hanker back to those sets of yesteryear.

You only have to look at the phenomenal success of Topps Heritage, alongside numerous other retro-themed releases, to know that there’s a market out there for those who long to return to the cards of their youth.

Maybe it’s because collectors have become worn down and cynical about the cards that are produced nowadays, or maybe it’s because there’s a genuine desire to grab hold of those wispy tendrils of memory that take us back to a time when collecting Baseball cards seemed to be (on the surface at least) a much simpler and more straightforward process!

You see folks, that’s what nostalgia will do to you!

But maybe a short trip down Houseman’s “happy highways”, every once in awhile, never actually does anyone any harm? Although it’s probably worth remembering that, as with most things that now now reside in the past, you can never truly go back and recapture what once was great.

‘The Phantom Menace’ anyone??? I rest my case!

(Re)Introducing Panini

For a sports fan growing up in the UK in the late 70’s and early 80’s Panini Football stickers were pretty much an essential part of our young collecting lives.

Obviously I’m talking about our Football, ‘The Beautiful Game’, the sport our American cousins have taken to calling Soccer so as not to confuse matters with events that occur on or around the Gridiron!!

Panini continued to make sports stickers long after my interest in them diminished and as a company they pretty much fell off my radar. Until recent years that is, when I picked up on the fact that Panini America had gained exclusive rights to produce licensed NBA cards for the global collecting market!

Panini America?!?! Where the hell did they come from?? I remember thinking at the time that Panini should be just about those small footie stickers of my youth! Since when did Basketball cards enter the equation?

Since that time Panini has grown in strength and stature, steadily expanding its sports card portfolio and broadening it’s brand in the Hobby! And it was with a certain amount of fondness that I’ve just read this article in D Magazine which looks at the Panini America of today as well as paying lip-service (and re-introducing me) to the Panini that I remember from my childhood, the one that played such an important role in my early collecting experiences!

I can honestly say that if it wasn’t for those football stickers of my youth, I doubt I’d have anywhere near the collecting bug that I have today!

Hold on though!! On second thoughts – Damn you Panini!! You’ve got a lot to answer for!!!

Go and have a read! And try not to be too disturbed by the look on Tracy Hackler’s face in that picture!! He looks like he’s enjoying himself far too much 🙂

In Appreciation Of… Clayton Kershaw

Back in October last year I started writing a series of regular posts that were designed to take a look at some of those undervalued or under-appreciated players that I felt didn’t get the Hobby love they deserved.

It’s been a little too long since my last foray into this area so I decided to pick it up again, starting with one of the most exciting pitchers in the Hobby today – Dodgers ace, Clayton Kershaw!

I imagine that Kershaw has a pretty huge following in LA, but I don’t get the impression this stretches to the rest of the Hobby. That said, you often see his cards fetching some tidy sums over on eBay so who knows? I could well be making the wrong call on this one!

Clayton Kershaw was drafted 7th overall in the 1st round of the 2006 draft! A Dodger throughout his career so far he worked his way up through the LA farm system, making his MLB debut in 2008, when he spent a whole year as the youngest player in the majors!

Despite putting up incredible numbers in High School and in the Minor Leagues, Kershaw finished his rookie season with a 5-5 record, with a 4.26 ERA in 22 games (21 starts). He continued to work on, and improve, his craft over the next two seasons, something which paid off in 2011 when he won the pitching Triple Crown, compiling a 21-5 record with a 2.28 ERA, a 0.97 WHIP and 248 Ks. He won his first Cy Young that season and has already started drawing comparisons to another Dodgers southpaw you might have heard of – Sandy Koufax.

As of this writing Kershaw is 24 years of age! The sky’s the limit and I’m almost tempted to ditch my Cardinals and become a Dodgers fan, just to follow this guy!!

Only almost…

Outside of Baseball, Kershaw, along with his wife and childhood sweetheart Ellen, is actively involved in volunteer work. Together they launched ‘Kershaw’s Challenge’ and wrote the book Arise in order to help raise money to build an orphanage in Zambia. In 2012, he was honoured with the ‘Roberto Clemente Award’, the highest humanitarian honour bestowed by Major League Baseball!

I guess I could always start up a Clayton Kershaw PC. I’ll have to ask the Night Owl his advice as he’s got over 260 different Kershaw cards in his own collection!!

Given all that he’s achieved on and off the field in his short career so far, isn’t it time to start giving this young pitcher some Hobby appreciation?

I think so!

MLB Extends Topps’ Exclusive Baseball Card License to 2020

Earlier this evening news broke from the Sports Card Industry Summit in Las Vegas that Topps ‘ exclusive licensing agreement with Major League Baseball had been renewed until 2020.

In a prepared statement Howard Smith, MLB Senior VP Licensing, said –

“Since making Topps our exclusive baseball card licensee, they have continually validated that decision by bringing clarity to the marketplace and reinvigorating the hobby, especially among young people. Generations of baseball fans have grown more attached to the game through collecting baseball cards, and Topps is continually coming up with new and creative ways to reach the next generation.”

So there you go!!

As the news steadily breaks over the internet and message boards/forums buzz with opinions of all shapes and sizes, I’ve been pondering myself as to what this might mean for the short-term and long-term status of our Hobby!

And truth be told, I haven’t really come up with anything ground-breaking yet!

I have to confess that my initial feelings were of immense disappointment. Not because it means that Topps will be the sole provider of licensed Baseball cards for the next several years, but because other companies weren’t given a fair crack of the whip.

Panini have produced two of the best Baseball card sets of the last 12 months in Cooperstown Collection and National Treasures, so it makes me incredibly sad to consider that they won’t be getting a chance to produce cards under an official MLB license! The potential excitement at seeing a new creative team let loose on MLB licensed cards has now been diluted down to a series of ‘what-if’ scenarios!

Further news has since broken from the Upper Deck camp that they have reached an agreement with the MLBPA to produce Baseball card products. You can read all about this deal here through Beckett Media. Interesting stuff!!

So where does this leave us now with Topps?? Bear in mind that we were already three years into an exclusive deal, which has now been extended by a further seven years! SEVEN YEARS!!! That’s an incredible amount of time. I’m curious as to how much Topps had to pay out to secure a deal for that length of time, and exactly how much extra Topps had to pay to secure their exclusivity!

Earlier, on Twitter, I spoke with Chris Olds of Beckett Media who confirmed that the seven years is around double the standard term for this type of deal, and his thoughts were that it was more than likely for longer-term planning and stability!

Update

This stance has since been confirmed by Mark Sapir at Topps , and you can read more about this over at Cardboard Connection. What’s interesting is that Sapir points out that Topps has so far failed to entice more kids back to collecting, as they originally set out to to back in 2010 when the exclusive licence first started, but if this is one of their ongoing business strategies then this could be great news for the Hobby and the future! 

End of Update

I’m not going to use this as a springboard for having a go at Topps. If you want to question someone, how about we start pointing our collective Hobby fingers at MLB and try to fathom their motives in all this. Everything Topps has done is for their own benefit as a business! As a company there are a lot of things that they do well, along with an awful lot of things that they don’t do so well.

They continue to release a whole bunch of great looking card sets (although they try a little too hard sometimes with cramming in more and more content each year), but they have well documented problems with their customer service and their redemption program!

This deal could signal a crossroads for modern Baseball cards! Topps has the potential to either lift the Hobby to greater heights, or to maintain the status quo over the next few years, giving collectors a lengthy period to mull over how things might have been if there had been other players in the market!

Whatever happens from now on, whether you love the idea or hate it, officially licensed Baseball cards are once again the property of Topps, to do with what they will!

Personally I think there’s room for at least one more licensed manufacturer, no matter who it might be! Shame we won’t be getting the chance to see what someone else can bring to the table!

Collecting Prospects – Hit of Miss?

Topps’ inclusion of Prospect cards in their Bowman branded products over the last several years has added a whole new dimension to player collecting!

Although not true Rookie cards, Topps have placed the ‘1st Bowman Card’ stamp somewhere on each card to let us all know exactly what we’re getting, and in a lot of instances collectors are taking to these Prospect cards as a player’s first official Baseball card release, overshadowing their ‘true’ Rookie card which is released after a player makes their MLB debut.

On a personal level I don’t have anything against Prospect cards, although I do wish they were assigned to their own product rather than being mixed into the Bowman products as an insert. I just feel that it makes things a lot neater that way 🙂

But given the emerging popularity and status of the Prospect card over a players Rookie card, the notion of collecting Prospects has intrigued me more and more over the last couple of years.

The thing is… Where do you start? Do you try and collect as many prospect cards as possible? Do you go for a selection of players to concentrate on, possibly from your favourite team(s)? Do you choose one particular player and try and collect all the variations and parallels that exist for said player?

And that’s before we even start looking at the autographed parallels, which are usually valued infinitely higher than their standard, non-autographed counterparts!!

There are easily over 200 Prospect cards released across the Bowman brands each year and it’s worth bearing in mind that only a limited number of these will go on to have successful MLB careers. Even the promise of a highly touted Prospect does not always guarantee that college or Minor League success will carry over into success in the Big Leagues.

I came across this article by Tim McCullough, in a St Louis Cardinals community forum, Viva El Birdos, earlier this morning and it’s well worth a read as it uses a couple of recent  player examples to highlight the need to keep things in perspective when setting expectations for Baseball Prospects. It a really short piece and Tim makes some good points.

What Makes a Prospect Successful?

So this prompted me to don my research hat and do some more digging around to see just how successful Prospects are when they reach the Majors, and to see if this success might have an effect on the way that collectors chase after Prospect cards.

Well, it didn’t take me too long to find the following article written by Scott McKinney back in February 2011. Scott, a resident of NYC, is a columnist for Beyond the Box Score and a regular contributor to the Royals Review. You can also find him on Twitter @ScottMcKinney1

In his article Success and Failure Rates of Top MLB Prospects Scott recognises that the failure of top Prospects is extremely commonplace and looks at historical precedent to ascertain what can be expected from “various kinds of highly regarded prospects”. He attempts to answer his question by looking at the Top 100 Prospects from previous years and looked at how well they performed in the Majors, rating by rank, position, time period and organization. For his population sample Scott used the lists published by Baseball America for the Top 100 Prospects from 1990 to 2003, and looks at each player’s Wins Above Replacement (WAR) rating to gauge how ‘successful’ a player has been.

Now, I can’t even begin to fathom the amount of work that Scott put into this, and I feel like a bit of a cheat for piggy-backing all the detailed and meticulous research that he did, but his findings make for some really interesting and surprising reading. Please click on the link to the article itself to explore Scott’s methodology further, but he’s a quick summary of his conclusions…

• About 70% of Baseball America top 100 prospects fail
• Position player prospects succeed much more often than pitching prospects
• About 60% of position players ranked in Baseball America’s top 20 succeed in the majors
• About 40% of pitchers ranked in the top 20 succeed in the majors
• About 30% of position players ranked 21-100 succeed in the majors (with the success rate declining over that ranking range from about 36% to about 25%)
• About 20% of pitchers ranked 21-100 succeed in the majors (with the success rate declining over that ranking range from about 22% to about 15%)
• The success rate of prospects (both position player and pitchers) is nearly flat and relatively undifferentiated for players ranked 41-100, and especially those ranked 61-100.
• Corner infield prospects and catchers are the most likely to succeed in the majors, but outfielders, third basemen and shortstops are the most likely to become stars. Second basemen and pitchers are the least likely prospects to succeed in the majors or to become stars
• Prospect success rates have not improved much over time and there is little data to support the contention that prospects are more likely to succeed now than they have in the past

As with most statistical analysis these findings should be looked at with several caveats in mind, as Scott himself points out in his article. For instance, Scott has used a specific criteria for what he considers to be a ‘success’, a ‘failure’ or a ‘bust’, and this may well be open to interpretation when compiling a case-study like this.

That said, the conclusions that he arrived at are pretty amazing, and you can make of them what you will!!

So, how do these findings help us in determining whether it’s worthwhile collecting Prospects or not? I guess if you look at things on the surface your gut reaction might be ‘why bother?’.

Over here in the UK the majority of us have no real ties to college players or Minor League Baseball. I’ve mentioned in previous posts that it isn’t usually until a player begins his MLB career that he even appears on the radar at all. Naturally there are exceptions to this rule, with names like Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper standing out as recent examples of pre-MLB hype transferring over into MLB success. However for someone in the US there might be several different reasons that a collector might follow a certain specific prospect – for instance, they might have gone to the same high school/college; they might come from the same home town; they might play for their nearby Minor League team, and so on…

There’s also another aspect to Prospect collecting that I’ve not even touched on yet, and that’s the financial element! Prospecting in Prospect cards can quite a lucrative business, whether you’re in it for the short term by buying a shed-load of new product and ‘flipping’ the current ‘hot’ Prospects to invest in more boxes/cases or to build your own PC, or whether you buy up lots of cheaper Prospect cards and store them away in the hope that they will eventually go on to become major stars. All it takes is for a player to have one break out season and the value of his cards can rocket, turning a once humble collection into a relative gold mine!

For example, over three years ago scouts were predicting that a 6’2″, 190lbs  17-year old out of Millville High School, NJ, had the skills to become the Angels’ CF of the future when he was drafted with the 25th pick in the first round of the 2009 amateur draft, but none could have anticipated that, in 2012, Mike Trout would go on to have one of the best Rookie seasons in Baseball history! And I can imagine that there are some collectors out there that are sitting on his 2009 Bowman Chrome Draft Prospect card, giggling inanely to themselves right now… That’s if they haven’t sold it already for a quick buck!

But perhaps there’s a much more simpler aspect to collecting Prospect cards – fun! Surely there’s a great feeling of satisfaction of picking out one or two Prospects and simply following their career through Baseball cards, irrespective of whether they go on to have great success or not.

I suppose what it all boils down to is why you’d want to collect Prospects in the first place and what you would want to get out of it! If it’s for the quick turnaround then it’s worth bearing in mind that you can spend an awful amount of money and end up with no return whatsoever on your investment if you don’t get the big ‘hit’ or ‘hits’. However if you’re collecting with a long-term strategy in mind then just be mindful of Scott’s figures and embrace the fact that the majority of Prospects will never have a successful MLB career.

So from a personal point of view, would I ever collect Prospects to make money from it? Hell no!! Too much risk outweighs any kind of potential reward!

But if you eye up a top Prospect as a player you might want to consider collecting, as you may have decided that his potential to succeed is higher than most, then go for it. But bear in mind that the chances are he’s already been spotted by other collectors and you’ll be paying a premium for his cards even at this early stage in his career!

I recently pulled a Corey Seager autographed Prospect card from a box of 2012 Bowman Draft! A very nice card of a popular 2012 first round draft pick! I may even consider picking up a few more Seager cards over the coming months… because, you never know do you?

He just might be the one!!

So, are there any other Prospect collectors out there? If there are I’d love to hear from you and get your thoughts on how you approach Prospect collecting and what you get out of it!

Take care, Andy

2013 Topps MLB Opening Day Preview

Whoops…

Apologies but this one completely slipped under my radar. I think it’s been out for a good few weeks now but I’ve only just chanced upon it!

I always get the impression that Topps MLB Opening Day is one of those releases that a lot of collectors tend to let slide by. It’s a low price point, scaled back copy of the main 2013 Topps set, with an ‘Opening Day’ logo slapped onto the front of the card.

Due to it’s lower price per pack you don’t get as much content in terms of flashy inserts (at least not as much as other sets, anyways) but Topps does make the effort to include autographs in the product, which is a nice touch, particularly when they include David Wright and Will Middlebrooks alongside several team mascots!! Fredbird of the St Louis Cardinals is already on my radar!!

Click here to see the MLB Opening Day sell sheet for next year!

For Better Or For Worse…

Yesterday I was mulling over my next blog post and I was considering writing a short piece on the exclusive deal that Topps has with Major League Baseball and its effect on The Hobby.

For those of you who didn’t know (because you’ve probably been living under a rock, or something), back in August of 2009 MLB announced an exclusive licensing arrangement with The Topps Company in an effort to “streamline and stimulate the trading-card market”.

The exclusive deal went into effect on 1st January 2010 and is due to end (at least at the time of this writing) on 1st January 2014. According to their contract with MLB, Topps is allowed to produce up to 17 different Major League releases, with products retailing for under $1/pack (Opening Day, Attax, and Stickers) being exempt. They are also obligated to produce two Minor League products.

At the time when this news broke I wasn’t collecting, but I still closely followed The Hobby and a revelation like this was hard to miss. I remember thinking, along with pretty much everyone else, that giving a deal like this to Topps could only be a bad thing for Baseball card collectors, most likely resulting in a drop in standards and quality of the card products.

Now, over three years on from the original announcement, the dust has had plenty of time to settle and perhaps we can now re-examine where things stand for Baseball card collectors and their relationship with Topps and their products.

But… rather than me sprouting off some ill-educated drivel I thought I’d revisit the thoughts of Chris Harris over at his blog Stale Gum who wrote a piece called ‘Some thoughts on the Topps/MLB license deal’ back when the original news broke.

In his article Chris makes several solid points in favour of the deal, pointing out that Topps had been given a unique opportunity to re-invent and restructure the Baseball card market for the better.

I thought it would be fun to revisit the points that Chris made three years ago, to see where things stand today… So here goes…

1. Fewer brands — Four years ago when there were four licensees, The Hobby was drowning in a sea of 89 different baseball card releases. So MLB and the PA did what was best for The Hobby by 1) letting Fleer die; 2) kicking Donruss out; and 3) limiting the two remaining card companies to 20 — later lowered to 17 — releases each.

Four years later, and 34 brands is still too much; and to be honest, Topps and Upper Deck just aren’t up to producing that many quality products. If you don’t believe me, just take a look at some of the stinkers Topps and Upper Deck have released in recent years: UDx, Documentary, Moments & Milestones, and Stadium Club — products whose sole reason for being, it seemed, was to fill out their respective company’s 17-brand quota.

— I guess that this was pretty much a given really. Collectors had been criticizing card companies for years for the amount of product that they were producing, most of which was often dubious in terms of quality and content. The exclusive license for Topps did exactly what MLB intended in terms of streamlining The Hobby market, although whether the market was stimulated or not is possibly still open to debate

2. The end of the gimmick card — With exclusivity, the days of the gimmick card should be over. There is no need for Topps to print cards of squirrels, print cards upside down, or stealth short-prints that compromise the integrity of the base set.

2012 Topps Series 1 Skip Schumaker ‘Rally Squirrel’ SP

— Mmmm… OK then Topps… Explain this one away. The more things change the more, I guess, they stay the same. Who’d have thought that Chris’ prophetic words of three years ago would see the release of another Topps card with a squirrel on. And it was bloody short-printed. And it still fetches between $45 and $60 on eBay!!! SP cards are here to stay people and, love ’em or hate ’em, form the backbone of several Topps Baseball sets each year, particularly the retro themed sets like Heritage and Allen & Ginter, alongside the main Topps base set (although they tend to be variants in the main Topps set rather than rarer base cards). If done carefully, and in moderation, I firmly believe that SP cards have their place in The Hobby and can provide a welcome challenge for set builders

3. Reinventing Bowman — The last couple of years, Bowman Baseball has been a brand that has lost its way. Yes, the “ROOKIE CARD” rules that went into effect in 2006 have taken a bite out of Bowman, but much of the decline of Bowman has been self-inflicted. This is a golden opportunity to reinvent Bowman. Instead of three Bowman sets (Bowman, Bowman Chrome, and BDP&P), consolidate them a single, late-season, brand.

— Amen to this!! As a fan of Rookie cards I really wish Topps would scale back their releases and produce one ‘mega’ Bowman set that goes out each year after the World Series. That way you can ensure that they catch ALL the rookies for that particular year and beef up the autographed rookie selection as well. Keep the prospect cards, by all means, but just put them in one larger product that makes life so much easier for rookie and prospect collectors

4. Marketing The Hobby to older collectors — For years the mantra has been, “We must get kids into The Hobby.” And for years, The Hobby responded by making “kid-friendly” products: Triple Play, Fun Pack, Topps Kids, UD PowerUp, UDx, et al. There’s just one problem with that though. Speaking as a former child, I know from experience that most children hate being pandered to. Kids want “grown-up” stuff and grown-up trading cards are no exception.

How about this: Instead of marketing baseball cards to kids, how about selling them to adults? Back in the early-90s, you couldn’t watch a hockey game without seeing an ad for Upper Deck Hockey cards. Why not try the same now? Why not place Topps banners on outfield walls? Why not run thirty-second ads during games? How about ads in Sports Illustrated or ESPN: The Magazine?

Oh sure, Michael Eisner is saying the right thing about kids. But in order for The Hobby to grow, Topps needs to re-focus it’s efforts towards adults. Market to them. Educate them. Sell to them. It not that The Hobby should abandon kids, per se; but market to their older brothers and dads. (And yes, their sisters and moms, too).

— Difficult one for me to call here as living the UK makes us pretty much removed from everything that happens back in the US. We don’t get to go to card shows or frequent card stores (at least any of the few that seem to still be open, anyways) so if there’s someone out there – in the US or Canada – that might be best placed to comment on this then lets hear from you 🙂

5. A more down-market Hobby –Topps does not do “high-end” well. So why bother with it anymore? Now that they have exclusivity, is there any reason for Triple Threads or Sterling Baseball? I doubt most collectors would miss it anyway.

— Couldn’t agree more!! I’ve already mentioned my disdain for hi-end card releases in a previous post so I won’t labour the point here. However, given the fervour that met the most recent release of Triple Threads only last week, it appears that there is still a thriving market for hi-end releases, with collectors frantically searching for the one, big ‘hit’ that will make their collecting dreams come true!!

So there you have it… As I mentioned in my comments against Chris’ fourth point, as UK collectors we’re pretty much removed from the epicentre of the Baseball collecting world over in the US, and as a result I don’t feel that we’ve been greatly affected by the exclusive Topps/MLB license agreement.  As far as I see it, Topps has continued to produce popular quality card releases aver the last few years and we still use channels such as eBay or COMC to collect what we want, when we want it, falling foul of shipping costs and import taxes along the way.

And we still do it because we love The Hobby so much!!

I’d really love to hear from anyone over in the US or Canada to get your take on how The Hobby is thriving (or not) over in your neck of the woods!!

And thanks to Chris Harris for all of his thoughts, those many years ago…

p.s. Contrary to how it might read above, I really do love that Rally Squirrel short print!!