General Forum

I guess I am the last one to find out, but just discovered that Press Pass is now gone.

I can add then to my list of disappointments .....  Score, Pacific, Fleer, Donruss, Inkworks, Press Pass.....

I think the price of cards has become too high to attract youthful entrants into our hobby.  Card collecting has become "an old man's game".   Sorry to be so negative.

 I do not like this reference as I am not even 30 yet.  if this classifies me as an "old man," well... can I retire now?  I should get some of the perks of the title, I think.

I think Panini bought Score, and Donruss. Upperdeck ended up with Fleer/Skybox.

Wouldn't surprise me to see UD go under at some point. Besides MJ, Tiger, and a few movie sets, don't think they have much else except the NHL.

Heard something about UD International suing them. How messed up is that? Getting sued by one of your own brands. Then a merge between Topps and UD came pretty close to happening a couple years ago.

Dixxy, you do realize that over half the people in the world are younger than you. So on behalf of all of us truly old geezers out there, may I be the first to welcome you to geezerdom.

 man, when i was 16 and looking forward to my mid life crisis i had a completely skewed view. I somehow thought i would be rich enough to afford all my toys... actually had a kid tell me id hurt my back at work. Looked at him and told him i had a decade on him, damage done. Then i recollected and sighed. I have a decade on him... and i can't afford the darn convertible! 

I totally agree about the cost. With packs being $20, $50, $100, or $200 of the high end stuff....too much for me. I don't have kids and I barely have enough money to buy cards. I miss the old days where $3 was considered expensive. And card shops have to jack up their prices to stay in business because people have to buy online to save money. The most expensive box I ever bought was close to $300 and I felt so gross afterwards.

Maybe it's sports card history repeating it self ? Topps bought out Bowman Gum. Topps tried to put Fleer out of business. At one time Topps sued Fleer, when Fleer put gum in packs. Topps said kids were buying packs for the gum, not the cards. Yeah right.  Then Topps brings Bowman cards back to life. I never bought a newer pack of cards for more than $15.00. I'm glad I only collect older (60's-80's) cards now.

 I collected off and on through the '80's as a kid and then went pretty hard around 1989 when Nolan Ryan joined my Rangers. Oddly enough, I had wanted a Troy Aikman Score rookie  for Christmas and my 75 year old grandmother went out and found one. Then she got the collecting bug and put together a very impressive Dallas Cowboys collection (pretty much every major issue Cowboy card from the beginning of the franchise until about 1995... heck, she was a Stadium Club Charter Member). I lost interest between the glut of sets in the '90's, going to college, and Nolan retiring. 
Then in about 2009, I got the stupid idea in my head to start putting together the ultimate TCU Horned Frog card collection. Having been out of the hobby for 15 years, I had absolutely no idea how it had changed. Here I'm thinking there are probably a handfull of cards for each year (because at the time, I really couldn't think of any major TCU pro players other than LaDainian Tomlinson and a few minor stars). Boy, that was a rude awakening. 
I had to finally make myself quit last year because I had spent an obscene amount of money and my wife was... um... not happy. My now not updated catalog numbers nearly 8,000 cards, of which I have about 6,000 (not counting 1/1s which just kind of make me angry that they exist).
I think the absurdity of the whole hobby hit me when I realized two things:
1) There's a guy on eBay that has the 2003 Latarence Dunbar Leaf Limited Platinum Spotlight 1/1 for sale. It's been there for at least 5 years now. He wants $40 for it. Dunbar played a total of 5 games in his NFL career. The only people who could want this card are Dunbar fans (are there even any?) or completists of Atlanta Falcons or TCU cards. Nobody is gonna want this for $40. I even sent offers (which decreased the longer that card sat there) and he declined them all. Sure dude... it's a 1/1, but it only has value if somebody wants it. Simple supply & demand concepts get tossed out the window.
2) Jerry Hughes, a 2010 rookie (and almost draft bust), had over 200 cards released in 2010 sets. Bob Lilly, an NFL HOFer and Cowboys legend, had like 25 cards released during his entire playing career. If you include all of the cards made for Bob Lilly and Sammy Baugh (from their RCs to present) the combined totals for these two legends doesn't come close to the current total for Andy Dalton.

Yeah, I often long for the days of 3 or 4 sets with 1 card per player (maybe a couple of extras like highlights or something) and no chase-numbered-auto-relic-parallel nonsense.