Venting: Oh My!

[todtz79]

i my self mostly collect toews i do have a fair bit of higher end kane crosby malkin howe ect but if you want one of those players i would want toews in retern star players for star players is only fair would that be fair to say

with this said i would trade lower end toews cards inserts higher end base for other players as i have just done 5 or 6 trades in the last few days for lower end toews cards

[aweeks]

I do agree with you somewhat...
I'm a Canucks fan yet I have very few Canucks cards in my PC. It's not because they don't have much value, but simply because Crosby/Ovechkin ect are better players and i'd rather have them in my collection. Also, those higher end players make for better tradebait, which I can use to complete sets I am working on :)

[Raptor]

I also agree with most that is said. I am a leafs fan and always has been since a baby but I collect tony o because in my opinion one if the best vintage goalies of all time and he is funny. I also collect cheevers because again one of the best and because he has a mask style of his own and lastly I collect don cherry because he is awesome. He doesn't care for Crosby and neither do I. When I am making a deal for a trade I ask for those 3 guys, I know they are harder to get players so if I have something that someone else wants I try to make the deal work but I will only take something that I think I can move pretty easy and it doesn't have to be Crosby, Gretzky and so one. But you have to look at it like this If someone wants a card from me and let's just say it is my bernie parent pad/jersey and you don't have anything I collect for players or sets than I will look and see what else you that I can move to get something I want and if you don't then I am sorry why would I trade bait for other bait that may not go anywhere for months and I had to pay to get it shipped to me. I might as well have kept my original card and saved a buck or two

[TheIronHorse4]

I pretty much agree with you on all fronts.

Quite frankly, I don't see the point of being in this hobby, unless you're doing it for fun. The fact of the matter is, 99% of us are going to take a loss in actual money, over the long haul.

I get that there are some people who do this for a living, and they need to operate at a profit.

The only thing I would add to what you said, is that there have to be some exceptions. Maybe I've got 1 or 2 PC guys that I collect, and I've got a couple of sets that I'm working on. If I've got a card that you want.... and you've got nothing from my wants...... the Ovy/Crosby/Gretz/Orr/Howe type stuff.... for a lot of people..... is the only other stuff they're interested in. Why? Because if you can't get them something they need, they do want something that's easy to trade or easy to sell, so they can turn it into something they want.

This is a great point, and what I imagine many collectors live by. I personally don't collect any specific hockey player, but like breaking hockey. When I get a nice Koivu piece that a huge Koivu collector wants, I'll probably ask for any Yankees. Since a lot of hockey colelctors don't have a ton of baseball, I know I'm leaving them with few options other than buying the card from me, which some just can't afford at the time. That's when the Crosby/Ovechkin/Malkin ect... comes out cause really it's just looking for easily movable trade bait or something i can sell just as easy while still allowing the true Koivu collector a chance at getting his/her card.

[davescards]

I do agree with you somewhat...
I'm a Canucks fan yet I have very few Canucks cards in my PC. It's not because they don't have much value, but simply because Crosby/Ovechkin ect are better players and i'd rather have them in my collection. Also, those higher end players make for better tradebait, which I can use to complete sets I am working on :)

I agree with you to a point. The problem with your theory is 60% of traders can't afford to have crosby\ovechkin traders above inserts. One scenario I can think of is:

I used to collect the SPXitement subset. I needed like 4 for the set. One of them being Henrik Zetterberg. Its a 4 dollar card. Dude checked my bucket and picked out my Sidney Crosby Jersey card BV'd 80 bucks. When I told him I was only interested in the 4 dollar card, he said pick something else out. I said, that's all I want. He said, well I don't take anything I can't sell.

Now I mean a 4 dollar card people. I offered him a Zetterberg Jersey card BV'd 20 bucks for the 4 dollar insert. And he declined. You'd think for a 4 dollar card and someone collecting the set, they'd cut you a break right? Especially when you're offering to trade down in value.

[geschrocks33]

I agree with your rant here 100%

I am normally looking for the people I collect, which quite frankly aren't people that most others want.

Aside from the few Miller and Stastny collectors, who collects Clutterbuck, Stempniak, or Gragnani as seriously as I do?

But for your rant, even when you don't have my specific stuff I'm looking for, I'll browse through your bucket, and try to at least find something that I could take it return for whatever you wanted ya know

Good rant thread, much needed, hopefully people who need to see this will

[roy.the.greatest]

Is it just me or are people so caught up with Money and Value, that they've forgotton what this hobby is all about?

How can you justify in 2009 to pay $500 for a pack of 4-6 cards and don't care about money and value? This hobby is a big business since two decades, now bigger than ever, and next year it will only be bigger again. If someone does not like hockey, this collector will disappear inside 5 years, nobody will throw so much money on a long period if he don't like hockey and to collect.

[zPens87z]

I, like others in this thread, agree completely with what you say. In this case, the rant is a very thoughtout rant.

I collect a variety of different things, not any supercollector for a player or anything close to that. I collect what I like (including Crosby, Toews and Kane but they are on my 2 favorite teams so..)

It is tough when I don't open the "Cup. OPCP, or Black". My tradebait is all low end stuff that most people have no interest in.

And the demand for the Crosby is so large, I have yet to get a simple jersey card of him, let alone an autograph.

It seems like the lower end sets don't get appreciated as much or traded as much. (but that is a different story)

[RGM81]

How can you justify in 2009 to pay $500 for a pack of 4-6 cards and don't care about money and value? This hobby is a big business since two decades, now bigger than ever, and next year it will only be bigger again. If someone does not like hockey, this collector will disappear inside 5 years, nobody will throw so much money on a long period if he don't like hockey and to collect.

The point that Dave is trying to make--and I'm not trying to put words in his mouth here, so he can correct me if I'm wrong--is that not everybody in the hobby has $500 kicking around for a pack of 6 cards, and that it's enormously frustrating for a collector on a limited budget to be constantly running into barriers because they don't have premium players available to trade for low-end cards of lesser mortals. The post he made above exemplifies what's wrong with some collectors - he needed a $4 insert card and the guy said, "I only want your Crosby jersey" and wouldn't make a deal with him, as if Dave and his piddly $4 card were completely beneath him and Dave had insulted him and wasted his time by merely asking.

I don't begrudge anybody in this hobby who has more money than I do to break a lot more stuff than I do. I wish them well, I look at their breaks, and then I go back to trying to find my pithy little Josh Gorges cards that 99.9% of people in this hobby pray they don't pull because it's a waste of their time and money--99.99% if they know I already have the card in question. LOL What does bug me is the attitude that gets projected by some folks that insist upon only accepting premium players in exchange for commons and semi-stars. I'm truly sorry I don't have a Crosby jersey or Ovechkin auto to trade for a Guillaume Latendresse RC, I guess we can't deal. No, I won't give you my Ovechkin YG in exchange for an Andrei Kostitsyn jersey card, so I guess I'll just have to sit here with my Ovy YG and no Kostitsyn jersey card.

To completely turn the corner, there are far more great traders in this hobby than there are bad ones. Two weeks ago I made the most monstrous trade I am likely to ever make in this hobby, a deal in which my trade partner significantly "traded down" 6 cards he had available for 36 cards (25 of which were very difficult for me to let go of, I might add) that he needed. There are a lot of people that would simply scoff at the notion of trading 4 cards /10 or less (including a 1/1) of one of the hobby's main darlings to get some un-numbered, though still hot-selling, autograph cards of a bunch of retired Habs. I almost felt embarrassed at asking him about some of these premium cards because I had nothing of equal 1-for-1 value, but he did it without skipping a beat. He even asked a couple times if I was 100% sure I wanted to part with the cards I parted with. It's guys like that who give little guys like me hope that yeah, we can own the premium cards without having to break our bank or cross our fingers and hope for the best that the one box break we do for that month gives us a good result. The deal worked for me, it worked him as it set up a couple more deals afterwards, and though sure getting the sales values more or less right was important, we both came out of this deal HAPPY.

That is what it should be all about at the end of the day. If you're only happy with a break if you pull an Ovechkin or Crosby because it will help you break even, and you're not running a store or hockey cards are not your primary source of income, you might have a problem. If you only make deals to get cards to flip on eBay, you might be short-changing yourself from enjoying the hobby in all its multitude of enjoyments. I've let go of some pretty good-money cards, a couple were really tough choices, but the return on all of them brought me great joy. As I sit here and look at the top two shelves of my display case (bottom two are obscured by the desk) I smile every single time I see that Carey Price Complete Jersey, that Josh Gorges The Cup Black Rainbow, that supposedly $20 Jean Beliveau jersey, and that Gorges Ultimate Collection Gold /25 that I traded away a pretty limited Gretzky insert to get. I'm sure that someday I could make a nice little pile of money with my collection (there's always a Habs fan or two out there) but for me it's not about the dollars and cents.

That's all I have to say about that.

[davescards]

Amen brother.