Baseball Cards

Collecting hobby losing out to instant rewards
Monday, January 14, 2008
By STEVE EIGHINGER
Herald-Whig Staff Writer
Nick Davis is a throwback to the days when kids relied on their imagination for much of their entertainment quotient.
Davis, a 16-year-old junior at Quincy High School, enjoys comic books. Actually, he loves comic books.
"I was pretty much raised on them," Davis said. "My dad, Ray, was a big fan ... and I think I was about 5 years old when I was first attracted to a copy of Spider Man at a friend's house."
The rest, as they say, is history.
Davis is a regular at Midwest Comics, 1849 Broadway, where comics and board games are the norm and video games are often considered a dirty word, or at last mildly taboo.
January is National Hobby Month, when traditional interests such as collecting baseball cards, coins, stamps and memorabilia — or the reading and collecting of comic books — are lifted up in celebration. More often than not these days, many of those traditional activities have taken a back seat to the highly popular video games that have rapidly evolved during the past decade.
Jim Brown, who owns Midwest Comics and is a longtime reader and collector, says it is getting tougher and tougher to attract today's youngsters to something as old-fashioned as comic books.
"Parents getting their kids involved is the key," Brown said.
The idea of building a collection through the years and enjoying what it offers has been lost in favor of the instant gratification of the video game.
Davis said what many his age miss out on with comic books is the quality of the writing.
"They are like mini-novels," he said.
Brown says diehard comic book readers/collectors are attracted not only to certain superheroes or storylines, but specific writers and artists who work in tandem.
"There is some incredibly well-written material out there," Brown said.
Brown said the comic book industry has taken steps to try to lure back some of its lost — or future — audience through giveaways and other promotions at the national level. Locally, Brown has turned Midwest Comics into part-comic book store and part-gaming establishment. There are regular days and times set aside for playing board games and a variety of tournaments.
While more traditional hobbies are trying to re-establish a foothold, some of the newer activities continue to flourish. Scrapbooking is arguably the "hottest" new hobby to come along in recent years.
"And it's still going strong," said Michelle Hagerbaumer, store manager at Ben Franklin Crafts, 1705 Broadway.
Stores like Ben Franklin are hotbeds for scrapbookers, who combine crafts and family photos into page-by-page keepsakes that evolve into full-fledged family treasures.
Hagerbaumer said one of the reasons scrapbooking popularity continues to grow is the purpose it serves within the family unit. What was once a book filled with nothing more than a series of pictures and few comments here and there is now a full-scale, magazine-type production that turns each page into a conversation piece. Specially-designed accessories are a must for the up-to-date scrapbook artist.
Baseball cards remain the strongest segment of the sports card collecting hobby and easily command the most interest. Kathleen McKenna writes on http://www.boston.com/, "People who aren't raising sports-crazed children might assume that baseball cards have gone the way of go-carts and Partridge Family lunch boxes. But the opposite is true: Baseball cards continue to draw legions of collectors young and old, and the business of buying and selling these collectibles remains as viable as ever."
The bottom line with any hobby is the bottom line.
"People have to be able to afford to be involved with a particular hobby, or there will not be a hobby," said John Mast, a Quincy baseball card collector and dealer.