What's Your Hobby / Industry Score?

Great post from SumoMenkoMan at his Sumo Wrestling blog.  He's come up with a scale that illustrates everyone's motivations in the card hobby, and how much value and profit are involved.

In my initial comment on the original post, I said I figured I was an H9.5 or so.  Mostly because I have sold a few things on eBay and tried to set up a table at a show one time.

But the more I think about it, and reread Ryan's post, the description of an H10 is totally me.

H10 Pure Hobbyist: This is the foundation of the hobby.  These are the set builders, blog content creators, TCDB scanners, traders, and pure enthusiasts.  Profit is not in their vocabulary and they do it for the love of sorting, cataloguing, and collecting.  Part of the Hobby Base.

I'll try not to completely rehash my activities, philosophies, and motivations here, but that description fits me to a T...

I've been a set builder since 1978.  Back then that's what most people did, since there were no inserts, hits or parallels.  I originated some player collections then too, which started out as extra cards of interesting players that weren't part of a set build at the time.  I've branched out since then to a 60+ player collector, football (and casual hockey) team collection, astronaut and space non-sport collection, and a few other small projects along with building a couple baseball sets annually (not necessarily the same ones), and occasionally a football or hockey set along the way.  The latter two haven't been happening very often lately.

This blog has been chugging alond steadily for just over two years now.  I can't say it's grown exponentially, since my average view count is still around 50, but it does make most of the major blogrolls and the occasional mention on more famous ones.  Guess I have my moments.  Not sure how much social media helps people know about it.
I do wish I was better at eloquently expressing the aspects of the hobby that I enjoy and find in common with other collectors and explore them on a deeper level.  But most of what I put out is complaints on designs and bloat, and much more shallow ideas.

I do enjoy contributing to the Trading Card Database.  It's such a valuable resource to me that I almost feel compelled to give back in any small way I can.  To improve the content of what I think is the definitive reference for the hobby is very important.  The only thing that would surpass helping other collectors with information about cards is to be able to send them cards myself.  I've been at this a long time, and have accumulated so much - both in cards and knowledge about them - so it's nice to be able to pass that along to others.

As for the money side, I remember the days of looking up every card in Beckett's guides, rejoicing about picking up new stars for bargain prices or pulling that hot card out of a pack.  Now that I'm not limited to a $5 allowance, or a part time income, I'm pretty much over the price guide thing.  Over the years, I've become a good bargain hunter, and can usually find that vintage high number for well under book value.  Any time a dealer pulls out the Beckett magazine these days, I know I'm probably not buying much at his table.  My price reference is COMC, mostly because you can look things up so quickly, but even then, you have to ignore the ones in the dark framed images, because those are marked up by the cooperating dealer.

I am truly blessed to be able to basically spend what I want on cardboard for the most part.  (Or cursed by addiction to have little resistance to doing so.)  I'm not at the level of buying cases or high end boxes, and don't drop more than double digits on any one card most of the time.  I still buy singles and boxes of junk wax just because I like the set.  I'll readily select a big name star card that's got a few imperfections to finish my set and save money rather than holding out for a pristine specimen.  If old cards are too perfect, they look fake.  I'm only after an example that looks good and fits with the rest of my set and don't care if it's only resellable for a fraction of whatever number.

$107.50 for a plastic prison and a label???

As I've said repeatedly, grading has its place in sight unseen transactions and verifying the authenticity of an item, but shouldn't inflate the price beyond the Hi column in the guide for a raw card.  Who cares how many people have decided to submit that card for grading and have recieved that rating?  It's all dependent on the whims of the people involved.  Why would you wildly increase the dollar value based on that?

This casual attitude carries over into trading too.  I don't actually mind if someone wants to make an even trade, that makes sense.  But it's too much work to me to look up every individual card and tally the guide price and then add and subtract to hit an exact number.   I guess it works much easier for high end traders since they're only dealing with a few cards at a time.  But if I've got a stack of cards for you, and you have some for me, then unless there are some high dollar items involved, it's all good, right?  Quite often, I'll get a request that a trader has several cards from my lists and references their wants site.  I'll go and start pulling whatever I have for them.  Sometimes, I'll end up going through a large set list and when I'm done, I'll have twice the number of singles that they started out with for me.  We'll either add on or go to a second round a bit later.  Sometimes, if they're not especially valuable, I'll just send the whole stack the first time.  Better you have them to finish your set than just sitting in a box here.  I'm not out to "win" every trade, and get annoyed at those who do.  I've got such a volume of extras, that it's better to me to move out more than I take in when I can.

Even with all this volume, I still enjoy managing it.  I can no longer keep it all in my head, so I'll find stuff I didn't know I had all the time.  I actually don't catalog what I HAVE in any central form.  I do intend on counting everthing and arriving at an approximate figure sometime soon.  It probably wouldn't take much to create an inventory, since most of it is sets or teams that are catalogued elsewhere, but I really don't have a need to know what's here.  I focus on what I still want to add.  A want list is basically the opposite of an inventory, and it shrinks instead of grows when you get stuff, so isn't that better?  I have my central wants on a Google site, and then many other lists, most of which are physical printouts of electronically created inventories.  I do like creating charts and image enhanced lists.  Before the Database was around, I used to offer to other player collectors to make them comprehensive lists by pulling data from the Beckett site and then cleaning it up in Word with columns and color to condense it by several pages and make it pretty.

used to be faster

That's what makes the hobby enjoyable to me.  It gives me little projects and keeps my mind working.  So does sorting.  That's the real relaxing part.  For a while, I could sort a box or two of flagship in record time.  The need for a magnifier hinders my speed on some sorts nowadays, so I've slowed down in general.  But it's still cathartic to put order to the chaos of a stack of random cards.  Some collectors think sorting is work.  I like it, it's part of the fun. 

I think that's one of the main reasons I like collecting.  Putting order into chaos, completing a list, expanding your scope.  It's like solving puzzles, or creating art.  The process is interesting, and you feel a sense of accomplishment when you're done.  And the interaction with other collectors is the bonus benefit.  (Not to mention the fitness effect of lugging montster boxes, but I digress.)  I'm definitely not in it for the money.  Value seems to get less and less as time passes anyway.  It's more like it's in my blood to need these little cardboard slices.  It's almost a hormonal effect when I sift through a box or peruse a binder - the serenity and feeling of contentment.  I just love the dang things.