A good friend of mine shared this article from The Atlantic with me. As a kid, I once dabbled in the possibility of beginning a card collection — not just in baseball cards, but in football as well. The hobby never took off for me, however, and I’m sure my lack of interest was due to impatience and restlessness more than anything else. Nevertheless, in the quest to look at baseball as a whole, ignoring the role of baseball cards and their collectors would be a foolish move to make. In his article, Pinsker talks about the relationship between card collecting and capitalism, which is all-too-appropriate considering that Major League Baseball is one of the largest conglomerates in the United States.
A Cultural History of the Baseball Card, by Joe Pinsker
This is wonderful. Thanks for posting this article within an article within an article; one of those internet experiences where you start reading one topic and end up somewhere else. I’m referring specifically to where the cultural history of the baseball card article veers away from the finance aspect and into the psychology of card collecting.