Tuesday, February 18, 2014
1997 and 1998 Pinnacle Inside Five "Pack" Break.
I ripped open five "packs" of this crap so that you don't have to.
Wednesday, February 05, 2014
Why Cee Angi Matters
Cee Angi represents to me the kind of "consumer" Topps ought to be marketing to: a fanatical baseball fan, who used to collect in her early years, went away for a while, and now wants to get back into collecting again.
All of which leads me to a question I posed on Twitter last week.
And we're not even at autographs & gamers, gimmicked variations, manu-relics, and other such lagniappe.
The number of collectors actually buying, much less collecting, their products is steadily declining, and it doesn't seem to me like Topps even cares. It's easy to discount the wants of your customers when you're a monopoly. In order to survive in the long-run, Topps needs to A) retain the collectors they have, and B) bring lapsed collectors back into The Hobby. They're not exactly doing a great job with "A," and if you're not winning over people like Angi, then they're not doing such a great job with "B" either.
All of which leads me to a question I posed on Twitter last week.
@SportsCollector One hurdle: How do you explain The Hobby of 2014 to someone who hasn't collected in 20+ years? Will they "get it?"
— Chris Harris (@stalegum) February 1, 2014
Just imagine for a moment, that you haven't opened a pack of cards since before the 1994 Strike. You probably remember parallels, but you'd probably wonder why a product has to have 14 of them. You exited right at the peak of the "insert mania" of the early-90s, but what to make of all the hundreds of inserts? How can you collect them all? Is it even possible?And we're not even at autographs & gamers, gimmicked variations, manu-relics, and other such lagniappe.
The number of collectors actually buying, much less collecting, their products is steadily declining, and it doesn't seem to me like Topps even cares. It's easy to discount the wants of your customers when you're a monopoly. In order to survive in the long-run, Topps needs to A) retain the collectors they have, and B) bring lapsed collectors back into The Hobby. They're not exactly doing a great job with "A," and if you're not winning over people like Angi, then they're not doing such a great job with "B" either.
Tuesday, February 04, 2014
A Broken Resolution, and a New Focus
My New Year's Resolution for 2014 was to blog more. Well, it's February 4th and I'm only getting around to writing my first post now. I know, right? Sue me.
To be honest with you, I've been wondering what to do with this thing. As you've undoubtedly noticed, the number of blog posts I've written over the last few years has declined, and I proportionally blame this, in part, to the quality of Topps' recent baseball products. (If they don't give a shit anymore, why should I?) But even if things were all hunky-dorey in The Hobby, I doubt I'd be blogging much about it.
About ten years ago I went through the same lull where I took a few years off from my "webzine" (remember them?). I was burnt out and needed a break. All life is cyclical; everything evolves from The Great Magnet.
(OBTW, if you actually want to read the "old" Stale Gum, and trust me you don't, you can find it if you know where to look.)
It was only after I discovered the blog format and began reading cardblogs like Ben Henry's Baseball Card Blog and the Cardboard Junkie that I was inspired to re-launch Stale Gum in the blog format; which, in turn, probably inspired others to start their own cardblogs. (I shouldn't say "probably." The e-mails, personal messages, and cardshow shout-outs I've received over the years proves it.) I'm not going to take the credit for the late-2000s boom in cardblogs, but if there was ever a "Golden Age" of card blogging and of Stale Gum, I'd say the years 2006-2010 were it. For the first time since the days of Jefferson Burdick's mimeographed newsletters, the collector had a voice this Hobby; a voice that you just didn't hear all that much from in the Mainstream Hobby Media. It also helped that most of the card products were still somewhat collectable.
I guess I'm in the same rut now that I was in 2002-04. When the King of The Bloggers declares that "Blogging is Dead," maybe it's time to this puppy to sleep, give yourself a pat on the back, and move on. Besides, the cool kids have gravitated towards Twitter doing when used to be called "micro-blogging."
Twitter is a great tool and had it been around in the early-2000s, I doubt this blog would even exist. But there are some things you just can't compress into 140 characters -- or even a series of 140-character Tweets. But then again, there are some things just not worthy of a traditional blog post.
So tonight, in this, the Fourth Day of the Second Month in this Foul Year of Our Lord, Two-Thousand Fourteen, I'm giving Stale Gum a new focus. The 800-1000 word blogposts won't be entirely gone, just less frequent. In its place, I'm going to try to write a series of 50-100 word posts -- maybe once a day or a couple of times a week. Or, like, whenever.
Always Be Collecting
To be honest with you, I've been wondering what to do with this thing. As you've undoubtedly noticed, the number of blog posts I've written over the last few years has declined, and I proportionally blame this, in part, to the quality of Topps' recent baseball products. (If they don't give a shit anymore, why should I?) But even if things were all hunky-dorey in The Hobby, I doubt I'd be blogging much about it.
About ten years ago I went through the same lull where I took a few years off from my "webzine" (remember them?). I was burnt out and needed a break. All life is cyclical; everything evolves from The Great Magnet.
(OBTW, if you actually want to read the "old" Stale Gum, and trust me you don't, you can find it if you know where to look.)
It was only after I discovered the blog format and began reading cardblogs like Ben Henry's Baseball Card Blog and the Cardboard Junkie that I was inspired to re-launch Stale Gum in the blog format; which, in turn, probably inspired others to start their own cardblogs. (I shouldn't say "probably." The e-mails, personal messages, and cardshow shout-outs I've received over the years proves it.) I'm not going to take the credit for the late-2000s boom in cardblogs, but if there was ever a "Golden Age" of card blogging and of Stale Gum, I'd say the years 2006-2010 were it. For the first time since the days of Jefferson Burdick's mimeographed newsletters, the collector had a voice this Hobby; a voice that you just didn't hear all that much from in the Mainstream Hobby Media. It also helped that most of the card products were still somewhat collectable.
I guess I'm in the same rut now that I was in 2002-04. When the King of The Bloggers declares that "Blogging is Dead," maybe it's time to this puppy to sleep, give yourself a pat on the back, and move on. Besides, the cool kids have gravitated towards Twitter doing when used to be called "micro-blogging."
Twitter is a great tool and had it been around in the early-2000s, I doubt this blog would even exist. But there are some things you just can't compress into 140 characters -- or even a series of 140-character Tweets. But then again, there are some things just not worthy of a traditional blog post.
So tonight, in this, the Fourth Day of the Second Month in this Foul Year of Our Lord, Two-Thousand Fourteen, I'm giving Stale Gum a new focus. The 800-1000 word blogposts won't be entirely gone, just less frequent. In its place, I'm going to try to write a series of 50-100 word posts -- maybe once a day or a couple of times a week. Or, like, whenever.
Always Be Collecting
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