Kid collects vintage

Nice story about teenager collecting pre-WW2 cards. I'd be interested to hear from how hard he has to work to get vintage dealers to take him seriously when asks to see cards and says he is interested in buying.

teeange vintage collector

Jay, that's actually my neighbor Asher. His brother and my son were on a team I coached for 3 years.
To answer your question things are a lot different than when you and I were his age and got treated like crap by dealers.
He's knowledgable and polite and he gets treated really well, which makes him all the more enthusiastic about the hobby.
He and his brother collected cards for the last few years, but when they found out I did too Asher started coming over about once a week to thumb thru binders and borrow books. In January he want to his first show, and Ryan Christoff spent a lot of time showing them Cuban cards and made them each a really good deal on a few cards. They spent most of the day at our first Culver City show talking to poeple, and when we had our latest show both of them asked if they could be there at 7am to help everyone unload. That certainly made them a lot of friends and everyone was really generous with their time. Jay Miller spent about a half hour teaching him about Old Judges, Ted Z spent an equal amount of time on T213 Coupons and Goudeys, and Mark Macrae, Brian Marcy, and Marty Pritchard all spent time with him. Bill Cornell practically gave him a T206 Evers and a father and son team that had cases of T206's taught him about rare backs as they showed him every one except Cobb/Cobb.
Sure beats getting berated by Goody Goldfadden at the top of his lungs in a crowded show just for asking how to tell the difference between a sp Leaf and the common series. Times have changed for the better, thankfully.

Good for them. By the time they're 30, they'll know more about the game than most of us put together, and they'll be the kind of fans who will love a classic game like the Dodgers and Cardinals played tonight (is Beltran a beast or what?).

And I'd love to see a Cobb/Cobb up close myself! Everyone goes on and on about the Wagner, and understandably, but Cobb/Cobb is really the T206 holy grail. If I scored one, I think I'd just retire from the hobby and consider myself officially Gandalfed as a collector. It doesn't get better than that.

Hope those kids stay with it. It's a wonderful hobby.

I just wish there were more kids into it. It is great to see a young one interested, but the fact that he's being treated like royalty speaks to the paucity of young collectors into pre-war. He sounds like a good kid, and it was a well-written article. Playing with the high school team at age 13 is impressive.

Never heard the phrase "Gandalfed" before...

Great to hear that the kid is being treated right. Sounds like the next Zach Rice. No surprise that Macrae would be helpful. When I first moved to CA in 1983 I was still very much into punk. Dealers would practically pull their cases off the table to keep me from stealing the cards, lol. Macrae was the only one that took the time to answer my questions and talk to me, which lead to a great friendship.