What’s the appeal of an old baseball card other than selling it to the next guy?
or comic books and antiques and much more, you need xtra folding cash to participate and most cant
In a sense, it is a form of money, something like bitcoin, I guess. You buy it, partly because you want it, but at these prices, you are, “speculating”, that it will hold its value better than money or other assets over time.
Answer: People who have money to waste love to brag by wasting it where others can see. It’s an ego-centric thing......kinda like framing every certificate or award or photo-op you ever got and filling your home walls with them for everyone to see how great you are.
See my post #15. Also opened up more fun and amusement for us kids by creating different games, kept us out of trouble. For a nickel you could get a Topps pack of gum and 5 Topps base ball cards. If you were good at a game you could turn those 5 cards to 100’s.
I have two footlockers of baseball cards from the late 60s to the mid-90s. Many of those in the 80s are in complete sets sealed by Topps.
I have also several of my 1940 to 1950s cards to the Ty Cobb Museum in Royston, GA.
Old baseball cards offer nostalgia for when one was a boy in love with America’s sweet game of summer and saw the men who played it as heroes of Homeric stature.