a rather controversial subject

[fossil]

i have great fun, in collecting and seeking out new sets of cards to add to my colection, it is a fascinating pastime, and at night, i am able to 'unwind 'a fter a long day, look at my sets of cards, and for a short time, relieve childhood memories, during the 1950's and 60's., yet i often read, hear comments, and have known other collectors, that i feel, they have lost the initial innocent of card collecting.
it seems as if they have lost this first love, and become more interested in greater details, surrounding quality, rarity and monetry value.
it seems as though many card collectors seem to place so much emphasis on quality, and how mint is mint ?
i have no need to have a high powered magnifying glass, to see if a cards as indentations, less than perfect printing, slightly un-sqare, minor creases, reproductions over originals, and the such.
it is the subject matter that i am more interested in.
i do not loose sleep over the fact that i have purchased a set of cards, tht may have indentations , from a past collector, over eighty years ago, put them in a corner mounted album.
the original collector, may have collected them, because he , for example used to go bird watching, or botanising, much as i do today.
it is also like the emphasis, put on monetry costs.
recently, i managed to purchase an unauthorised reproduction of card.
the cards are on good quality acid free white card, the printing is as good as the originals i have seen, and four the cost of a couple of pounds, i have no need, ever to want an original set, that would cost me an hundred times the cost.
it is the same with errors and varieties.
my brother, that is a printer, and i have often visited his firm, and seen the printing process, before the main sheets are passed through the printing press, scrap sheets, either creased , previous error sheets and other discardable printers waste are passed through the printing press, to ensure that the main printed sheets are okay, often one of these so called error sheets get caught up with the batch of good quality prints, and go through the cutting to shape process.
i really fail to see how some collectors, as very much philatelists, get excited about much material, and i often joke with my brother, that some of this printers waste, is more value to collectors of certain items than the original is .
i would bee keen to hear of other collectors views upon this subject

[fossil]

apologies for incorrect title, meant to be 'controversial', not cotroversle

[IanSammel]

When I collected as a boy, all the fun of collecting was in buying a packet of bubble gum, ice lolly, sweet cigarette (as we were still allowed to call them in those days) or whatever and opening it to see which cards were in them.  There was no problem with the quality as everything was straight out of the packet.  (I don't think I ever chewed the bubble gum.  I had a large heap of it until my mother threw it away.)

However there is a limit to the number of Lyons Maid Zooms that one can eat.  If you want a decent sized collection then eventually you have to buy cards.  There it's up to everyone how much he wants to spend and what quality he is looking for.

[fossil]

what i am trying to get at, is that excitement has gone from many collectoers, of opening that packet of gum, only for the sake of the card, or purchasing goods just to obtain a card, that excitement of childhood, is taken ov er by the condition of the card only, which i think is really sad, to let those childhood days slip by.
i used to collect stamps, until i had the unfortunate accident in having my collection destroyed.
it was great fun, when a kid, swapping stamps with friends, buying new packets to find more to add to my collection, but in the end, i found i was specialising, and and viewing stamps under a high magnification, for flaws, ulmost un-noticable to the human eye, or using a perforation guage, for minute variations of perforation, even nowaday, many philatelist now use ultra violet lights to be able to see the phospher lines, that cannot be seenby the majority of the public.
it seems as if that magic has gone from the excitement of opening that packet, purly for a card they do not have
it is much the same with errors and varietys, most are duff printing stock, yet some collectors, are more pleased with a duff printed itemrather than the intended item.
also it is likewise with values, i do not care about my card values, if i have several sets of three or four hundred pounds catalogued value.
i purchase setsthat are of interest to me, in fact many cheaper sets, are far better than a set of several hundred pounds.
this is why i raise this question, that i believe many collectors, have lost the initial fun of collecting that they first started with

[Captain Pugwash]

I have to agree with Ian on this one.
I only had enough pocket money to buy a few packets of bubblegum/sweet cigarettes a week.I remember one day a boy at school purchased a whole box of A&BC gum (cannot recall which set) we were all in awe as he opened every packet.
I loved the gum,it didn't half make your jaw ache.

Now I collect as near to those cards which I pulled from the packs all those years ago.
I wouldn't put a grubby card in a page where the rest are clean.Dare I say near mint  

[IanSammel]

this is why i raise this question, that i believe many collectors, have lost the initial fun of collecting that they first started with

This could get very philosophical, but I guess that when it comes down to it, that's the way life works.  Childhood pleasures give way to more sophisticated adult things.  When I was a boy at school, we had school parties with large helpings of jelly, ice cream and lemonade.  Nowadays I think it would make me sick.  Of course opening a packet of bubble gum was fun and it still is but if I want to build up a serious card collection it's simply not possible to do it that way.  There's a limit to how much you can consume.  I mean how many pounds of tea did you actually have to drink to get a set of Brooke Bond cards?  Not only that, but as an adult I'm much more aware of e.g. things like how marketing works and how cards are sorted and packed to maximize sales.  When I buy my packet of Panini stickers, I'm thinking of how they are sorted to make me buy as many packets as possible before I get a set, which takes a lot of the fun out of it.  Things that never occurred to me as an innocent child.  The boy who bought a whole box of bubble gum cards probably saved money in the long run, even if he didn't realise it at the time. 

Childhood is a wonderful thing and I still enjoy a lot of simple pleasures; too many if my wife is to be believed    Several famous people appear to have said “We do not stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing!”  True words indeed!  I still look at my set of straight-out-of-the-packet Yellow Submarine cards and think of how much fun life was in those days.  But I also look at the condition when buying a card for my collection. I don't think that the one excludes the other.

[fossil]

that is true, that you say and very interesting.
it is the same way i felt about my stamp collecting, before it was destroyed in an accident.
it was very specialised, and comprised of hundreds of mostly victorian and edwardian british postage stamps.
when one considers the first postage stamp, the so called penny black, a specialised collector, could acumulate two and a half thousnd different examples, of just one stamp.
i could never put together another collection, like i originally did,
i have not collected stamps for around forty years now, but my interests are still there for stamp collecting , and i do try to stay informed, about current events.
when i first started collecting cigarette and cards around ten years back, i decided that i would not go through that procedure again, and collect for the sheer pleasure of the theme rather than condition or price.
i do keep within some bounds of condition, but if the odd one or so is under par, it doesn't bother me.
i tell my grandchildren, there are three ages of man, childhood, adulthood and childhood., i don't want to go from childhood, adulthood and old age.
i don't wan t to denigrate other collectors that have been collecting far longer than i, in fact i find any type of cigareete and trade card collecting very interesting, even upon items and themes i do not collect.
i would be very interestd in many other collectors views upon the subject.
this is what cigarette and trade card collecting is all about, to have philosophical discussions and debates, so to enhance and develop the hobby