My mom and uncle are big antique collectors. (Mom collects antique Santas and sheet music. My uncle collects guns and WWII memorabilia and tools). Maybe that’s why I’m such a memorabilia nut.
Starting in the late 1980s, my mom, dad, uncle and me used to drive 60 miles or more to rummage through the various antique shops, malls and shows of Northeast Wisconsin. Sometimes we would even drive a few hours to Milwaukee, although listening to my parent’s music choices sometimes made it unbearable to be in a car with them for more than an hour.

One Saturday night (we always went on a Saturday) dad pulled into the parking lot of Bosse’s, a cigar shop in downtown Green Bay. But like most cigar shops, Bosse’s sold magazines. They sold any magazine you could think of.  

I first started collecting baseball cards in 1987 and lived in a very small town. The only sports card publication I ever found in my hometown of Marinette was a big baseball card price guide that Beckett put out annually.

That day at the cigar shop I stumbled upon a huge newspaper-looking publication that talked about baseball cards and all sorts of other sports memorabilia. Except this was no newspaper. It was probably over 300 pages and three sections. It was Sports Collectors Digest.

I will never forget that day. All the way home I had my head buried into my newfound paper treasure, which smelt like a sweet old stogy.

I was hooked. I was a subscriber of the magazine all the way through college. I was only in middle school when I bought my first copy. Kids probably thought I was a bit odd when the only magazine I would read in study hall was SCD. Maybe that’s why I never got many chicks in high school… More on that later.

Anyway, the reason I bring this topic up is because today I made a post on the forum at gameuseduniverse.com.
Keep in mind, my post had nothing to do with SCD or any other magazine for that matter, but I had my signature at the bottom, which mentions our magazine.

It wasn’t more than ten minutes after I made my post that Howard Wolf (one of the boards regular participants) began firing questions at me.

Click here to see what was said.

I have no problem with criticism of me or the place I work for.

I just would like to stick up for my all-time favorite magazine, which I now work for.

Here is the e-mail I sent Howard this morning. By the way, he may have came off a little forceful in his message board post, but he was very cordial in an e-mail to me:

Howard,

I too remember when SCD was 300-plus pages and when I couldn’t wait to get it in order to buy tons of different items.
Now that the Internet has taken over, SCD is no longer the place for many of these items. Why would someone pay hundreds of dollars for a full-page ad when they can list their items on eBay for a fraction of what an ad would cost?

That’s not to say our publication isn’t a key part for some sellers.
Auction houses love putting ads in SCD because our database is so huge and we still do have a very high circulation number.

Also, believe it or not, there are still collectors who don’t use the Internet. Our publication is the only way they can purchase collectibles.

We are very actively trying to get new advertisers, but it is not easy.

That said, you can’t say much about our price. We charge less than 50 cents per issue. If you find just one key item a year (and that is being very conservative) it is worth your subscription fee, IMO.

Also, I guarantee you will find some of our articles very interesting. We just had a nice Cap Anson feature, cigar box feature (which I wrote) and there ARE some controversial pieces in our magazine. Joe Phillips just wrote a great article about fraudulent gloves hitting the market.

Your input is always welcome.
chris

I truly mean that. Everyone’s input is always welcome. Plus, I really feel that we are making a huge effort to improve our website and are going to fill it with very interesting content. We can’t do it alone however. The more our readers participate in things like this blog, the better it will be.