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House Of Cards: Baseball Card Collecting and Popular Culture (Volume 12) (American Culture) Paperback – March 15, 1997
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Explores the connection between baseball card collecting and nostalgia among men of the baby boom.
Baseball card collecting carries with it images of idealized boyhoods in the sprawling American suburbs of the postwar era. Yet in the past twenty years, it has grown from a pastime for children to a big-money pursuit taken seriously by adults. In A House of Cards, John Bloom uses interviews with collectors, dealers, and hobbyists as well as analysis of the baseball card industry and extensive firsthand observations to ask what this hobby tells us about nostalgia, work, play, masculinity, and race and gender relations among collectors.
Beginning in the late 1970s and into the early 1990s, baseball card collecting grew into a business that embodied traditional masculine values such as competition, savvy, and industry. In A House of Cards, Bloom interviews collectors who reveal ambivalence about the hobby’s emphasis on these values, often focusing on its alienating, lonely, and unfulfilling aspects. They express nostalgia for the ideal childhood world many middle-class white males experienced in the postwar years, when they perceived baseball card collecting as a form of play, not a moneymaking enterprise. Bloom links this nostalgia to anxieties about deindustrialization and the rise of the civil rights, feminist, and gay rights movements. He examines the gendered nature of swap meets as well as the views of masculinity expressed by the collectors: Is the purpose of baseball card collecting to form a community of adults to reminisce or to inculcate young men with traditional masculine values? Is it to establish “connectedness” or to make money? Are collectors striving to reinforce the dominant culture or question it through their attempts to create their own meaning out of what are, in fact, mass-produced commercial artifacts? Bloom provides a fascinating exploration of male fan culture, ultimately providing insight into the ways white men of the baby boom view themselves, masculinity, and the culture at large. [Excerpt:]“Collectors often decried how money had ruined their hobby, making it hard for them to form meaningful friendships through their cards. Money, however, made the hobby not only profitable but also more serious, more instrumental, and therefore more manly. The same collectors who complained about greed often bragged in the same interview about the value of their cards. Yet money, in turn, made the hobby less akin to child’s play and more like work: lonely, competitive, unfulfilling, and alienating.”- Print length160 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherUniv Of Minnesota Press
- Publication dateMarch 15, 1997
- Dimensions5.5 x 0.5 x 8.5 inches
- ISBN-100816628718
- ISBN-13978-0816628711
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But there are negative dimensions to nostalgia, too. Bloom points out that "nostalgia is more often a commentary of dissatisfaction with the present than it is an attempt to accurately understand the past" (p.87). In this context, Bloom finds nostalgia to be as destructive as it is liberating...
Having begun the book by announcing himself as an involved observer, Bloom ends by underlining the tentativeness of his conclusions, saying "I see this book as initiating a dialogue about gender identities of men by critically examining an aspect of our culture", viz., baseball card collecting. I found Bloom's narrative informative and his interpretations thought-provoking. -- Leverett T. [Terry] Smith, Society for American Baseball Research, Bibliography Committee Newsletter, April 1998: 98-2
Changes in baseball, American society, and marketing techniques stimulated an upsurge in baseball card collecting in the late 1970s that resulted in a fad that has lasted for two decades. An estimated 4,000 collectors grew to four million by 1989, making baseball card collecting the fourth largest hobby in the United States. Bloom's book reminds us of how recent the phenomena is and how such a boom creates conflicts among its participants.
His book is based on a close reading of collector's newsletters and magazines, participant observation at baseball card shows and shops where collectors sell and trade their wares, and interviews with about thirty collectors. His purpose is to examine adult sports fan culture as it relates to male gender identity and the concept of masculinity.
He succeeds for the most part. Readers interested in the interrelationships among advertising, sports, and masculinity will be amply rewarded by Bloom's study. Those more interested in the culture of collectors may use his data to compare with other kinds of hobbyists. -- Bernard Mergen, American Studies International, Oct97, Vol. 35 Issue 3, p117.
About the Author
John Bloom is assistant professor in the Department of American Studies at Dickinson College.
Product details
- Publisher : Univ Of Minnesota Press; First Edition (March 15, 1997)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 160 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0816628718
- ISBN-13 : 978-0816628711
- Item Weight : 8.2 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.5 x 8.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,812,352 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #184 in Antique & Collectible Sports Cards (Books)
- #6,108 in Baseball (Books)
- #10,197 in Popular Culture in Social Sciences
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
John Bloom is a professor of history at Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania. His past books are A House of Cards: Baseball Card Collecting and Popular Culture; To Show What an Indian Can Do: Sports at Native American Boarding Schools; Sports Matters: Race, Recreation and Culture; Barry Bonds: A Life; and There You Have It: The Life, Legacy and Legend of Howard Cosell.
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1. You collect baseball cards or collected in the early 90's
2. You can take someone indirectly picking at card collecting as a hobby
3. You could read a really long sociology journal paper
If you can't take any of those points then it might not be for you. I had a bit of trouble with point 3, but I toughed through it. It has some interesting points about why people collected baseball cards (or still do) and will raise questions in your own mind on why we are so interested in sports and collection possessions in general.