If you're a die-hard baseball card collector, The Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards is a reference tool you must have. Granted, our company publishes this massive reference guide (the 2008 edition weighs in at 1,850 pages), but corporate plugs aside, it's the most complete guide to baseball cards on the market and offers complete checklists of some very obscure sets.

The current editor of the Standard Catalog is Don Fluckinger, who is also a regular contributor to Tuff Stuff. Don has a fascinating blog where he posts information about the newest sets that have been uncovered. It's hard to believe that there are still sets and cards that are just now being discovered decades after their release, but that's what makes this blog so cool. Plus, collectors like you often provide some valuable information.

To check it out, click here.

That's what people used to tell me when I worked in television. Now I get to see if they were correct.

Sports Collecting Radio is now up and running. You can click on the Sports Collecting Radio logo on the TuffStuff.com home page, or you can click here to go to the audio player, then click on the "play" button in the left hand corner or click the "iTunes" logo on the bottom of the screen to listen to the show.

Our first show went live Feb. 15 and is being re-aired every hour on the hour. Our next show goes live Feb. 20 at 1 p.m. (Eastern) and it, too, will be re-aired every hour on the hour. Once a new show debuts, the previous week's show goes into the Archive folder where you can download it and listen whenever you would like.

The goal of the show is simply to bring you more insight into the sports collectibles hobby. We’ll provide the latest industry news, previews of upcoming products, interviews with card manufacturers, league licensors, dealers, current and former athletes, the various experts we have here on our staff and others. We'll also answer questions about items in your collection, so feel free to send us comments or questions via e-mail to sportscollectingradio@fwpubs.com.

Ever since Upper Deck became the first card maker to have a pack of cards selling for more than $1, card makers have been criticized for pricing collectors out of the market. The critics remained when the first $3-a-pack products hit the market in 1993, when the first $5 packs came out shortly after that, and every time the hobby pushed past another price point previously thought to be untouchable.

Today’s new card offerings include more than a dozen brands across all sports that will cost you $100 or more per pack. Mind you, the fact these products exist is for the simple reason that there has been a certain segment of the collecting population that has demonstrated over the years that they are more than willing to fork over that kind of cash in return for a product that is perceived to be of equal value.

The card companies will still be offering a variety of super-premium card products in 2008, but what kind of reception those products will receive is still unclear. With inflation at its highest rate in 17 years, increased concerns about the stability of the nation’s economy and consumer spending on the decline, a growing number of people within the industry, particularly owners of hobby shops, said they’d like to see card companies put more resources into creating and promoting lower-priced card sets during the coming year.

The nature of the card market suggests that even if sales of high-end products were to slow down, there wouldn’t be any noticeable changes in what’s being offered until next year. The card companies plan their product schedules up to a year in advance, and they have to do so with an idea of how each product’s sales will impact their projected annual revenues.

The card makers, especially in baseball, have put a larger focus the past three years on offering a reasonable number of low-priced offerings as a way to attract more kids to the market. There are low-priced products in other sports as well, but the pro-kids marketing message that baseball has invested in requires there to be a variety of low-priced products on hand. Companies in all sports have also spent more resources beefing up their highest-priced offerings as well, because that’s where the best profit margins reside.

While there are a handful of low-priced offerings and a growing number of very high-priced offerings, the so-called “mid-priced” brands seem to have been overlooked. Those products have long been favorites of the collector who wants a little more quality than what’s found in the low-priced offerings but can’t fork over $50 or $100 on a single pack. As the median pack price increases, these collectors are finding less that fits their budgets, and consequently getting frustrated with the hobby.

The hobby can't afford to lose anymore collectors, particularly those who have enjoyed the activity into their adult years. It also doesn't make sense to roll out additional product lines that the bulk of your customer base can't afford.

Economists will eventually declare whether the nation’s economic woes fit the official definition of a recession, but the mere fact the term is being batted around as often as it’s been is enough to suggest things aren’t all that great on Main Street, U.S.A.

Economic slowdowns worry people in a variety of industries, and the sports collectibles business is one such industry. When times are tough, people tend to prioritize their spending. Hobby pursuits such as trading cards tend to get pushed down on the list.

But it might surprise some to recall that the hobby’s so-called “boom years” of the late 1980s and early 1990s took place during a time when the U.S. economy was entering a recession. Card values for vintage material were increasing on a steady basis, new card products and companies were arriving at a rapid rate and investors and speculators couldn’t get into the card market quick enough.

Why did our hobby grow at unprecedented levels when the economy as a whole was performing so poorly? A confluence of several events helped ignite the demand on the consumer level. Throughout the decade of the 1980s, there had been a renewed interest in older baseball cards, particularly those from the 1950s and ’60s. Youngsters from that era had grown up and were looking for items that reminded them of those years. Because so many of their original cards had been lost or survived in poor condition, demand for the remaining cards from that era was rekindled.

Increased demand resulted in an increase in values. As word started to spread around the country that baseball cards were appreciating in value, other collectors came out of the woodwork.

As values for older cards increased, the natural assumption was that modern releases held similar investment potential. As rookie cards of stars like Mickey Mantle or Pete Rose had increased at robust rates, buyers started hoping to hit even bigger rewards by stocking up on hundreds, if not thousands, of rookie cards of other can’t-miss prospects such as Eric Davis, Gregg Jefferies and Jim Abbott.

The news media around the country fueled some of this frenzy with stories that bragged about the return on investment in baseball cards as being far superior to what stocks and bonds were offering. Some dealers even offered to create investment portfolios of cards. Give the dealer $5,000, and he would build a collection of cards that he believed had the best opportunity to appreciate in value over the next few years.

Is a similar boom period in the cards – so to speak – for our hobby if a recession takes hold in 2008? Probably not. After all, the price surges we saw for older material were influenced by a large group of new buyers in the market.

In addition, the cash needed for someone to enter the market at that time was relatively low. Today, most people are well aware of the potential value of cards, and the startup costs of entering as an investor are much higher. Remember, back then you were buying mostly raw cards. Today, most of those same investment quality cards have been slabbed and graded and sell for premium prices.

If you wanted to take your chances on speculating on new cards, the startup costs are also much higher than 15-20 years ago, as are the risks. Only a certain percentage of new releases enjoy noteworthy gains in market value, and it’s harder to buy in the quantities needed to make most speculators happy.

Tough economic times could mean a renewed interest in lower-priced cards and memorabilia, but the same kind of investor-fueled frenzy that sparked the hobby’s boom period isn’t likely to be repeated anytime soon.