It’s not a hobby, it’s an antidote
As men get older, they lose connections. Less friends, less relationships. Scientists and academics are giving this trend some thought.
I’m in my 40s, and although I’m a sample size of just one, this applies to me. It’s happening, and it’s awful during the moments I let myself think about it. I don’t feel lonely—I feel alone, which is different.
Whereas I once would have labeled myself an extrovert, my outlook flipped. That might be one reason I’ve let myself get sucked in by the hobby the last few years. It’s my way of trying to re-establish connections. For that reason, collecting cards isn’t just my hobby—it’s an antidote.
Shane from Sports Card Nobody hosted Mama Breaks (Stephanie) on his March 28 episode. I was alone throwing the ball for one of my dog’s, Dexter, when Stephanie brought up introversion and the hobby.
Here’s what she said, slightly abbreviated for length:
“I decided to start collecting, and it’s a very introverted, just ‘me’ type of thing where it involved me looking up stuff or buying things on eBay and keeping them,” she said. “Whereas, when I started joining these breaking rooms and actually opening product with other people, seeing those same people week after week and bonding over the hits we’ve gotten in the past or the stuff we’re currently buying and collecting, I think it’s a beautiful entry point to the hobby. It’s really a great place to build a community online.
“I think what blows my mind is that we forget how big of a percentage of people in the hobby do not get to go out to these card shows in person, don’t really have these great LCS’s … so really breaking, especially during the boom, helped a lot of people really learn a lot and build communities online.”
Breaking is communal. Trade nights are communal. Shows are communal. Hanging out at the LCS, my favorite part of the hobby, is communal. Parking yourself in front of eBay, as Stephanie said, is not.
Shane, who started SCN as a way to meet people and learn about the hobby, responded enthusiastically.
“The community aspect of this hobby is so special. You really miss out if all you’re doing is collecting,” Shane replied. “If that’s what you want to do, absolutely, you collect any way you want to collect. But when you get a chance to take a silly piece of cardboard and laugh about it with somebody else and talk about the history of that card, it takes things to an entirely new level.”
Shane’s response to Stephanie moved me because it mirrored my own reaction, so I DM’d him to ask if he’d elaborate, which I’m grateful he did. I told him in advance I was writing this post, so his replies are printed with his consent.
“The reason it stood out to me was that [Stephanie] spoke to something that matters a lot to me,” Shane wrote. “My entire podcast has become mostly about the perspective of a collector and the ways the hobby matters to me. The most important part of collecting for me is the connections it helps me make with other people. The fact that she’s driven by trying to build a community and trying to push those connections and interactions is exactly the type of positivity we need to hear more of.”
The older I get, the more awkward I feel, which is the opposite of how I thought it would go.
I related to what Shane messaged next:
“I’ve spoken on my podcast a lot about how, in general, I’m a reserved person. I’m the type of person that walks into a room full of strangers and my first impression is that nobody here will care about anything I have to say. That’s just where I tend to live in my head. The podcast was my way to try to put my voice and myself out there and see if I could make some more connections. Stephanie pushing that aspect of her breaking was exactly the thing that inspires me.”
In this world we are many things: daughters and sons, brothers and sisters, spouses, parents, employees, friends, significant others. But we’re also ourselves, and we deserve things for ourselves that we don’t have to justify to anyone. Maybe for some, including me, participation in the hobby is an announcement—to ourselves and to the world—that we’re not ready to disengage, to drift away as the earth continues to spin. That we’re ready to write a new chapter.
Or, maybe it’s just something fun to be a part of. That’s OK, too.