Card Message Boards

A recent episode of the Wax Museum Podcast, focused on basketball cards, provides a high-level history of message boards as they relate to the sports cards hobby (episode 125). I'd encourage anyone interested in cards, no matter the sport, to go and give this episode a listen. It's fun to reminisce on my early days of online card trading, but it was also interesting to hear others experiences.

My message board of choice was The Bench. Friendly group of users, mostly easy to make deals in my value range, and a board focused on baseball. I made a good many basketball card trades as well, but they were tougher to come by on The Bench. The last trade I made there was in 2012, coming up on a decade ago, which is hard to believe because that site was a daily stop for me. I check in every once in awhile, and the forum is still going strong on the baseball wants and for trade sections. I'm sure the volume of posts and trades is well down from where it was when I was active, but it's great to see people still making deals on the site.

I wasn't as active, but still made a good many trades on Sports Card Forum.

Honestly, my collection would be nowhere close to what it is today without these message boards. They were my primary method for acquiring the cards I wanted. Looking back at deals I made on these sites, not many of them look like 'bad' deals. I never had a Trout rookie to trade, for example. I probably traded some early LeBron cards that looking back I probably should have held onto, but I'm happy with where my collection is now. It's also interesting to see how my collection focus shifted over the years. In baseball, I focused on Braves from the 90s and Cal Ripken Jr, throwing in some players I've mentioned on this blog before like Cesar Izturis. And while my focus has shifted somewhat based on where I now call home, I traded for cards then that are still some of my favorite cards now. 

I also tried to complete a few insert sets. The farthest I got was 2006 Bazooka Stamps, and most of these I picked up via message board trades. I'll have to get this back up on the want list and finish it out. I'm pretty close. 

Outside of the card blogosphere, where have you made trades over the years? What are your earliest memories of making trades? Were you on sports card message boards? What was your experience like?