Beckett: Women are collectors too

WOMEN ARE CARD COLLECTORS TOO

(SOURCE: Beckett Sports Card Monthly)

Walking on the floor of a card show is an interesting experience. There aren’t usually hawkers trying to get me to look at their wares. Rather they look behind me in hopes to find the child who dragged me to the show.

For the record: there are never children with me at card show and I didn’t go there kicking and screaming.

I’m a card collector. And, I’m a woman.

The surprise from many vendors can be laughable at times. When they finally realize I’m a customer with cash to spend, they’ll do whatever it takes. There is no discrimination now even though some can hardly believe a woman collects cards.

Then, they pull out their greatest collection of WNBA cards.

That’s when I usually walk away.

While collectors are overwhelmingly male, there are still many female collectors out there, which shouldn’t come as surprising as many people seem to be.

Women make a large portion of the fan bases for professional teams. The reach of women by online sports site is close to the same as men in a study released in August by ComScore. Among women 25-to-34-year olds, the reach is 30 percent and when compared to men of the same age bracket the reach is closer to 40 percent.

Men still spend more time on sports sites than women, but the study shows women do love their sports.

So, why shouldn’t women also be collectors?

“Baseball is my favorite sport to watch and attend games,” said Marie Pecora, 29, of Valley Cottage, N.Y., who is co-author of a card collecting blog A Cardboard Problem with myself.

“I like the thrill of the chase, picking up packs of cards and seeing if I can get my favorite players,” Pecora said. “It's a fun hobby and a way to make friends with similar interests as an adult.”

Female sports fans are a growing market across most sports. Look at hockey where 25 percent of the Philadelphia Flyers' season ticket holders are women, said Brian Smith, the Flyers' public relations assistant.

In the first two rounds of the 2010 Stanley Cups playoffs, women viewers increased 15 percent over last year, NHL research showed.

But even with the burst of estrogen, it seems women have yet to conquer the card-collecting world.

At a recent card show Pecora attended with her mother, a vendor asked her what kind of cards she collected.

When she told him baseball cards, he told her “the bright, shiny ones sell for lots of money.”

“For a minute I just stood there with my mouth open in shock that he thought I was that stupid,” said Pecora, a New York Yankees fan who collects Robinson Cano and Albert Pujols. “Then I just laughed and said, they are refractors. I collect cards, I'm well aware of what they are. Then I found out he was from Boston.”

Female card collectors aren’t different from their male counterparts. Collections start in similar ways.

Lisa Su, 35, of Mountain View, Ca., began collecting when she was in elementary school when a friend Jeff would sell her 1985 Fleer for a couple of dollars a bundle.

“I used to enjoy looking at the cards and reading the back,” Su said. “At the time, I had more male friends because the girls shunned me because I didn’t speak English very well. But the boys accepted me because I could kick a ball really far and throw a ball really far.”

Su took a similar path of many collectors. When she was in high school, she lost touch with collecting cards, but in 1993 she caught the collecting bug once again.

Su collected Brett Favre and one of her favorite cards she owns is a 2002 Stadium Club Co-Signers Dual Autograph Kurt Warner/Brett Favre.

But her collecting choices received a few off-hand remarks that a man who collected Favre would likely never hear.

“I’ve been asked, ‘Do you only collect hot guys?’” Su said. “I think it’s because I collected J.T.

Snow and Brett Favre.  I loved J.T. Snow because of his defensive skills and his batting, not because of how he looked.  I collected Brett Favre because he's a gunslinger.”

That’s a common misconception for many female sports fans in general. As a Derek Jeter collector, I have received the same comment.

But I’ve never heard a guy ask another Yankee if he only likes Jeter because he’s cute.

We look at numbers, statistics and how they play the game. We funnel toward certain players because we enjoy aspects of a person’s talent.

And like men who collect Cat Osterman cards, we would agree, they are easy on the eyes. That’s just the bonus to collecting trading cards, but never a reason.

Female collectors have formed a bond with each other as they know what stereotypes they have to contend with. They have met through social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter and message boards. They have also become some of the best traders. Whenever I get a Josh Hamilton card, the first person I think about making trades with is Tricia Hall, who runs the blog The Hamiltonian.

Her blog amongst others that are run by women have opened the eyes of many collectors.

“I'm not so surprised with women collectors because I've been exposed to so many of them on the blogs,” collector Peter Caprara, 29, of High Point, N.C., said. “I don’t remember any female collectors when I was a kid. I was surprised when I got back into collecting to find female bloggers, who wrote about baseball cards.”

But the reason there aren’t as many female sports collectors varies in opinion between collectors.

It could be from a lack of friends who are interested in the same hobby or that girls aren’t exposed to the hobby when they’re young. For little girls there are many competing hobbies, but recently there seems to have an influx of trading cards revolving around what girls like such as Hannah Montana.

“Usually, collecting memorabilia is something that connects you to a specific sport whether you’re there or played the game,” said Brian Rozsahegyi, a collector from Calgary, Alberta. “It’s something you have to hang on to that memory. For women who never played sports or went to games, it doesn’t mean the same thing.

“But times have changed,” he added. “Big time.”