For me it's the memeories. I remember the cards as much or more than the players themselves. I remember the hysteria around the 1984 Donruss Mattingly, the 86 Donruss Canseco, a couple of 1985 Topps Goodens paying for a box. I remember Fernandomania and hearing the records he broke. I remember the 1990 Leaf Thomas, the 89 UD Griffey. I remember the Glenn Hubbard 84F snake card, the Billy Ripken, etc. I grew up mostly without cable, and even when I had it, there was no MLB season ticket, so the Twins playing a few games on channel 9, the Game of the Week, and a smattering of Cubs/Braves games the couple years we did have cable was the baseball I saw. I didn't get to see much Yaz, no Aaron, Mays, Clemente, Mantle, missed Killebrew, but I remember the 65 Topps Yaz, reaching up to catch a fly ball, the 65 Clemente staring at you, the Aaron HR record breaker. The few Mays cards I could afford as a kid, etc. Pictures are like LP's or cassette tapes, relics. People don't pass them around anymore, they pass around the digital camera, they point you to their facebook or photobucket. 8x10's are bulky, harder to store/protect. I can bring a stack of cards to Twinsfest, hand them to the players to sign, wait for the ink to dry, drop it in a penny sleeve, toss it in a Card Saver or top loader, and slide them in my jacket pocket for the rest of the day as I go about my business. I can't do that with 8x10's. Plus the cost of cards from my childhood has gone WAY down. Canseco/Mattingly/Griffey/Thomas used to be close to $100 cards when I was a kid/teenager, 1985 Puckett cards were $20-50, a 74 Topps Schmidt was $50-100 at times, now it is the price of a blaster or less for a pretty nice one. I can send one out TTM and not be despondent if it never comes back. It's a bummer,but I can deal with 40 year old me losing a $2 card a lot better than 17 year old me could deal with losing that $85 Canseco rookie. The internet has made cards so much more accessible to people, even in the mid - later 90's those 90 Leaf Griffey, Maddux etc were $10-20 cards, now I can buy the set for the price I'd have paid for those two cards
