OT - Grumpy Old Man Thread

[bayareabadger]

Well if Ive taken all your stuff theres a problem.  I cant find it.  Could someone please help me find it

Yes, but you’ve gotta buy me lunch afterwards. Sit down restaurant too.

[Gigem]

I look at my own adult interest and can credit myself with fostering the more mature interests of my older generation: watching sports, going to live events, road trips, wine club memberships, sports bars, and reading mid-century novels.

I bring this up because last weekend, while catching up with two college buddies who’ve remained friends largely by joining in with me on those very interests – road trips, sports bars, reading similar books – and it turns out they’re both avid collectors of Pokémon and Magic the Gathering. It was something about them I really hadn’t paid attention to.

I related their card collecting interest to what I was thinking about back in March: Millennials and Gen Zers don’t have the wealth to fund Boomer generation interests of golfing, yacht clubs, casinos, motorbiking, traveling Europe, etc. Instead, they stick to the less expensive interests drawn from their youth, which also allows them to draw on their fix for nostalgia. Even with the collectible value of Pokémon Cards surging to the point of pricing out beginners, many Millennials have childhood collections that allow them to enter the trading frenzy. However, it turns out collecting Pokémon Cards has become very expensive. Pokémon Cards have become an addiction. For the last few years newly released Pokémon product lines can’t meet demand purchasing demands.

Where Boomers got their gambling fix at the casino, Millennials and Gen Z get their fix by opening Pokémon booster packs – from Medium: “Pack Addiction: How Pokémon Cards Hijack Your Brain’s Reward System.” I had no idea the Pokémon card market was such a mania these past few years – from IGN: “10 Billion Pokémon Cards Were Printed Last Year — and It Still Wasn't Enough to Stop Shortages and Scalping.”

I skipped a couple of pages, but how is Pokémon any less credible than collecting baseball or football cards ?  Baseball cards were a big deal to the boomer generation and before. There just wasn’t much else to do. Three channels on TV and your favorite baseball players.