Outline · [ Standard ] · Linear+ What about Bob?

He should be proud that the site is in such capable hands...   Of course when he does return someone will have to distract him long enough while the stale doughnuts are dumped and the crumbs swept under the rug.

Those crumbs are from the bodies we hide all over the place.

My semi-annual checkup on Bob and what happened to finestkind? sheesh..i can't take a break for anything before someone dissappears..!

My semi-annual checkup on Bob and what happened to finestkind? sheesh..i can't take a break for anything before someone dissappears..!

Thinning out for sure, to say the least.

My semi-annual checkup on Bob and what happened to finestkind? sheesh..i can't take a break for anything before someone dissappears..!

Not sure. Kind of semi-quiet here now. Life is full of change and maybe they changed what they are into????

Guess when I came walking in, they went walking out, its was more active here when I first joined, just dont understand what happened!

I'm just gonna stick around and see what happens, to many good folks here to just walk away, think everyone just needs to step up and make do of whats already here, a Trading site, and forums to post in, kudo's to the members that keep Posting Contest and Box Breaks and keeping members active here, and the TCC team members that stick it out with the moderating!

Who's paying for the server by the way? Someone is keeping it going, so lets get active everyone! Hopefully the owner will come through and help with the site issue's along the way!

  Who's paying for the server by the way? Someone is keeping it going, so lets get active everyone! Hopefully the owner will come through and help with the site issue's along the way!

The site is currently being automatically paid for by the owner still. I conversed with him several weeks ago. Dont anybody worry. The site is what we make it. Like Paul said, lets keep active.

Bob is a stand up, fair and all around great guy. Everyone loved him... We disagreed politically but he was classy and a great forum admin.

Unfortunately, when he stepped away a few of the people left with some authority let it go to their heads. TCC was my first card home and I defended it for years... But a point came when I removed my sunglasses and evaluated things objectively and I didnt like what I saw. I witnessed personal vendettas, suspensions, back biting, gossiping, and grown men acting like high school girls. A point came where I couldnt defend TCC anymore on other forums. IMHO, some of the mods were the main factor in TCC declining. One person(Bob) was not responsible for the sites decline in popularity.

This is my personal opinion and the opinion of 100's of others Ive personally conversed with on 4 different forums. Dont take my word for it.... Ask around and you'll find the general consensus is that not all but the majority of the mods were the reason people migrated elsewhere.

Bob is a stand up, fair and all around great guy. Everyone loved him... We disagreed politically but he was classy and a great forum admin.

Unfortunately, when he stepped away a few of the people left with some authority let it go to their heads. TCC was my first card home and I defended it for years... But a point came when I removed my sunglasses and evaluated things objectively and I didnt like what I saw. I witnessed personal vendettas, suspensions, back biting, gossiping, and grown men acting like high school girls.  A point came where I couldnt defend TCC anymore on other forums. IMHO, some of the mods were the main factor in TCC declining. One person(Bob) was not responsible for the sites decline in popularity.

This is my personal opinion and the opinion of 100's of others Ive personally conversed with on 4 different forums. Dont take my word for it.... Ask around and you'll find the general consensus is that not all but the majority of the mods were the reason people migrated elsewhere.

Very insightful! I feel like the glory days were just yesterday then I look at the calendar and see how the years have flown by. Sad to see it go down like this. Maybe the Mayans predicted the end of TCC. I might try to get back into the hobby and pursue trading on here in the next few months if my home life follows how I plan.

Bob is a stand up, fair and all around great guy. Everyone loved him... We disagreed politically but he was classy and a great forum admin.

Unfortunately, when he stepped away a few of the people left with some authority let it go to their heads. TCC was my first card home and I defended it for years... But a point came when I removed my sunglasses and evaluated things objectively and I didnt like what I saw. I witnessed personal vendettas, suspensions, back biting, gossiping, and grown men acting like high school girls.  A point came where I couldnt defend TCC anymore on other forums. IMHO, some of the mods were the main factor in TCC declining. One person(Bob) was not responsible for the sites decline in popularity.

This is my personal opinion and the opinion of 100's of others Ive personally conversed with on 4 different forums. Dont take my word for it.... Ask around and you'll find the general consensus is that not all but the majority of the mods were the reason people migrated elsewhere.

Jeremy, reality is that the decline of this site is everyone's fault! Bob for walking away and leaving a team of mods in place which in your words "caused the decline" and not leaving them with the tools to fix some things like the main page or the virus issue. I was a "co-leader", in Bob's absence, of that group so I guess I take the blame as I could not keep people interested, stop adults from acting like 2 year olds, or fix things.

I don't think the decline was due to the mods. As the old saying goes it takes two to tango, so I don't think the mods were the whole problem in the issues that made people leave. There were clicks that wanted it their way, here as well and they butted heads with the mods and when some of them got punished for butting heads, those clicks joined their "leaders" in revolting, leaving, etc. Not saying the mods may not share the blame, but sometimes when you put up with the ###### they put up with for no compensation it pushes you over the edge. I had several personal battles with hard headed individuals that often made me want to ban those members. As you said GROWN MEN acting like high school girls were issues from specific members outside of the mods. Anyway, the above stuff is history now. The mods are still the mods, until Bob decides he wants to run his site again and clean house, etc. At the rate things are going he probably will not have to, as most have left or spend very little time here.

Anyway, this topic is really about where is Bob and not about why someone wants or does not want to be here, so we should try to keep it on that topic.

I have not spoken to Bob in years via phone, email, pm, etc. I hope he is doing well enjoying his family life and hope some day he cares enough to return here.

chopinalex, dude I'm still alive calm down.

Im still here. Not a lot but i get on here and there. I do kinda miss the way it used to be. Was a time when you could make a topic and on the home page it was at the top of the list and 5 mins later it was gone already. Now sometimes you topic will stay up on the top list for a day or 2!

I do know several people got out of the hobby on here, so they also pretty much left the site as well. Some people left because it kept slowing down so they just jumped off the ship, and more that did it the slower it got and the more would leave.

Then you had the hack or whatever was going on for a while and what not. You also had where only Bob could allow new members on and there was a TON of people that tried to get on and just couldn't. And by the time someone else could do it those people were long gone.

Trading also slowed way down, not exactly sure why. I know some people stopped busting new stuff for one reason or another. Card company's losing contracts. Cost of products sky rocketing. Really bad high-end boxes. Lack of new ideas. The trashing of old good stuff that worked. Bad economy where people couldn't afford to collect as much or bust new stuff. Postage going up, so those tiny traded got to the point where it cost to much to do them. Other sites allowing rules to be broke (like paypal gift) so why would you do a deal here and pay fees, when the next site will let you avoid them.

I really see the whole card market honestly fading away. Not over night but I do see it coming. People are getting sick of the same stuff. And how many people can bust $100 packs and $500 boxes and get $20-$100 bucks back? And its not just a bad pack or 2 here and there. Like panini black. Even the big hits are not getting the cost back of a pack/box! And they put some players in there that made you scratch your head. The only way you come out ahead on a pack/box of this is if you pull a griffen or luck auto patch! Other wise it was a bust break. From all the breaks I watched on youtube and people listing there breaks on ebay. You also have the fakes market bigger then ever!! And not much to stop it. People swapping patches. People faking serial numbers. People faking graded cards. Fakes slipping by the company's that "authenticate" stuff. Fake autos on everything. So when you have a ton more fakes then real, its hard for people to spot the fakes. And if they are buying fakes for half the cost of a real, how can you sell the real one. Used to be a time you could spot 1-2 fakes in the mix of 100 real but now its hard to spot the real 1-2 in a 100 fakes.

Then you have online sellers now. Which has killed the local stores. Hard to sell something for $100 in your store, when you can go online and buy it for half as much and its comes right to your door. And with the online people are willing to all but give there stuff away, so you cant get much out of your stuff (if you have the same stuff). And you also now have more "flippers" or investors then actual collectors. They are buying boxes to bust just to resell the cards. Some of them don't even collect at all! I talked to a guy at a local card show they doesn't collect anything. He just buys and sells for a job. Which is fine if you have 1 here and 1 there, but there are to many people doing it. And you used to have people that collected there favorite team or players or sets. Now they only want the newest hottest thing out and only the top players. So unless you have those you cant get ride of much. And you get stuck with a ton of stuff you don't want and no one else does ether. And you are also getting the "false" idle that stuff is rare. Like 1/1's. Yes each is rare. But when there are 100 different 1/1's for each player in a set (like SPX moments) are they really that rare? The only difference in each one is the little moment in the card. And they are making 25 different versions of each card, like topps chrome has like 20 different refractors now. So even if each version is numbered to /25, you think those are rare, but when you have 20 different versions, there is 500 different cards for that one player. and when you have them /1 /10 /25 /50 /100 /250 /500 /1000 you can see they really are not as rare as you might believe. And you also have the people that only want and care about the "hits". Now days you cant really give away base, let alone sell them. Even the biggest players from the best products on bring a buck or 2. Used to be if you pulled a card /100 (that came 1 maybe 2 per box) that was a big hit and valuable now ever card in the box is /100. They have flooded the market with "rare" not so rare stuff. Now if it isn't rare people don't want it. And everything is centered around the newest group of rookies (3/4s of them will turn out to be bust or ok players) and all those cards will become pretty much junk. And when you end up with a closest full of those junk type cards that used to be hot stuff it makes you think back. If you love your cards then thats one thing. But its hard to sell and trade the stuff you don't want or collect anymore if it isn't worth anything. So its harder to get the stuff you do want unless you keep dumping money into it. Thats why trading is so hard now, unless you have the new best stuff.

There are just some many things going bad for the hobby as a whole. There are people making a killing doing nothing but scams with our hobby, you can only get burnt bad so many times before you just give up. You might be able to get burnt for $100 one or 2 times where what you bought is worthless, but can you 20-50 times? And how many bad boxes are you going to open at $100 each and get $20 back if your lucky. You have to win sometimes or you will stop!

So all that also plays a roll in these type of sites dieing down. I honestly think its the card market dieing more then the sites them self. And the site dieing is just one of the repercussions of the market dieing. No market, hard for the site thats dedicated to the market to survive. Just think of the pokemon market, and any sites they were just for that, I am sure 99% of them are toast. There card market pretty much died so did the sites for them (I don't know for sure, but I its not hard to see that being the case).

I don't want to sound negative but just saying what I see. I wish the site could revive and the hobby also but I don't honestly see it happening unless big change comes down the pipe line. If you ask me, I give the hobby 3-5 more years as we know it. Yes there will still be collectors and cards, but not like we know it now. Look at all the brands/company's that came alone and gone. Pacific, Collectors Edge, Fleer, Proset, Best, Action Packed, Pinnacle, and im sure there are some others. GONE. Well some are kinda other company's or there name like Fleer is owned by upperdeck. But upperdeck I think is on there last leg, losing licenses, law suites, stuff like that. And they only have so many college photos they can use (they didn't know this point would come) and people don't want to look at the same photo on ever card they have. And college stuff has never done really well like sage and press pass, hot when it come out, but dies ever year really fast once the other stuff comes out. They are always a half year hit at best. Some of the same for the other big players. The small guys will get crushed out. I could go on and on but I think I have way more then made to point.

Also graded cards I think are kinda dieing out. Because now most things are coming our near mint to mint or better most times. So everything is going to grade a 8 or 9 or better 9 out of 10 times. So the "desire" for a high grade is not like it used to be. And with all the cases for cards now, most are going to be in decent condition for a long time to come. Kinda why the old stuff in high grades brings so much money, they handled the cards back then, there was not really cases, off centering was a really common known thing in the hobby. Cards were in cheap tight packs and thin junk boxes so corners got beat up a lot before they ever came out of the packs or boxes. Now they come in boxes inside of boxes etc.

I give it 5 years and most of these big players will be gone. Not wishing that on them, but just where I see it going. It will come down to 1-2 company's left and they will be out of ideas so they will slowly die off as well. And most things having to do with them will goes as well.

But I do hope maybe the hobby and this site can make a comeback. I miss the old days on here.

Sorry if I made anyone who reads this feel down about our hobby.

Cliff notes anyone?

I believe this site will survive as long as everyone contributes. What I mean is have everyone engage or participate in conversations. At this moment I have plenty of time on my hands and am trying to focus on bringing life back to TCC. I cant do it alone. Its a community effort not just a CZ Team thing or Admin thing. Its everyone involved. As a member of the CZT I am stepping up to the plate to try and tackle this issue of low activity. I wish I could help with all issues concerning this site but only a few CZT members are blessed with the main controls. So my powers are limited. I have recently proposed many ideas to the team to turn this ship around. Hopefully some of the ideas come to fruition.

As for the hobby I believe its what we make of it. To start off true collectors do not bust boxes to try to get more than what they paid for it. Only gamblers do that. Collectors bust boxes to get their favorite players/teams cards. Too many people worry about making their money back. You will be dissatisfied probably 90 times outta 100 if thats what you do. We should collect for the fun, not the money.

As for Bob, I think this site will do fine without him as long as its in the right hands. He built this ship. Its up to us to guide it and keep it afloat. I agree with redwing40 about making some changes with the CZT. If some dont have the time and the passion they should step down with an invitation to come back when both the time and passion return.

I wanna touch base with a comment edgerrin32 brought up about people who want only the hottest things. I am a card show promoter going on a year now. From the experiences Ive had so far there are still old school collectors and dealers out there. I could not believe how popular vintage is to this day. Making money at card shows is all about demand in your area. What might not sell in one place might sell at a show 50 miles away. You can only reach so many people at a card show. Thats the advantage of the internet. Not so much overhead compared to a LCS. To me, a card show is not about making profit off renting tables out. Its about the fun we experience. Talking to other collectors. My goal as a promoter is to get more kids involved into the hobby. Not to make money with the hobby but to have fun with the hobby.

To sum up what this topic is about....we dont need Bobs presence to keep the ship sailing. We all have the power to keep it afloat. All we have to do is click on the "New Topic" button or the "Post Reply" button. Thats it. But its up to the CZ team to make sure its running smoothly and rid of all the kinks that could harm our ship. I see a turnaround for TCC in 2013. Im gonna do my best for the community.

Whatever you guys need let me know. Always willing to help.

Edge thanks for the short version of your story..lol...

Gforce..I remember a long long time ago you trying to get your first group box break going and I was advertising a lot for you..then you became a box break guru and now you are retired and live in africa or something. Time flies...or i'm just stuck in 2006-2007

what happened to ace and kooljazz and I know about mango...and on and on and on.....

I miss teh good old days, posting back in '06 about an upcoming box break and having the thread go to 2 pages with just people wishing good luck. Even though i'm not interested in the hobby anymore this site is still the first website I log onto every time I turn on my browser.

Box Breaks made me go broke!!! I took a hiatus and then was forced into retirement after a failed comeback attempt.

what happened to ace and kooljazz and I know about mango...and on and on and on.....

Steve er aceecards is still here, just post something about the NHL comeback or lockout and you will probably get a reply or check those recent topics as I have seen him posting. Ken er KJ pops in rarely, haven't seen him in a while, but I know he posted a few months back. You can track any of those members by looking them up in members and then clicking on recent posts.

Jeremy, reality is that the decline of this site is everyone's fault!  Bob for walking away and leaving a team of mods in place which in your words "caused the decline" and not leaving them with the tools to fix some things like the main page or the virus issue.  I was a "co-leader", in Bob's absence, of that group so I guess I take the blame as I could not keep people interested, stop adults from acting like 2 year olds, or fix things. 

I don't think the decline was due to the mods.  As the old saying goes it takes two to tango, so I don't think the mods were the whole problem in the issues that made people leave.  There were clicks that wanted it their way, here as well and they butted heads with the mods and when some of them got punished for butting heads, those clicks joined their "leaders" in revolting, leaving, etc.  Not saying the mods may not share the blame, but sometimes when you put up with the ###### they put up with for no compensation it pushes you over the edge.  I had several personal battles with hard headed individuals that often made me want to ban those members.  As you said GROWN MEN acting like high school girls were issues from specific members outside of the mods.  Anyway, the above stuff is history now.  The mods are still the mods, until Bob decides he wants to run his site again and clean house, etc.  At the rate things are going he probably will not have to, as most have left or spend very little time here. 

Anyway, this topic is really about where is Bob and not about why someone wants or does not want to be here, so we should try to keep it on that topic.

I have not spoken to Bob in years via phone, email, pm, etc.  I hope he is doing well enjoying his family life and hope some day he cares enough to return here.

Maybe I was little harsh on the mods. You make several valid points. I shouldn't paint with a broad brush because there were so many variables. However, I stand by my "Opinion", simply because of the general consensus. But with that said I understand there were many variables and like you said... these are unpaid volunteer positions with no training and we are all humans. Stuff happens and there were many child minded members pushing you guys to the limit.

With that said your name never once came to my mind when I originally posted in this thread. In my book you have always been one of TCC's finest. I say that because in hindsight and after reading your reply I hope you were not personally offended with my post. I would never question your integrity and dedication to TCC based on my trades, experiences and observations of you when I was active here.

IMHO, Bob will be back.... He'll right the ship and TCC will stand the test of time... This forum had something SCF, Blowout, etc, etc didnt have...... A sense of community.... It wasnt always about BV/SV. We cared for each other, we were brothers and sisters. Ive seen thousands of dollars worth of cards given away for free. Ive seen members rally around other members in time of need and support. We weren't trading partners. We were friends. We were family. We were loyal.

I loved trading with Michael(Tarasadie17), Dwight(Urbanmonk) and so many others. Artyman's box break groups were the best. Johnnys post were hilarious and Richards post were always anxiously awaited. Steve's collection and box breaks were legendary. His knowledge of the hobby was envied and admired. Crpalmi's hobby changing group box breaks altered the hobby forever. Bob's April fools day livestream video was legendary. The politics forum was hated and loved by many. I could go on and on and I'm sure many of you have have similar stories.

Bob will resurface and when he does we will rally around him and restore TCC's reputation. People will call TCC home again and broken relationships will be mended! The hobby isnt going anywhere and TCC will survive.

Oh I thought this was about that Bill Murray Movie.

Seriously - I was around during some of the hayday of TCC and when Bob still held onto ALL the reins for the site.

Since then the Mods have been doing an admirable job keeping TCC afloat (as Abel so aptly put it).