5+1 Q&A With Kevin (@kevin.m.cormier)
Our hobby is a hobby of avatars and pseudonyms. But Kevin Cormier (@kevin.m.cormier) has always been Kevin Cormier: diverse collector, introspective thinker, music lover.
This week’s 5+1 Q&A discusses the value of experienced voices, the personal and logistical necessity of following your moral compass, and more:
Kevin M. Cormier
Q1: A while back on IG you posted an early Bowman Chrome auto of a player named Matt Bush, the top pick in the 2004 MLB Draft. You said when you put cards like that in your showcase at shows, collectors' responses tell you something about who they are. So, two questions, I guess: 1) Have you had a chance to put out the card yet, and what were some of the reactions, and 2) Where did you come up with this idea? It's really creative.
@kevin.m.cormier: I haven’t had the chance with this particular card, but I’ve done it with others in the past - most recently I had a 2010 Topps Chrome Stephen Strasburg auto RC /25, and it generated a lot of the same responses. Overall, it’s something I love to think about, because I fundamentally reject the premise in our current world of “I have an online opinion, and you have an online opinion, so they must be of equal merit.” Expertise and institutional knowledge are things I value very highly, as well as lived experience. So, someone can read about the 2004 MLB Draft class and get the trivia knowledge from it, but if you weren’t engaging in the hobby, on message boards, at shows in 2004, you just aren’t coming from the same place. And believe me, I *want* people to seek out that second hand knowledge, because I think the hobby is a far better place when more people become more broadly informed about the history and context of who and what came before them. But I also can’t value their experience the same as those who were there, just the same as I’ve listened to John Coltrane for three decades, but I wasn’t alive when Blue Trane came out, so my perspective holds only so much weight.
Q2: You seem to have such diverse collecting lanes: soccer, WNBA, hockey, baseball, wrestling, men's basketball. Within those lanes, how do you know which voices to listen to? I imagine things could get unwieldy without a little discipline.
@kevin.m.cormier: This is a great question, and I’m glad you asked it. To me, there are two things that go into it that should be top of mind of all collectors - self-awareness and a discriminating eye. You have to be comfortable with admitting you don’t know something - collecting isn’t that much different than other things in life where the hubris of continuing on in spite of ignorance leads to more bad than good. But that self-realization is only worthwhile if you also take great care to curate where you go for information. So, I find people that call themselves experts and tune in for a bit. You can weed out passion over performative gestures pretty easily. So, for soccer cards, the Soccer Cards United podcast is vital to me because I’ve listened to their growth while they constantly acknowledge that this is the best that they know now, and that it will evolve as they do. I was lucky enough to get added to a WNBA group chat on IG, and I am trying to be an absolute sponge because the knowledge in that group is leagues above most other collecting groups I’ve ever been a part of, regardless of sport. My hockey years were shaped by the old Beckett Boards, Brett (Stacking Slabs) helps me with wrestling - the off-center lanes are just so much more fun to be in.
Q3: That all makes sense. It sounds like you have some invaluable resources at your disposal. That said, that's still a LOT of lanes. I might be wrong, but I imagine discipline is key. I collect basically in just three lanes: baseball, a sprinkle of basketball, and cards of athletes who help me remember moments in my life. And even with so few lanes, I'm constantly torn by where to put my financial resources. How do you decide which cards to go after and which not to?
@kevin.m.cormier: See, I’m so undisciplined that I couldn’t even answer the previous question correctly, haha. And yes, there is definitely a challenge to having all the little projects that I do - my Watch List is consistently close to capacity. I’ve gotten a feel over time as to which cards I need to pounce on right away, and which ones will likely last a bit. The closer I am to completion of a set or run, the higher priority it is. Or if something comes up that’s under $10, I usually just grab it. But there are definitely times where the paralysis of indecision comes in - I recently sold a card for a decent amount on eBay that had been sitting for a while, so then I was trying to decide if I should add a couple of nice player PC cards, or knock off some cheaper set needs. A couple of days go by, I do nothing, and eBay deposits the money into my account, and I think I paid a vet bill with it. So more focus would probably help me be more decisive.
Q4: You've mentioned how you try to learn from others in the hobby. What do you think a newer collector could learn from you?
@kevin.m.cormier: I think a collector could use me as an example when it comes to building a collection that reflects you as a person. I come from a punk/indie background, so I’m naturally averse to mainstream trends. Prizm is like the Taylor Swift of the hobby - massive popularity, and you could have a perfectly fine hobby experience in just that lane, with plenty of peers to interact with. But for me, I need to be somewhere left of center, and figure out what the punk rock version of collecting is like, because that’s where I’m happy. And the other part of that is that I completely avoid collecting cards of players who may have done things I don’t agree with. I do my best to avoid players with a documented history of violence against women, for example (I never draft them on fantasy teams, either), because I don’t want the value of my collection to be tied to the success of a player who I’m not necessarily rooting for to succeed.
Now, mainstream hobby accounts and influencers would say I’m not “doing it right,” but I can look at my boxes and binders and feel like I have a good representation of myself.
Q5: How does your experience in an IG group chat differ from the broader, more general IG experience? Or maybe it doesn't and I'm just being presumptuous.
@kevin.m.cormier: Curation is key. The IG feed, try as I might, ends up throwing things in front of me that are cool, but I don’t care. I’m only in a couple of group chats, but the WNBA is extremely informative, and the Educators in the Hobby led to a couple of great individual relationships while still keeping that hub where we can check in with each other.
The IG feed feels like a museum, and the chat feels a little more like a conversation, but there’s still some gatekeeping and access issues there. That’s why I’m so excited to see what happens with @mindcycle_cards’s Hobby Boards, because it’s been a while since I’ve been on message boards, but that is still the most fruitful hobby experience that I’ve had.
+1 Question: What do you think of Fanatics buying PWCC? No, I'm just kidding. In your opinion, what makes for a good card show?
@kevin.m.cormier: I think it starts with variety. Here in the Boston area, we’re lucky enough to have several regularly occurring shows, and each one has its own flavor. But even within each show, I think it’s important for there to be different types of product available. If the majority of the show is just tables with the flippable shiny stuff, then I don’t know what you’re building there. It’s just everyone trying to pay 70% comps and no engagement. But, if you have a bunch of dealers who set up museums of nice cards that are way overpriced, you learn to just walk by them and maybe a 50-table show now only has 35 useful tables.
But ultimately, the variety needs to be the pool of participants. Despite what some want to believe, we are not an inclusive hobby. You see some performative inclusion, or people who truly think they are and just don’t know any better, but I go to a lot of shows by myself, and overhear a lot of conversations that are steeped in bigotry, racism, and misogyny. There are people who I simply do not do business with based on what I’ve heard them say. And even people who claim they want everyone to feel welcome just so they have more people to sell to - that’s not inclusion, that’s tokenism. I don’t have the answer on how to get the hobby where it needs to go, but I’m just trying to do my part to not perpetuate the status quo.