Then in two final chapters he presents his conclusions. I suspect it's no accident that SABR was formed at the same time. He finds card collectors to be motivated by conflicting desires. On the other hand, he wanted baseball card collecting to be an adult, important, serious, and thus worthy of attention. Bloom wonders why we go to all this trouble to be so unhappy.
Bloom sees nostalgia as potentially a positive force in our lives.
The card collecting that we do results in the maintenance of a form of play in our adult lives. We are being active and creative rather that simply accepting adult conventions. This kind of behavior makes me happy. But there are negative dimensions to nostalgia, too. Bloom indicates that the 1970s were a time when middle class, white males began to have plenty to be dissatisfied with.