Baseball Collecting Books: Book 2, from 1993 -- and a bonus project from 1979

A couple of days ago, I mentioned that I had found a couple of older books on baseball card collecting -- one from 1979 and one from 1993.  The 1993 book reminded me why I stopped paying attention to baseball card collecting, while the 1979 book reminded me why I started in the first place.

To remember the fun of 1979, here's another fun Junk Wax project for anyone who may still use spiral notebooks.  To be fair, I had enough of Mario Soto's card from 1978 to make a Mario Soto notebook...

Do spiral notebooks still exist in this day of the electronic notebook/tablet?  Well, maybe you can use your junk wax to protect the back of your iPad/Kindle/Android/etc,.

Then there was the 1993 book, The Grand Slam Collection: Have Fun Collecting Baseball Cards by Jerry Ford (2d printing 1993, Lerner Pub. Co.).

By "Have Fun", I think the author means, "How make sure that trying to trade baseball cards with your friends will mean you end up with no friends."  That may sound a little harsh, but, for example, here's the introduction:

Now, as I said, this book reminded me why I stopped collecting cards about 25 years ago.  It's not that it is inaccurate in any way -- it is just that there are so many reminders throughout the book to the middle-school kids to whom the book was targeted that everyone in life literally is out to get them and cannot be trusted.

For example:

Or:

Or:

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they aren't after you.

I am not trying to be a Pollyanna about the current state of the hobby in any way.  I am sure that there are still nefarious companies and dealers on the market who would consider picking through sets, lifting one or two cards, and trying to sell it as a complete set.  I don't know of any personally.  In this age of fairly instant information sharing, though, and in this age of declining revenues for card makers and local card shops alike, one would think that dealers would be less likely to bite the hands that are feeding them.

Has anyone encountered such skullduggery these days?  (Please don't name names, though.  No one needs a lawsuit for something like that.)