Entertaining article on baseball cards. I know I was all about collecting them in the early 90s. I'm sure there are others like me in the Sports Talk board. It makes me sad to think of all the money I wasted...

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" Last month, when my parents sold the house I grew up in, my mom forced me to come home and clear out my childhood bedroom. I opened the closet and found a box the size of a Jetta. It was so heavy that at first I thought it held my Weider dumbbells from middle school. Nope, this was my old stash. Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of baseball cards from the 1980s. Puckett, Henderson, Sandberg, Gwynn, and McGwire stared back at me with fresh faces. So long, old friends, I thought. It's time for me to cash in on these long-held investments. I started calling the lucky card dealers who would soon be bidding on my trove. First, I got a couple of disconnected numbers for now-defunct card shops. Not a good sign. Then I finally reached a human. "Those cards aren't worth anything," he told me, declining to look at them. "Maybe if you had, like, 20 McGwire rookie cards, that's something we might be interested in," another offered. "Have you tried eBay?" a third asked. If I had to guess, I'd say that I spent a couple thousand bucks and a couple thousand hours compiling my baseball card collection. Now, it appears to have a street value of approximately zero dollars. What happened? Baseball cards peaked in popularity in the early 1990s. They've taken a long slide into irrelevance ever since, last year logging less than a quarter of the sales they did in 1991. Baseball card shops, once roughly 10,000 strong in the United States, have dwindled to about 1,700. A lot of dealers who didn't get out of the game took a beating. "They all put product in their basement and thought it was gonna turn into gold," Alan Rosen, the dealer with the self-bestowed moniker "Mr. Mint," told me. Rosen says one dealer he knows recently struggled to unload a cache of 7,000 Mike Mussina rookie cards. He asked for 25 cents apiece. For someone who grew up in the late 1980s, this is a shocking state of affairs. When I was a kid, you weren't normal if you didn't have at least a passing interest in baseball cards. My friends and I spent our summer days drooling over the display cases in local card shops, one of which was run by a guy named Fat Moose. The owners tolerated us until someone inevitably tried to steal a wax pack, which would get us all banished from the store. Then we'd bike over to the Rite Aid and rummage through their stock of Topps and Fleer. Card-trading was our pastime, and our issues of Beckett Baseball Card Monthly were our stock tickers. I considered myself a major player on the neighborhood trading circuit. It was hard work convincing a newbie collector that Steve Balboni would have a stronger career than Roger Clemens. If negotiations stalled, my favorite move was to sweeten the pot by throwing in a Phil Rizzuto card that only I knew had once sat in a pool of orange juice. After the deal went through, my buddy wouldn't know he'd been ripped off until his older brother told him. He always got over it, because he had no choice: Baseball cards were our common language. In the early 1990s, pricier, more polished-looking cards hit the market. The industry started to cater almost exclusively to what Beckett's associate publisher described to me as "the hard-core collector," an "older male, 25 to 54, with discretionary income." That's marketing speak for the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons. Manufacturers multiplied prices, overwhelmed the market with scores of different sets, and tantalized buyers with rare, autographed, gold-foil-slathered cards. Baseball cards were no longer mementos of your favorite players—they were elaborate doubloons that happened to have ballplayers on them. I eventually left the hobby because it was getting too complicated and expensive. Plus, I hit puberty. It's easy to blame card companies and "the hard-core collector" for spoiling our fun. But I'll admit that even before the proliferation of pricey insert cards, I was buying plastic, UV-ray-protectant cases for my collection. Our parents, who lost a small fortune when their parents threw out all those Mantles and Koufaxes, made sure we didn't put our Griffeys and Ripkens in our bicycle spokes or try washing them in the bathtub. Not only did that ensure our overproduced cards would never become valuable, it turned us into little investors. It was only rational, then, for the card companies to start treating us like little investors. The next wave of expensive, hologram-studded cards didn't ruin collecting for us—we were already getting too old for the game. It ruined baseball cards for the next generation of kids, who shunned Upper Deck and bought cheap Pokémon and Magic cards instead. This year there are 40 different sets of baseball cards on the market, down from about 90 in 2004. That's about 38 too many. When there were just two or three major sets on the market, we all had the same small pool of cards. Their images and stats were imprinted on our brains. The baseball card industry lost its way because the manufacturers forgot that the communal aspect of collecting is what made it enjoyable. How can kids talk about baseball cards if they don't have any of the same ones? Seeing as the cards I once prized now fetch a pittance on eBay, I decided not to sell my collection. I figure my Boggs rookie is worth more as a keepsake of my card-shop days than as an online auction with a starting bid of 99 cents. The worthlessness of my collection gave me an idea, though. The card manufacturers and the Major League Baseball Players Association have launched a $7 million marketing campaign to remind a generation of children that baseball cards exist. Instead of spending all that money to tell kids that cardboard is cool, Topps and MLB should convince everyone that cards are worthless, suitable for tacking to the wall, flicking on the playground, or at least taking out of the package. In that spirit, the other day I opened three Topps packs that I'd stowed away as an investment in the late 1980s. I even tried the gum, which was no staler than I remember it being 20 years ago. And as I flipped through my new cards hoping to score a Mattingly, I felt that particular tinge of excitement that a generation of kids have missed out on. "

http://www.slate.com/id/2146218/?GT1=8483

[Edited on August 4, 2006 at 3:54 PM. Reason : .]

8/4/2006 3:54:04 PM

Quote :

"I even tried the gum, which was no staler than I remember it being 20 years ago"

this part is bullshit, i tried some 1987 topps bubble gum 2 years ago and the shit disintegrated within a minute

8/4/2006 4:03:45 PM

Yeah, I wasted a ton of money on them, still have aot of them. My family used to own a store but got out around 1995.

8/4/2006 4:06:02 PM

all those hours with becketts and essentially diong excel sheets on graph paper.

8/4/2006 4:09:59 PM

^^ Damn I bet you have a fucking ton of cards. Atleast your family got out in 1995 before it got really bad. All my cards are in my parents attic. Even if they aren't worth shit, I will never get rid of them because if nothing else they are nice memories.

I used to have a bad ass Don Mattingly collection. I had everyone of his cards (including All-Star cards, team cards with his picture, etc) up until about 1993 when too many cards, inserts, and other bullshit came out. As much as Upper Deck revolutionized the card industry, it also ruined it by making the cards too expensive and creating too many damn inserts.

8/4/2006 4:45:17 PM

i didn't read the article but i'm pretty sure it says that my thousands of baseball cards aren't worth shit

which i already knew

8/4/2006 4:46:47 PM

^What he said.

Me and Dad and my brother have thousands.

My Mickey Mantles/DiMaggios/Musials and others arent worth half what they were 10 years ago.

8/4/2006 9:14:10 PM

That's kind of sad to read really. Althought its hardly shocking with the direction the industry took in the 90's. Funny though that someone would post this just a couple days after my parents asked me what I want them to do with my old collection.

8/5/2006 9:38:21 AM

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"Damn I bet you have a fucking ton of cards"

Last time I counted, it was upwards of almost 10,000 cards

8/5/2006 12:10:24 PM

ive got somewhere around there too...i got back into it last summer and did some selling/trading on ebay, but damn cards have lost their value.

id love to see ur collection sometime tho

8/5/2006 7:07:19 PM

I used to collect in the late 80s and early 90s. I'd say in the early 90s when Upper Deck started coming out with those glossy cards was kind of the end of an era. Back then, Topps, Sportflick, Donruss and Fleer were the 4 big brands, with Topps being the preferred brand.

My parents always told me to keep them because my grandmother threw out my father's collection. Sad to see that they're not worth much now--looks like everyone had the same idea. It got Naziesque in the early 90s.

8/5/2006 7:27:56 PM

There are only two baseball card manufacturers now, Topps and Upper Deck. Fleer is gone, and MLB wouldn't give Donruss a license to try to reduce the product being put out in the market. It's nice to see that MLB is trying to get kids interested in cards again. Here are a whole bunch of recent articles and stuff on ESPN.com. All good reading.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=baseballcards/060725
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=caple/060726
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=snibbe/cards/060726
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=baseballcards/060727
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=thompson/060727
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=baseballcards/060728
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=snibbe/060728

8/5/2006 8:31:14 PM

Quote :

"I eventually left the hobby because it was getting too complicated and expensive."

bingo

8/5/2006 9:17:05 PM

^^ not true, there are tons of other brands. Sage and PressPass are 2 of the top brands for rookie cards and rare auto's.

[Edited on August 5, 2006 at 9:17 PM. Reason : ,]

8/5/2006 9:17:31 PM

ironically enough, i just moved into a house off of Western, and when i was prying around in the attic i found a binder of baseball cards.

the first page contains Johnny Bench, Ken Griffey Jr, Cal Ripken Jr, Randy Johnson rookie. funny how i always get excited looking at them

8/5/2006 9:29:17 PM

whoa, thats badass... in decent shape?

8/5/2006 9:35:41 PM

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"not true, there are tons of other brands. Sage and PressPass are 2 of the top brands for rookie cards and rare auto's."

Do Sage and PressPass make major league baseball cards? They may produce minor league baseball cards. I did a quick search and couldn't find any. Like I said before, I think Topps and Upper Deck are the only two card companies that have a license from MLB to produce baseball cards.

8/5/2006 10:37:30 PM

^ sage and presspass are predominantly football and basketball...

they are known for getting rookie cards out of players drafted only weeks after being drafted. Some of the 1st rookie cards are actually from presspass....i have a die-cut Allen Iverson presspass card that i recently found is now worth >$150.

julius hodge's 1st rookie card is presspass

Quote :

"whoa, thats badass... in decent shape?"

yea they are in good shape, i also just found a Chipper Jones Durham Bulls card too..haha its pretty cool!

8/6/2006 3:16:17 PM

this thread is perfect timing i was just about to sell my cards on ebay to make a few bucks i guess i was not the only one with this idea too bad they are worthless i guess i will hold on to them for another 10 or 20 and years and then see what they are worth

[Edited on August 6, 2006 at 9:34 PM. Reason : dfghjk]

8/6/2006 9:33:27 PM

I got shaq and alonzo rookie cards back to back in a pack one time. Beckett listed them at $175 and $125. The guy that ran the shop offered $200 on the spot and I refused. Had I taken that $200 I'd be a lot better off right now. Now the shaq is worth about $15 and alonzo probably not worth the paper it's printed on. Oh well maybe the shaq will pay off for a grandchild one day.

8/6/2006 10:36:37 PM

i don't think i could ever sell my collection

8/6/2006 10:58:30 PM

I stopped with the cards back in 93, back when I was 14. What a waste of money.

Comic books arent worth more than you buy them for most of the time but at least you can read a story and not some shitty baseball statistics.

8/7/2006 12:24:18 AM

I would never sell the thousands of cards I own, and every now and then I'll buy a pack if im in a store that has them...

Quote :

"I felt that particular tinge of excitement that a generation of kids have missed out on."

8/7/2006 8:12:27 AM

yeah, I got rid of most of my cards that were "useless" several years ago. So my collection is only a few hundred cards now. Mostly rookies from the 80's: McGwire, Maddux, Smoltz, Griffey Jr, Canseco, Bonds, Bagwell, etc

although I still love to go to card shops and look around. Occasionally I'll buy something

[Edited on August 7, 2006 at 9:16 AM. Reason : card shop]

8/7/2006 9:15:43 AM

I collected football cards in the early 90s, mostly just looking to pull any Dallas Cowboy I could. After awhile I quit or lost interest. About a year ago I was in Wal-Mart and saw some packs and on a whim or whatever bought several. The cards were 2005 Topps All American, retro styled cards that look like 1950s cards and are of old and new "All Americans" in their college jerseys. As I went through the packs I found an Autographed Jim Brown card with him in his Syracuse uniform. I was stunned, having never pulled a card like this before. I later found out that there are only 19 of them made. I checked out ebay and saw a fewthat had sold for as much as $400. I started buying more but have never pulled anything as big

8/7/2006 9:24:41 AM

^ thats awesome...i pulled a Ginobli/Duncan jersey auto card from their NBA Finals team 2 years ago outta a Walmart pack haha

8/7/2006 11:36:00 AM

When I was a kid, I had all these shitty 90-93 Donruss, Topps, Score, etc common cards and me and my brother wanted to take them and plaster our bedroom walls with them. Nothing but shitty ass Alfredo Griffin and Jeff Blauser cards hung all over the room covering every inch of wall. Obviously it would have taken forever and a hell of alot of staples, but my dad was like "Hell Fuck NO!!!"

8/7/2006 11:49:43 AM

Jeff Blauser
Ha, I remember him. Memories...

8/7/2006 12:28:02 PM

My fav baseball card was OIL CAN BOYD i thought that was hilarious

8/7/2006 1:45:31 PM

personally, i'm very partial to my 1990 NBA Hoops FENNIS DEMBO card

8/7/2006 1:51:04 PM

Quote :

"My fav baseball card was OIL CAN BOYD i thought that was hilarious"

hahaha, i have that card too, but forgot about it til now. Damn, i bet I have 10000 cards. :-(

8/7/2006 2:40:18 PM

Billy Ripken

8/7/2006 2:48:07 PM

Ah, the "Fuck Face" card.

Good times.

8/7/2006 8:02:07 PM