Turning Back The Clock: Rediscovering Baseball Cards
An old hobby makes a strong comeback
I needed to put the cards down already. Needed to, but I couldn’t. I recognized the feeling — it had been 30 years since it visited me so energetically: the undeniable power of baseball cards to overwhelm the need for sleep.
Things were different now, though. Very different. Before too long, a toddler would be waking up, completely indifferent to the fact that his father’s joy for an old hobby had been unexpectedly rekindled after lying dormant for decades.
One week ago, on a Zoom with college friends, I learned that the baseball card market is not just popular again, it’s on fire. In fact, many cards are more valuable than ever.
Not quite three years ago, I packed up my baseball cards from my childhood bedroom, just prior to a cross-country move to San Diego. At the time, I can remember thinking about the Mickey Mantle rookie card. You know, the 1952 Topps 2-1/16″ x 3-1/8″ piece of cardboard that defined a generation. Seemingly everyone who was a kid in the ‘50s possessed the card only to have their mother throw it out or give it to the kid down the street who put it in his bike spokes.
When I was packing up my cards — stored thoughtfully but not hermetically in 800-count storage boxes, old wax-pack cases, and random boxes into which my cards fit in a Tetris-like manner — I kept thinking about the newspaper articles that both my grandfathers shared with me during my active card-buying days. Every year, there was another story detailing how baseball cards outpaced the S&P 500. Data supported the hobby as a sound investment. Then, in the late ‘80s, card production increased significantly and saturated the market.
For the last three or four years, though, baseball cards — and trading cards in general — have rallied. All it took was the pandemic lifestyle to give the industry an additional push.
Wall Street has gotten involved, and there are multi-million dollar funds that focus on cards. I couldn’t help but find the baseball card industry’s renaissance a bit — shall we say — GameStoppy. But now I know that, in 2018, while I was moving my collection out of my parents’ house in Baltimore, the value of cards was already on the rise.
Neglected as they may have been, I was nonetheless tethered to them after years of devotion. They were always there for me. The fronts of the cards put faces to names, while the backs offered the statistics and insights that fed my cravings and curiosities. I alphabetized them, ordered them by number, by team, by year; I displayed them around my room. But as I grew older and the market — flooded with more and more brands, editions, and gimmicks — flatlined, I didn’t know if I even wanted them anymore. I just didn’t know what I’d ever do with them.
It was the monetization of baseball cards that ended the innocence of my youth.
Sometime in 1985, I walked into Jay’s Sports Connection. Of course, my friends and I weren’t there for baseball cards. It was the peak of Garbage Pail Kids mania, and the word on the playground was that Jay’s had the trash. (More on that later.)
I remember standing shoulder-to-shoulder with other kids in a bit of a scrum, each of us jockeying for the attention of the store employees: Jay, whose name was on the sign outside, and a man named Uncle Dave, whose t-shirt advertised that moniker. Classmates of mine who were indoctrinated collectors seemed to speak a different language within the store’s confines. When I had my chance to speak to Uncle Dave — a man who might have a case against The Simpsons if he sued the show for creating Comic Boy Guy in his likeness — he told me that the rubber bands I had around my cards would decrease their value by potentially warping, bending, or tearing them.
Farewell, childhood. It was a good nine-year run.
Immediately, the joy of collecting baseball cards became competitive, objectively measurable, and financially motivated. Hey, it also turned out that the baseball sticker collections I had were worthless because I actually stuck them in the book. Go figure.
As of last week, my cards had been resting peacefully in a built-in cabinet, clinging to their real estate before beach towels or spare sheets uprooted them.
Well, it’s a whole new week now, and the towels, sheets, family photo albums, and my wife’s yearbooks better watch how they speak to those precious baseball cards.
Before we go any further, I want to make something clear. I imagine that reading about someone meticulously going through his baseball cards is only slightly more enjoyable than enduring a former friend’s story of how his fantasy football team lost because the running back took a knee at the 1-yard-line. Nobody wants that. Nobody ever says, “So tell me about your fantasy football team.” Similarly, I don’t think any of you wants the play-by-play of me scanning through the 40-year-old cards — in decent yet unremarkable condition — of mostly long-forgotten players.
I’ll keep it simple. The cards I’ve accumulated over the years have been reborn. This week, I have texted with friends about the cards we’ve rediscovered, the inadvertent and unavoidable wear-and-tear that has occurred, and the individual and collective joy we’ve received from this emotional windfall. The best part is that none of us expected any financial gain from our collections. If a little comes our way, terrific, but realize that this wasn’t even a consideration two weeks ago.
While age has rounded some once-sharp corners and knocked all of us down a grade or two from mint condition, time has rewarded us with the ability to receive a kind of joy that I had previously believed was shattered that day at Jay’s.
My grandfather had a common refrain that he would use to punctuate many of the stories he told me: “I thought you’d get a kick out of that.” His voice and that line have been echoing in my head all week, a gift in and of itself. The meaning for me in this context is to acknowledge that a card I had forgotten about long ago and that I never considered to have market value now carries a three- or four-digit price tag… in mint condition.
But here’s the deal with card condition.
When my son was a little over one year old, he was crawling around on his big sister’s bed. Like every good negligent-father story goes, I took my eye off him for one second, then saw him in midair, fear in his eyes (and mine) as he rotated towards the ground. Guess what? My son is still in mint condition. Better than ever, in fact. But if you treat a baseball card that way, goodbye resale value.
There’s a company called PSA that is now very busy and, unless horribly mismanaged, very successful. PSA is the authority on card grading. Mint condition matters. And on the widely accepted 10-point scale, “Gem Mint 10” is where it’s at.
I expect every card I find to be flawed one way or another. Some cards, though, survived only to have been doomed from the start by being cut poorly. This wasn’t a rare occurrence either, especially in cards from the ‘70s and ‘80s. Who was cutting for Topps back then, Angel Hernandez?
A 1980 Topps Rickey Henderson rookie card recently sold for $180,000. I’m sorry. Did I bury the lede? This sale was what initially got my attention, too. (Prior to the pandemic, the card was selling somewhere between $20,000-$35,000.)
“Mint 9” versions of the same Henderson card have been selling for about $5,000. So you see what just one slight imperfection in centering or coloring can do.
Staying up too late flipping through baseball cards has been the carefree distraction I didn’t even know I needed as we approach one year of social distancing. I’ve recaptured the wonderment and joy of a 40-year-old pursuit. I never spent a lot of money on cards as a kid. I remember not buying the 1985 Don Mattingly Topps card for $11 because it just felt like too much to spend. (In mint condition, it’s selling for about $400 now — oops.)
I plunked down $7 at a card show on a Jim Abbott rookie card sometime in 8th grade. It was a big decision for me, especially since Beckett Baseball Card Monthly — the pricing bible of the day — listed it at $6. It recently sold for more than $100.
As I flip through my older cards, I’m amazed both at the generally good condition most of them are in and also how so many of them look like 10s at first glance only to reveal a slightly frayed corner or two.
I managed to uncover a handful of cards from 1980 that look to be in mint condition. How those cards survived my entire childhood in that shape is beyond me. (Having only a younger sister who had no interest in them definitely helped.) There are also plenty with unsightly creases and folds to be found. I still remember sitting on my Mattingly rookie. That was a mistake.
As for those Garbage Pail Kids, in the event you wanted another sign of the decline of Western civilization, they’re doing exceptionally well. Little did I know when I was protecting my trophy cards — a Ripken rookie, the 1985 McGwire Team USA card, Bo Jackson’s Future Stars card, and that $6 Jim Abbott — I should have been installing bulletproof glass around the likes of Nasty Nick, Stormy Heather, and Dead Fred. Mint condition 1985 Garbage Pail Kids are routinely fetching several hundred dollars — and much more in a few instances.
I’ve spent a few nights lately, poring over these Garbage Pail Kids, chuckling at the brazen and insensitive nature of many of the characters, sharing pictures of them with friends. These guys would have a hard time making it today.
Nonetheless, Nerdy Norm, Brutal Brad, Slobby Robbie, and Leaky Lou are all commanding several hundred dollars each. Maybe MLB needs a new cross-promotion. Do you think Garbage Pail Pitchers get upset when Garbage Pail Hitters admire home runs?
Once again, I’ve stayed up too late on account of baseball cards. I’ve been energized remembering the feel of the wax pack, sensing the thrill of quickly scanning through the cards for the first time, smelling the gum and seeing its powdery residue. I’ll probably do it again tomorrow, too.
I thought you’d get a kick out of that.
Thank you for reading Warning Track Power. If this column took you on a happy trip down memory lane, I recommend the book Wax Pack: On the Open Road in Search of Baseball’s Afterlife by Brad Balukjian. The premise is so ingenious that I can’t look at the book without wishing I had thought of the idea first. It’s brilliant. Subscribe now to have WTP delivered to your inbox every Thursday (or sometimes Saturday).
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/18500937/houston-astros-hall-famer-jeff-bagwell-was-guest-darren-rovell-bar-mitzvah
Great story...my mother never through my cards out from the late 50’s. I was one of the lucky ones. Steve from Baltimore.