The Commercializing of Baseball Card Collecting

In the 1950s, kids everywhere were enamored with the heroes of the day, the monuments to athleticism and talent. The golden age of baseball was upon this country and every child in the nation wanted to have a piece of it. And so a few companies who’d seen the possibilities of putting small cardboard start cards in sweet containers as a way to sell more sweets. The baseball card, while borne many years earlier, was turned into the marketing tool that it would remain as for many years.

For almost 40 years the baseball card companies were a novelty. Those that collected them were rabid and children reveled the tiny pictures of their favorite players, but sets were singular, annual, and only a small handful of companies partook of the potentially giant pie. Other sports followed and the sports trading card industry had modest success for a long time.

Being a collector was simple in those days. You went to the store grabbed a rack or single pack of cards and hoped to find someone you recognized. If it was a famous player you hid your treasure away or took it to the corner and traded it for a player you liked better. It wasn’t a complex science. But, like any burgeoning industry, the seemingly simple process soon became a mass market machine.

In the past 15 years or so the sports card industry exploded, whether from actual interest in the marketplace or from the shiny dollars signs in the eyes of the trading card companies is a toss (a little bit of both most likely), but something big happened. In 1991, the previously simple approach to producing cards yearly, one set of every player in the league began to expand. New companies, like Upper Deck, and old companies looking to reestablish a name like Bowman began releasing their own sets this time in limited supply. By 1993, the cards that were sometimes placed within sets as special awards, a league leader in hitting or a cy young winner, garnered their own subsets of limited edition cards that only showed up in every few packs.

Soon after this the major companies began releasing subsequent sets, both high end and lower end. Upper Deck’s Collector’s Choice line was a cheaper alternative to many of the newly announced designer lines like Topps Chrome or Bowman’s Best. These premium editions cost more than a normal pack of cards and contained limited editions of the same players, but with special dyes and limited cuts. The cards became fancier and shinier and soon the ideas of refractors and gold subsets arose. That is, the normal set of cards with one of each player was cast in a special gold tinted frame and printed in a smaller quantity, making it rarer and thus more valuable.

The value of the cards themselves was set by the producers. They declared the rarity of each set and a third party of card valuers, magazines like Beckett and Tuff Stuff valued the cards accordingly. Of course, if you look in the actual market no card ever sells for its listed price.

The market’s explosion was still relatively under control by 1997-1998. The sets were expanding but it was still possible to buy and get cards from every set on the market without hardship. But something incredible happened in the 1998 baseball season. Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa tore off a monumental race to break Roger Maris’s single season home run record. As it became apparent that they would succeed, the value of their cards skyrocketed. The market couldn’t get enough of them and the public, with a new found zeal for the sport began to put their money where their interest was. Mark McGwire’s rookie card was selling for almost 300 dollars by the end of that season. Accordingly it’s now only worth about 10. But the industry responded at the time and subsequently in the past 9 years or so it’s become nearly impossible to keep track of the options and variables in the industry.

And accordingly you can see the disappearance of the decade old family card shops on every corner. Hobbies are high tech these days and yet simple. To collect baseball cards you need the time to read up on each set, the money to strategically invest, and the patience for some kind of turnover, not to mention any player’s card is a bit of a gamble. If they’re caught with steroids or decide to start playing awfully you’ve lost whatever value you had in that card.

And let’s not forget the PSA system. The grading of cards crept in about the same time as the interest in McGwire and Sosa did. If you’re going to pay that much money for a card you want to know that it’s the best possible version of that card, right? Well, that was the logic behind PSA, so now if you ever want to sell a card worth more than your left pinky you’d better get it graded, and if the grading isn’t free. Like any profitable sector, it’s a business. It’s just too bad it’s hard to recognize the hobby behind that business anymore.