Baseball cards? Anyone? Bueller?
Slate had an interesting article on the baseball card economy. Specifically, the bottom has fallen out of it.
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.
It appears that, indeed, nothing gold can stay.
Did y’all have baseball cards? I never got very into it. (I had a bad experience early on where I mistakenly identified a Roger Clemens card as a Jim Rice card. Don’t ask.) Now I just have three. My Jim Rice card (yes, it really is him this time), my Nomar Garciaparra card (as a prospect), and my Johnny Pesky card (as a manager). What baseball cards do you guys have?
July 30th, 2006 at 12:11 am
How funny! Cause Jeff Passan over at Yahoo just wrote a very entertaining column about the exact same thing.
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July 30th, 2006 at 6:40 pm
I was once a huge mark for Don Mattingly. Yes, he’s a Yankee but I liked him. As I sit here, I am using one hand to type, and in my other hand I am holding my 1984 Donruss Don Mattingly rookie card. (get your minds out of the gutter!) When I bought this at a card show (I talked the guy down from $90 to $75! - ALOT of money when you’re a teenager making $4 an hour) I was so psyched. After a few more 45 HR, 145 RBI seasons, the card shot up to around the $150 mark! Woo-hoo! Now I must wonder if I can get more money for the clear plastic “brick” that it sits in than the actual card. Anybody want to make me an offer??
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