Baseball Cards

derek jeter = the guy from nsync that's always behind everybody else

Tracer - no Rich Gedman "love"? Spike Owen? DON BAYLOR? OIL CAN BOYD? The crapitude was a team effort, regardless of the scapegoats. No, wait - it was McNamara's fault.

I also have about five thousand Jose Canseco rookie cards, if anyone's interested...

The oversaturation was also spiked with mania for special ("special") and rare cards called "inserts" that could be found in only a small percentage of packs, which was supposed to justify their double-digit Beckett valuations.

So oversaturation + artificial scarcity = a lot of kids getting ripped off and eventually giving up on the whole deal as a sunk cost of adolescence = my story.

This nails it.

The last thing I remember about collecting cards was buying four or five packs of super ultra ltd edition rare upper deck baseball cards, I think they were 5 dollars a pack for 3 cards, and one out of every 1000 or something would have a card with a REAL BASEBALL JERSEY sewn into the card!!!!! Of course, I probably got nothing but Pedro Guererro and Chris Sabo cards, and gave up the hobby for good.

I still have around 12,000 or so cards in my parent's basement, neatly organized by team. So many people have the same situation that I doubt they'll ever substantially increase in value.

Just before the big bust in prices, I tried to convince my parents to let me sell all my cards, but they wouldn't let me. Their reasoning was that since the value of cards increased so much from the pre-1970s to now, they would continue to increase at a similar pace during the next few decades (RONG). Also, they thought that I'd just blow all of the money I made from selling the cards on videogames (RITE).

oh man my best card was a 1960 Topps Nellie Fox and i bought one of the thick plastic holder things with bolts in the corners

it's pretty amazing how much cards devalued. i have a shitload of griffey rookie cards which were worth $10 a pop in the early 90s and now they're worth a nickel.

my best card was some 1971 nolan ryan topps card. i think it's in my closet back at my parents' house.

know what was cool was that 1992 Score (i think) Bo Jackson card where he had the shoulder pads AND the bat

It's not the most valuable I have by any means, but aesthetically this was always my favorite:

http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a193/ironsij0287/osmith.jpg

Man, I remember writing an essay in 4th grade about how my hero in life was Ozzie Smith. Then it turned out that my best friend at the time had written about how his best friend was me, and things got really awkward when I said I had chosen Ozzie Smith.

how uncomfortable for Ozzie, too

hahahahahaha
I think I'm going to start an Ozzie Smith thread.

who else had a Beckett subscription? god that was a thrill checking to see if the little arrows went up or down on your top 10

^^^^yes

^^^^

My very first pack of baseball cards were Donruss 88's, I opened it up and this was the first card:

http://www.baseballcardproject.com/Donruss/R/1988/443.jpg

It was at this point that I decided that the Mets were my favorite team and Strawberry was my favorite player. I really enjoyed collecting the cards and never really card about value. Good thing about that.

it's pretty awesome to think about the players everyone was creaming over during the baseball card collecting peak! omg gregg jeffries! steve avery!! jose canseco!! doc gooooden!! future hall of famers WILL CLARK and DON MATTINGLY!!! DAVID JUSTICE and KEVIN MAAS!!!

Results 1 - 10 of about 278 for "jim abbott" "def leppard". (0.35 seconds)

Remember the Score Dream Team cards? Those were hot:

http://www.stonekitty.net/%7Elucyscloset/061607/Image001.jpg

Full bleeds ruined baseball cards. I really liked the wood grain borders of the 87 Topps:

http://www.flapa.com/baseball/cards/KevinMitchell1987_653.jpg

The 1987 Topps set is one of the few that I own all of, and of course there were no noteworthy cards, rookie cards or anything from that series.

Somewhere I have an uncut sheet of 1994 Score cards.

This one kills me, stick figure Barry:

http://www.homeruncards.com/imagesrc/bondstp.jpg

Awesome:

http://www.johnstoncrew.com/GregMadduxRC.jpg

I had this exact same binder:

http://i11.ebayimg.com/03/i/000/b8/ag/a7b7_1.JPG

Oh the lols:

http://img.auctiva.com/imgdata/4/8/5/6/9/8/webimg/69023815_tp.jpg

http://images.collectors.com/Articles/b&bhull2.jpg

All these baseball card auctions on ebay with no bids are depressing.

http://tigerwoodsfistpump.blogspot.com/2007/08/when-baseball-cards-mattered_19.html

Holy shit, remember Brien Taylor?!
http://www.checkoutmycards.com/CardImages/Original/008/989/04F.jpg

I remember reading the entire cover story on the guy, who was basically some high school kid who could throw really, really fast. Never even made it to the majors, but in my mind he was a legend.

Never even made it to the majors,

injured himself in a bar brawl while in the minors and his career was over.

How much do you think 12,000 cards would be worth now? Discounting the "good" cards in them, how much would that many common cards be worth? $300?

I have Orel Hershiser's RC somewhere. I also have a signed Mike Richter (G, NYR) RC at home in CA.

good luck selling that to anyone, Z S

i think most people are too attached to their own collections, and that buying someone else's would kinda be like using their toothbrush

Ha, you're probably right. I guess I was thinking more of selling all of them to some small card shop. I'm sure people in that business get sick of clueless people walking in everyday trying to unload thousands of worthless cards.

this seems like a good place to mention this:

i have a ton of jeff bagwell cards that im irrationally inexplicably attached to
there's a good chance he's going to the hall of fame, at which time his cards would be at peak value (around induction time, if it happens)
i gotta sell all of them at that time, but im anticipating being all.. 'man, i CANT sell ALL of them...' or something
has anyone else dealt with this before?

Yep, with McGwire's cards during the season that he and Sosa were chasing 70.
In retrospect, I made the completely wrong decision.

dude, you're only going to get like 25¢ more for it anyways.

The card worth anything these days is a Bonds card with a signed confession on it.

here's a dumb question, but where do you buy baseball cards these days? i was looking to get some for my son because he's just at that age where he would probably dig them, and i couldn't find them. looked mainly in supermarkets and the big chain drugstores.

this was at the start of the season, wouldn't expect to find them now

I'm pretty sure Target sells baseball cards -- packets or boxes (no more wax boxes these days I reckon)

x-post . yea
Target sells them. 7 11 did years ago.

Sports Authority and Toys R Us sometimes sell 'em

thanx!

asshole card dealers took the fun out of card collecting.

"hey i've got a mint bonds card here, man!"

"ah but is it gem mint?"

"..."

http://www.snopes.com/sports/graphics/ripken.jpg

http://tigerwoodsfistpump.blogspot.com/2008/01/dealing-with-agony-of-once-valuable.html

it's pretty awesome to think about the players everyone was creaming over during the baseball card collecting peak! omg gregg jeffries! steve avery!! jose canseco!! doc gooooden!! future hall of famers WILL CLARK and DON MATTINGLY!!! DAVID JUSTICE and KEVIN MAAS!!!

Kent Hrbek!

Andy Van Slyke!

Glenallen Hill!

I'm gonna be RICH!!

I never got into this kind of collecting, cert not as an investment.

yeah i think the monthly price guides starting getting popular around the mid-80s, it was like the jr. stock market

by the way, the actual baseball card link for sir weeze's article is this: http://tigerwoodsfistpump.blogspot.com/2007/08/when-baseball-cards-mattered_19.html

come with us to 1971...

http://thebaseballchronicle.com/personal_stories/1971_topps_baseball

my dad's collection is at about 40,000. i used to catalog them for him!

i have a mark mcgwire rookie card that he gave me...somewhere...

yr grandma didn't throw them out? xp

baseball card dealers back in my hometown were like these messiah figures to kids, i swear. they had an entire army of 11-14 yr olds at their disposal at any given moment, keeping them loyal with 1989 donruss. it was all a lie!

anyone want to buy 5,000 '88-'90 donruss and topps cards, btw? $20.

http://onthescene.blogs.foxnews.com/2009/09/29/the-baseball-card-industry-is-in-a-serious-slump/

I wonder whatever became of my 1992 Topps complete set that I bought from the Price Club with money I had saved up from helping dig post-holes in my grandpa's backyard. I actually opened all the packs and put them into plastic sleeves for access to the gum. No regrets.

My dealer had $5 grab-bags on the wall - little manila envelopes on hooks labeled 1-30. You'd stare at them for 10 minutes or however long it took you to determine which one had the luckiest aura, then throw down your $5 and roll the fukken dice. OCCASIONALLY it was something worth more than $5 but for the most part it was some borderline decent card and a handful of no-name loser crapola. Scamming pre-adolescent boys, woop woop.

er, my complete set was 1990 Topps. Apparently they discontinued gum in 1992.

ya - the gum was staining the cards. boo-freaking-hoo.

one out of every 1000 or something would have a card with a REAL BASEBALL JERSEY sewn into the card!!!!!

Like, a wee couple-of-centimeters tall jersey? Or a scrap of a regular-sized baseball jersey?

Viceroy has some Chris Chelios card(s?) displayed in our windowsill for the lols. I realize this is hockey but it is a sports card nonetheless.

still have 50,000+ cards stacked in boxes in mom's basement. sorry, mom. they will be there until the end of time

also have a 2500+ will clark collection

1909-11 tobacco cards:

http://baseballcards.galib.uga.edu

had soooo many phil plantier cards

http://acidcow.com/pics/12208-the-30-worst-baseball-cards-of-all-time-30-pics.html

this one cracks me up:

http://acidcow.com/pics/20100809/the_30_worst_baseball_cards_of_all_time_16.jpg

No Kent Tekulve?

This feature also reminds me that I had a dream recently in which I was astonished to discover that Doug Drabek was still active.

There's still a part of my brain left over from highschool that could get back into collecting baseball cards tomorrow if I let it. That obsessive collect the whole set, find my favorite players, etc gland. Dangerous, dangerous stuff. I dare not let it out.

In a similar spirit, this is one of the funniest baseball books I've ever read:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a1/Great_American_Baseball_Card_Book.jpg

It was first published in 1973, long before all the collector insanity.

There's still a part of my brain left over from highschool that could get back into collecting baseball cards tomorrow if I let it.

^^ cosign

i'm almost positive i had that Tom Henke one

i had many of those cards morbs linked to, oscar gamble lol

i always remember the ugly dudes
http://lh5.ggpht.com/_kynWiBKxeYU/TD3GGv_F-_I/AAAAAAAAA5k/Nm4emmvNc2k/Andy_Etchebarren_77.jpg

clemenza - I had that book!!! totally hilarious and for a teenager it was this weird direct access to the ancient past

I went downstairs to try to dig it up so I could quote one specific entry, but I couldn't find it. I remember I leant it out a couple of times, so I hope I got it back...Let me give it another try.

Found it--forgotten that I'd replaced my old paperback with a hardcover edition. The entry I was thinking of is too long to quote in full; it's the one where they look at the text on the back of a Sammy Esposito card and analyze what it really means. Sample: "'Sammy attended Indiana U. for three years'...But as long as they were at it, did they have to throw in the 'three years'? This makes it sound as if Sammy was expelled."

Here's the exact card:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/bpv/images/9/92/Sam_Esposito.jpg

Well, I guess baseballreference.com blocks their images.

one of the funniest baseball books I've ever read.

Also (as I've said before) one of the most influential books on my own writing.

This is what my copy look like (the original cover, I think?)

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/38/f7/8092024128a0bedd634e1010.L._SL500_AA300_.jpg

And I can't believe this card didn't make that Top 30 list:

https://www.gfg.com/cardimg/119/27051.jpg

Chuck: Mine's without the dust jacket, but it's gotta be the same issue. (It was actually Mike Saunders who sent it to me, at which point I gave my paperback to someone else.) The Zernial card's great; my other favourites are the Bob Cerv card where it looks like he's hitting himself in the head, and the Unitas card towards the end. One thing I never understood--the way the authors clearly hate Bouton, even though their book is so similar to Ball Four in some of its humour.

http://caimages.collectors.com/psaimages/392/02220079/1960JohnnyUnitas.jpg

Yeah mine's without the dust jacket too. Metallic red type on a dark blue fabric cover, IIRC.

I've stolen so many lines from that book over the years. I'll always remember something to the effect of "Roseboro wore this expression ever since Juan Marichal whacked him on the head with a white-ash Hillerich and Bradsby" which I assumed was a joke for years until I learned it was true!

Johnny Unitas... there's a haircut you could set your watch to!

One thing I never understood--the way the authors clearly hate Bouton, even though their book is so similar to Ball Four in some of its humour.

I've got a later edition (early 90s) w/ separate new prefaces by Boyd & Harris. One of them mentions that Bouton had been asked to provide a foreword to the original edition and he declined because he didn't want his kids to see his entry wherein he was called a rat. They replied with what about all the much worse stuff other players kids saw re:their dads in Ball Four. Bouton stopped talking to them.

http://www.checkoutmycards.com/CardImages/Cards/236/789/07F.jpg

http://www.thebaseballcube.com/images/cards/8510.jpg

http://www.thebaseballcube.com/images/cards/8510.jpg
Why did I make such a terrible post about him?

Metallic red type on a dark blue fabric cover, IIRC.

You've got a good memory--exactly.

That Bouton stuff is fascinating. Here's the entirety of what they write next to his card: "Jim Bouton is a big mouth." Yet he was approached to write a preface? I'm guessing that was the publisher's idea, not necessarily the authors'.

Yeah, they didn't want a forward. They had another story about someone else (i forget) the publisher wanted. One of the guys decided to write the person a letter by hand (to show sincerity). The guy wrote back saying he didn't like hand written letters and whatever $ figure they'd quoted was "an insult".

Joe Garagiola was also approached, but backed out because he was still embarrassed about signing exclusive deals w/both Topps and Bowman in the 50s, and didn;t like that story being retold in the text.

Of course, later Topps made Joe's business cards:

http://nowbatting19.com/sitebuilder/images/1976_Topps_Garagiola-283x473.png

i have most of a set of 1968 topps world series cartoon cards. anybody who wants to pay postage is welcome to them.

why dont you ask that question of ebay and use the money for outrageous joy!!

I am goin through all my old cards now - ebaying some.
some of the cards really amuse me

http://rayonsports.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/gamble.jpg

so my brother's mother-in-law gave him a box of 1990 Fleers. they're not worth anything, but we've been enjoying opening them. they have a really nice look to them, very classically designed and clean. they have stickers too but they're no longer sticky so if you put one up on the wall they slide off after a few minutes.

Keep the Larry Walkers, and maybe the Sosas, too, just in case; the Belles and Juan-Gones are for the bike.

apologies if this has already been posted in this thread, but this is my favorite blog entry ever!

http://cardboardgods.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/2008_422_0001_steve_carlton_81_360.jpg?w=252&h=360

Aw man, I used to love Albert Belle.

clemenza, do u buy new baseball cards? i so enjoy opening packs of cards that i was thinking about buying a box of something new, but i don't know what to get

A truly fascinating player; I just meant he's not going into the HOF, which for a baseball card = worthless. I liked him too.

I was badly hooked in the mid-'90s (just after the strike; like investing all your money in Studebaker stock...), but I haven't bought anything for a few years.

Mordy: I think the boxes that tend to be cheap and easily available are, in terms of rookie cards, whatever falls into the steroids window--from about '87 to '93 or so. All those sets with rookies for Sosa, Palmeiro, Bagwell, I-Rod, etc., or burnouts like Belle and Gonzalez.

I collected from about '84-'92, so I got to watch my collection go way up in value and then crash down to earth, becoming nearly worthless. Really wish I'd gotten rid of them sooner.

that makes me feel a little better, jon. i collected in the early eighties and my brother at one point sold the lot on ebay w/o asking me for permission. i mean, i don't necessarily begrudge him for doing so, i owe him a lot in some respects, but axing someone never hurts

Yeah, my mom kept hinting around '90 that I should sell my collection to get $$$ for college, but at the time I was madly flipping through Beckett's, watching the prices climb and climb, and was all, "no way mom, this is going to be worth SO MUCH MONEY if I wait ten more years!". Stupid me.

My parents sold off all of my comic books and Star Wars toys at a garage sale without telling me, still hold a grudge to this day over that one.

oh shit, haha

why did the card prices end up going down? i don't know anything about that world

From what I understand it was just the inevitable collapse of artificially high prices. Like there was a period 2 years into his career when Gary Sheffield's rookie card was worth like $75 or something. It was like all of the sudden card values were based on hype and buzz instead of a HOF career or storied past (see also the ridiculous craze for Todd Van Poppel rookie cards). I'm sure someone else could explain it in more detail or with better back-up though.

it was pretty much a bubble. too many cards at inflated prices.

xpost

Mordy: a coworker and i buy a few packs every year when a new set comes out (ostensibly for graphic design reasons)... Topps now has an exclusive deal with MLB, so for now they're the only game in town. i like what they've done this year tho - they're applying an occasional classic card design to current players, so I got a 1987-style Andrew Mccutchen card in my last pack!

Oooh I loved the '87 Topps set when I was a kid.

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/dawson-87-topps.jpg

do they do a couple different sets? i remember when i bought cards in high school there were all kinds of different sets. ones with real bats, ones with pieces of jersey, ones that are all rookies, etc.

iirc they have a 2nd 2012 collectors set, but i cannot recall what its deal was.

also: how do you fit a baseball bat inside a pack of cards?!

xposts ah how funny

yeah, i've never been savvy enough to convert my trash into cash as it were

like i know i have some books and records lying around that would fetch a decent price, but for whatever reason it's never been in my makeup to suss that out. i would rather give those things to someone who would appreciate it. otherwise i would just spend that money on dinner or a v-necked sweater

not a "humblebrag", prob more of an enduring character flaw and illustrative of my attempts to evade full-fledged adulthood

baseball bat splinters!

Yeah, that was a huge trend among all sports card companies at one point, really thin slices of backetballs, footballs, jersy pieces, bat splinters, even tiny pieces of basketball floors iirc.

i have tiny basketball floor cards! also bat splinters, jerseys...

Man this thread is taking me back. Remember when the '89 Upper Deck set dropped and it was like the most exciting, revolutionary thing that had ever happened to baseball card?

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0wSWUUEE2sE/TelpLmlCiMI/AAAAAAAAHJo/YQQBGzfjVuI/s1600/1989%2BUpper%2BDeck%2BF.jpg

Yeah, that was a huge trend among all sports card companies at one point, really thin slices of backetballs, footballs, jersy pieces, bat splinters, even tiny pieces of basketball floors iirc.

wait what you are fucking kidding me

Another thing that hurt the card industry (as alluded to by clem) was the strike, which conveniently lined up with when Comic Books becoming ultra-hot collectibles (the heyday of Image, Valient, X-Men cartoon show etc.).

(xpost)

They even did Nascar cards that had parts of race-used TIRES.

Speaking of '89 Upper Deck, this card was such hot shit in my neck of the woods back in the day:

http://www.vintagecardprices.com/pics/1988/109494.jpg

At least all you guys had the excuse of being in grade school and high school when you got hooked; I was 33.

Always figured one of the companies would start sticking bits of Ted Williams' brain into chase packs, but I guess they had to draw the line somewhere.

well, we could split hairs about "ethics" all day, but is that really so beyond the pale? i think not

oh god!
a friend bequeathed a buncha books to me and this was amongst them:
http://books.gigaimg.com/avaxhome/a8/be/0013bea8_medium.jpeg

I had the Ripken "future stars" triple rookie, which seems to go for around $25 on ebay but was once "worth" a lot more.

i don't think i gave any sort break down of the classic cards i have, but i feel compelled to share now for some reason, so here a few of my favs that i own:
'61 Whitey Ford & Duke Snider
'65 Koufax
'66 Ernie banks
'67 Ed Mathews
'72 Mays, Orlando Cepeda
'73 Clemente, Brooks Robinson & Aparicio
'75 Aaron, Frank Robinson & Killbrew

speaking of the memorabilia stuff, an interesting section from the Upper Deck wiki page:

Memorabilia & Relic Cards

Upper Deck has changed its practice of using materials certified as "Worn" by the player depicted on the front of the card. The changed wording on the backs of Upper Deck insert cards makes it less clear as to how the materials were used or what player wore the item.
EXAMPLE: Steve Nash card 2004... (Back of card) On the front of this card is an authentic piece of a jersey WORN by Steve Nash as a member of the Dallas Mavericks in an NBA game.
EXAMPLE: Jermaine O'Neal card 2006 Exquisite...(Back of card) On the front of this is a piece of memorabilia that has been certified to us as having been USED in an NBA game.

Upper Deck has also stopped adding the word "Jersey" to the fronts of game-used insert cards. The company no longer acknowledges exactly what kind of material was inserted into the cards or how the item was used, and it has eliminated statements claiming the player pictured on the card front actually wore the inserted material.

Upper Deck's authenticity has been questioned in regards to players' jersey and uniform materials. The cards state the inserted items are known to Upper Deck to have been used or worn, but since most of the gear is acquired through third parties, the actual use is unknown. Most of Upper Deck's jersey materials are harvested at events like rookie photo shoots, etc.. During such events, players often change shirts dozens of times to generate event-worn uniform material that never sees the field of play.

Collectors still debate and question the authenticity of such 'memorabilia", which often includes items manufactured specifically for insert cards, patches, and other desirable content.

Which brings me back to Ted Williams' brain--with all the advancements in DNA science, a tiny little scraping from Ted's noggin would be so much easier to authenticate.

http://www.fangraphs.com/not/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/medium_RandyJohnsonIsAPrettyGirl-225x300.jpg

ha haah a haha

There's still a part of my brain left over from highschool that could get back into collecting baseball cards tomorrow if I let it. That obsessive collect the whole set, find my favorite players, etc gland. Dangerous, dangerous stuff. I dare not let it out.

― Mordy, Monday, August 16, 2010 2:01 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Annyong.

http://leftfieldcards.com/index.html

Dangerous, dangerous stuff. I dare not let it out.

I looked up Jose Fernandez out of curiosity, ended up buying some rookie cards online:

Madison Bumgarner -- 2010 Topps
Jose Fernandez -- 2013 Topps
Freddie Freeman -- 2011 Topps
Clayton Kershaw -- 2008 Topps Update
Andrew McCutchen -- 2005 Bowman Draft Picks
Adam Wainwright -- 2000 Bowman Draft Picks

They were all between $3-5. The Trouts, Cabreras, and Harpers, forget it.

I need to get back to work and save myself from such idle pursuits.

Jerry: "Clemenza let it out?"
Elaine: "Let. It. Out."

Ugliest card ever?

http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2013/08/bob_hamelin_worst_baseball_card_ever_the_case_of_1996_pinnacle_foil_no_289.html

I always thought those Topps Finest cards were hideous.

http://cconnect.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/1993-Topps-Finest-Baseball-Jumbo-All-Stars-Barry-Bonds1.jpg

(The 26-year-old Hamelin beat out Manny Ramirez and Jim Edmonds for ROY in 1994. Based only on what they did that year, and not taking into consideration age and projected future value, it's hard to argue with the vote.)

http://www.chicagonow.com/lists-that-actually-matter/files/2011/06/bob_walk.jpg

Congratulations, you're five dollars richer.

i remember those upper deck cards. man, they seemed so expensive at the time. i had that griffey at one point but sold it. i think i sold all my valuable cards. the most valuable ones were the '89 upper decks and the '90 leafs. unfortunately i didn't sell them at peak value, but fortunately i sold them before i lost money. i got some dece drinking money out of david justice and big hurt rookie cards. like i said upthread, it's high comedy to see how much people were willing to pay for certain cards. i'm pretty sure the kevin maas rookie cards peaked at $25. i know the doc gooden fleer rookie was $500 at one point.

impressive that the card is even worth more than it was (the Leaf FT) considering you can now get Upper Deck FT rookies for like $2. I think they were valued at $30 or $40 back in the day, which to me seemed like a shitload of money.

i think the OG upper deck series is regarded as the legit collector's choice one, i remember the 1990 set being really sought after initially but quickly declining. maybe it was just more common and the novelty had worn off a bit. i think it also has to do with the leaf set being more sought after. and after that, everyone was putting out premium cards and the market got flooded and basically destroyed. i know cards are still worth money but i feel like literally every kid i knew back in '88-'90 was into baseball cards, it was a huge peak era, basically as long as the card wasn't dented or creased you were cool. then it turned into shit you'd frame and grade out with a pitchfork score and if it was a millimeter off center, fuck you get out of my store.

Yeah, that $75 seems a little far-fetched.

I've got a whole bunch of rookie cards dating back to that time that I collected for a short time in the mid-'90s, after the bottom dropped out: Griffey, Thomas, Bonds, Bagwell, I-Rod, Maddux, Alomar, Piazza, Jeter, etc. Never the key rookie card, though, always the secondary ones.

every kid of my generation grew up hearing stories about how their dads' moms threw away all their baseball cards, which would now be worth so much money, so they never threw away theirs, and hence they're worth nothing.

I still have all mine!!! I'd sell them all for $5.

yeah got mine too, just got them out the other day. 88-94

I think mine are still under my childhood bed. I had a few notables. It looks from eBay like even my 1940 Lefty Gomez is not worth what it once was, and I would think that one is not super common.

yeah mine are in my room at my moms place, i wonder how much i could get for them (and my pokemon) cards

did anyone ever actually strike gold, i.e. find a valuable card in a pack instead of buying or trading for it? I think my Will Clark rookie was the one example of that.

I think I have all of Garbage Pail Kids Series 3 too -- I actually put the entire set together from packs and trading.

yeah i got a few good ones in normal packs but can't remember specifics.

I have an Iván Calderón rookie card. And then he was MURDERED.

close thread

i bought so many packs that i found a lot of gold in them thar hills. the griffey upper deck rookie was my best score and i had a lot of good cards from my early days of buying (when i was 7 or 8, before i knew they were worth anything.) i had ripken's topps rookie somewhere, sandberg's rookie card, a few others.

Same - got a lot of decent cards through collecting. Recently went through all my old cards and found Jeter and Rivera rookies I had no idea I had!
I still buy the occasional pack and have managed to score a Bumgarner and a few Bundy rookies.

I should probably try to sell my FT Leaf RC, but to hell with getting it gem-rated or whatever.

If you have a Leaf Mariano, Thermo, that's good--just learned he was the rare player who only had one rookie card issued. His first Topps card wasn't until 1995, shared with Lyle Mouton (who, glancing at his career stats, didn't seem to get a fair shake).

http://espngrantland.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/14674983388_2be6f53941_o.jpg?w=700&h=934

Oh my god does that dude live in Brooklyn? I think he goes to my Starbuck's

My cards, around 4,000 plus, were never in great condition so never that valuable, but some perverse part of me likes that there is no longer this crazy market. Did the market go south because everyone growing up in the 70s and 80s saved their cards thinking they would be valuable one day? I have a lot of 50s-60s cards that I never gave back to a lifeguard who lent me them one summer but their condition is highly variable

I finally threw out most of my '90s cards last week. What a heartbreaker — the hours and dollars I dumped into this crazy habit, everything meticulously sleeved and filed.

The mixture of lottery and "investment" and sports obsession were irresistible to 15-year-old me. I remember a friend in 1989 when we'd both just bought the Upper Deck Griffey set telling me with this self-assured grin, "Now we just sit back and watch it grow [in value]."

There's a chance that in another 20 years, the market might turn again once everyone my age has dumped their collections in the trash; but I can't keep carting these 500-count boxes around with me from home to home.

My best card is either my Patrick Roy or Guy Lafleur rookies (I'm Canadian). Of course, I'd trade the lot for a Gretzky, though that card's iconic up here, maybe the only one whose value has kept rising.

Yes everyone please start throwing your cards away / burning them

Mine are just in the closet at my parents. I assume they will stay there for eternity.

my instincts for cards are still there, i was in a thrift shop and there were a few cards lying around and i found a GEM MINT CENTERED 10.0 gregg jefferies DONRUSS RATED ROOKIE. could have had it for a nickel but i didn't want to make the investment.

i think the best part about cards were the statistics and learning about stats through them and i always thought it was awesome that there was a stat devoted to SLUGGING

Truthfully, dinnerboat, I think the hockey-card market is still pretty strong up here. Whenever I go to the big card show at the International Centre in Toronto, it's like 95% hockey-card vendors--no interest for me, but I don't think it imploded like the baseball market did.

xpost I definitely knew more about sports when I had the financial incentive of card values.

clemeza, Maybe for historical cards, but I think those early '90s glossy vomit collections (Pro Set, Score, etc.) tanked across the board. At least judging by ebay auctions.

that really what i loved most about them. loved looking at the careers of guys like Ryan or Rice and getting the card of a guy towards the end of a great career was so much more exciting than some flavour-of-the-month rookie card.

anyways - it was my mother moving into a much smaller space that caused me to toss most of my 90's cards (also is how i discovered the Jeter and Rivera cards i was unaware of)!

um – Clem, i would totally love to go to a card convention again. used to go all the time when i was a kid!

(xpost) True--but I think Lafleur and Roy rookies would be worth something if they're in good shape.

Let's catch the next one in the spring, Thermo. Last time I went, I ended up buying almost a thousand dollars' worth of baseball media guides from a guy over the next several months. These contain secret information available nowhere else except six or seven different internet sites.

my gooden rookie is worth less now than it was in 1989 :(

My Juan Gonzalez and Albert Belle rookies are worth less than a George Pataki endorsement.

mine were in my parent's storage since 2001 or so, presumably for eternity, and then about a year ago their basement flooded and they were all absolutely ruined. i had a lot of cards, not many of them good.

https://static.simpsonswiki.com/images/thumb/1/14/Omar_Vizquel.png/250px-Omar_Vizquel.png

http://ftw.usatoday.com/2016/03/family-rare-ty-cobb-valuable-baseball-cards-in-house

Had no idea Toronto's biggest card shop, Legends of the Game (long ago--they changed their name at one point), closed down a few months ago. Very quietly--don't remember anybody posting anything on Facebook like when the World's Biggest Bookstore or Queen Video or various other local landmarks closed. When I shrewdly started buying baseball cards in '94, the year of the strike, they had a huge space. Tim Horton's took over about 2/3 of it a few years later, but they managed to limp along for another decade.

Saw this trailer yesterday:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0GsVS2gSAE

There's a great documentary to be made about the history and eventual collapse of the baseball-card industry, but not sure that this is it--seems to be hooked around some father-son reunion story.

Best-looking Topps card of each year according to a panel:

http://www.mlb.com/cut4/the-coolest-topps-baseball-card-from-every-year/c-289614258

Ten best:

http://www.mlb.com/cut4/coolest-topps-baseball-cards-ever-made/c-289734612

I own two of them. The wrong two.

Links aren’t working for me

yeah, same here. and the link to a video you posted the other day also didn't work - might just be a thing with accessing the site from canada? i'm not sure.

Weird--I took both of the MLB site. Maybe taking off the 's' from 'https' messed it up. Let me try again.

https://www.mlb.com/cut4/the-coolest-topps-baseball-card-from-every-year/c-289614258
https://www.mlb.com/cut4/coolest-topps-baseball-cards-ever-made/c-289734612

Those work for me.

oh yep! those work, thanks

rad thanks.

marilyn manson was nice with it
https://img.playbuzz.com/image/upload/q_auto:good,f_auto,fl_lossy,w_640,c_limit/v1533673835/e4eaukgk650okjtxsjde.jpg

That '88 Fleer Tekulve they talk about is great too...

https://www.tradingcarddb.com/Images/Cards/Baseball/121/121-318Fr.jpg

haha!

i had that topps tekulve

https://www.sbnation.com/platform/amp/mlb/2019/1/25/18174412/bill-ripken-card-1989-fleer-frick-face-look-google-wont-index-this-if-the-url-has-the-actual-swear

Has there been a 30 For 30 on "Big, Dumb Baseball Card Collecting", because I would watch the fuck(face) out of it.

If you scroll up a bit, I posted a trailer last year for Jack of All Trades--still hasn't shown up here.

I have not finished this but no way is it not going to live up to the premise: https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/27425987/guy-ball-crotch-story-funniest-baseball-card-ever-made

I mean fuck face exists so the premise is false

https://www.mlb.com/cut4/coolest-topps-baseball-cards-ever-made/c-289734612

whoa I have 2 of these and I wasn't a big collector. The Don Mattingly was the only card I had that was over like $15 in Beckett's. The Frank Thomas one I have signed...does that make it worth more or less?

More pre-move winnowing: sorted cards for a few hours yesterday so I could take a few thousand useless extras to the thrift store. I kept HOF'ers, plus guys I figure may one day get in (strong bets like Larry Walker and Lou Whitaker, plus a few longshots like Will Clark and Rick Reuschel). But the time had come to close the book on Greg Jeffries and various other early-'90s luminaries.

sounds deeply pleasurable

that's Gregg with 3 G's

and JeffEries of course

i complete forgot that he went to STL and hit .342(!) in 1993. and finished in the ROY voting two years in a row. oh if i'd only cashed in on those GJ and Steve Avery rookies when i had the chance.

Don't know how I messed up the spelling--I only looked at eight thousand Jefferies cards yesterday...Was just reading up on him and looking at his career box. Definitely looked like a potential HOF'er out of the gate, right up until 26. (Got ROY votes two different years--that must be rare.) Conflict seemed to follow him around.

Suggestion for anyone who's still misguided enough to take an interest in this stuff.

http://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/JNoceraCollectibles

I bought 20 reprints from this guy. The cards are cheap (under $3.00 each), and the shipping is free. I'm not even sure if they're actual Topps reprints or knock-offs, but if they are, they're really solid. Bought Koufax, Mays, Clemente, Maravich, Namath, Orr, etc.

guys. The Met is closed, of course. But they have posted images of all the exhibited cards online. Looks like the collector had a keen interest in Chief Bender. And apparently he never attended a game in person!

https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2020/burdick-collection-january-rotation

Sweet.

I had only a brief flirtation with buying baseball cards as a kid. My best card was a 1980 Topps Rickey Henderson rookie card, which I sold for $18 (iirc) in 1987. It wasn't in NM or anything but this card is still worth a decent amount of money these days in good condition.

https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/university-of-nebraska-press/9781496218742/

this looks interesting, might scoop it up soon. guy opens up a random pack of 80s cards and then tries to track down all the players in the pack.

Sounds like a good podcast :)

Here’s a bit of background on the Burdick collection and the notion of “printed ephemera”:

https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ball/hd_ball.htm

I'll show off my new T-shirt here.

http://phildellio.tripod.com/bubblegum.jpg

I scrolled through the Burdick collection quickly--was there a Wagner and I missed it?

1952 store display.

http://phildellio.tripod.com/1952.jpg

How much are all the Mantle rookie cards in there worth (or at least how much three months ago...)?

^ partially colorized for your viewing pleasure

btw, I never quite understood the love for Mickey Mantle, who was just a big strong yokel who could hit the curveball, plus he played for the Yankees, so you couldn't very well pitch around him to the weak parts of the lineup. Willie Mays was twice the player Mantle was.

I'm a Mays guy too, but I would concede that Mantle's prime, at least offensively, was superior. And Mays had McCovey and Cepeda alongside him, so he wasn't on his own.

5 cards in those topps packs, hm. so a 1 in 5 chance that your mantle rookie card will be ruined by the stick of gum laying on it for 68 years?

IIRC mantle was #1 in the set and so few of them exist in good condition BC kids would wrap rubber bands around their collections

I thought so too, but it was #311--just looked at a checklist. (Andy Pafko was #1.) I wouldn't want that pack today, no...There are supposedly a few perfect Mantles out there.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidseideman/2018/04/29/forget-the-2-9-million-mickey-mantle-card-there-are-three-worth-10-million/#70a24a853a99

I'd happily settle for a Mays. (No Williams in the set.)

http://images.psacard.com/s3/cu-psa/cardfacts/1952-topps-261-willie-mays-mint-9-87181.jpg?h=1000&format=png&s.roundcorners=10

just a big strong yokel who could hit the curveball

insanity

I just dug out my cards, the ones I have in hard plastic, for the first time in maybe ten years.

I have a '54 Topps Hank Aaron rookie in excellent condition, and my heart just went into my throat seeing what it's going for on eBay. Three months' rent.

I just assumed there was this major depreciation in the last decade. I need to sell this card. Anyone have any tips?

you guys I am freaking out

I just found another card that I had no idea was worth anything remotely near this—way more than the Aaron.

It makes me nervous. HOW DO I SELL THESE?

Whoa!!

I have no idea but that is awesome!!!!

I can't believe it.

I'm okay selling a record or whatever online but I don't trust myself to grade these out or trust them to the mail or whatever

for context I am living month to month and my lease has expired

Sell them on eBay? Or alternatively contact a card shop (if any of those still exist) or professional reseller (ditto) and solicit a bid privately?

yeah I think so, I would happily give someone a commision to take them off my hands

looking at ebay it seems like the fall-off from M to EX/M is precipitious and makes all the difference, but both of these are in amazing shape, centered w/ good corners

yeah, i was going to say, if you're trying to sell them relatively quickly and without much hassle, i'm sure someone would be willing to do it all for you and take a decent cut. i'd be in the same boat as you - i would never want to make a call on the difference between M and EX/M and then make a bunch of money off of it, i'd be freaking out!

That's great. (Very intrigued about the non-Aaron card.) I could put you in touch with someone I met through a card show a few years ago--I bought hundreds and hundreds of media guides from him. I trust he'd give you sound advice.

still can’t find my yaz rookie after years of searching in my parents’ attic etc :/

i’m also v intrigued about the non-aaron card :)

xxp yes Clemenza that would be great, dm me!

so the other card is (to my eye) a near-mint Bench rookie...and I saw it selling for basically the down payment on a mortgage, which is probably an outlier but still

I do have a ton of other valuable rookie cards that I'd like to bundle off

I sent you some board e-mail, Hadrian.

I have a phone number, Hadrian, where you can message my friend. Send me board e-mail, or if you go to my user profile and click on my site, you can get my regular e-mail address.

terrific, thanks

Hope your Bench is as good as you say--you could really cash in on that one.

http://www.psacard.com/cardfacts/baseball-cards/1968-topps/reds-rookies-johnny-bench-ron-tompkins-247/31850

$33,000 for the 10 on there; the 9s run $2-3000, and even an 8 clears $1,000. (Dmitri Young owns one.)

well it's good by my lapsed collector standards...the corners all look pretty sharp, maybe a couple are just very slightly soft? It doesn't look fresh out of the pack I guess but neither are there any flaws that I can detect. Same with the Aaron card.

I'll report back!

I'm surprised looking some of these rookie cards up—Ryan, Palmer, Kaline, Brett mini, Morgan (signed) among others—that the Rickey, which is def mint, evidently goes for a lot more that those older cards

I could never quite figure out why certain rookie cards were valuable but others weren't. Not at the extremes--Mantle, Seaver, etc.--and I can even understand why PED rookie cards took a hit. But Pedro Martinez or Randy Johnson; you can get at least one of their rookie cards very cheap (under $5). It might not be the card to have--once there were numerous companies, one card would always end up being the most valuable--but that still seems comparatively low next to lesser players worth more.

my guess is the PED aspect just depreciated demand for those players.

@Topps 2009 Bowman Chrome Superfractor @MikeTrout graded @beckett_grading 9.5 sells for $3.93 million at goldin auctions “ goldin elite” tonight. Session 2 ends Sunday night at 10pm ...highest priced ever for ANY trading card.. pic.twitter.com/axV4sXjMcC

— Goldin Auctions (@GoldinAuctions) August 23, 2020

Saw that yesterday. Personally, I find refractor cards garish and ugly, although that one's not too bad.

I didn't know you could do this, buy shares in sports cards like they're stocks:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/12/investing/baseball-cards-markets/index.html

Very tempting to a self-deluded blowhard like me who has a gift for picking out HOF'ers a decade out. I have dozens of Juan Gonzalez and Albert Belle cards to prove it.

Hey, Belle should have made the Hall!

The amount of time I spent as a kid searching my grandparents' house for tobacco cards...

He was headed there, although I'm guessing he would have been stopped by PED allegations eventually. Even without PEDs, his career just ended too soon--didn't reach either 400 HR or 2,000 hits. He was awesome for a few years, though, and should have won the MVP in 1995.

No thread for basketball cards...Wanted to buy a box for my friend's eight-year-old son; preferably something discounted from the '90s, the era when they were over-producing everything. Forget it. A kid that age has about the same chance of starting a card collection as a young married couple does of buying a house.

i used to have a karl malone rookie. i sold it for 60 bucks when i needed money for weed.

plant that weed in the ground and grow some more, and the next 2 ounces will be free

thank you based karl 🙏

lol

so wait 90s cards are still dumb cheap right? i sold off mine for peanuts a few years ago. The new ones are pricey?

I looked around for a '90s set online--an overproduced Hoops set, something like that--and they were all around $150 a box. As far as new cards go, here's a Toronto store I looked at:

https://totalsportcards.com/collections/sports-cards-basketball-cards

Insane. (Your rookie card, Karl, seems to be selling for $500-1000 on eBay, depending upon shape/grading.)

It's impossible to get sports cards right now we tried to add them as a product line at work but can't get enough stock to bother. Very weird boom because the individuals usually aren't worth much, like 1993 all over again it's based on a set being laced with 5 signed Mike Trout holographic cards. The only difference is how they've wised up on making them actual rarities.

and they're all difficult to sell unless graded and the major grading houses for comics and cards have a 12+ month backlog

ffs this is a lot of weed

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1986-87-FLEER-68-Karl-Malone-Rookie-RC-BGS-9-5/264648683368

mine was probably more like a 7 though, it was just loose.

a loosie, if you will

I saw one that was supposed to be a 9 and selling for ~$800. (I always view these prices as purely hypothetical, meant for the one person insane--or rich--enough to pay what they're asking. Surely a lot of these get resposted eventually at a drastically reduced price?)

To reiterate my original point, though, this is No Country for 8-Year-Old Kids.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1986-Fleer-Karl-Malone-Rookie-RC-68-PSA-9-Mint-/353802025829?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&_trksid=p2349624.m46890.l49286&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0

Going up from there makes them increasingly rare but a 9.5 or 9.8 is probably more like $1500 as a realistic selling price.

Also I think the graders are just making shit up at that point. Like 1 out of 100 9s gets a bump just so some exist.

It's wild that '90s sealed crap is going for $$$ these days, although it seems like bulk loose cards from then are still relatively dirt cheap? Occasionally I'll see a Facebook marketplace ad with "1000 Cards for $30" or something.

totally picked through, i’m assuming.

(xpost) I've left it too late, but that's probably what I should have got him. I would hope they'd be in good shape, with at least the occasional star mid-career.

XP No doubt. I imagine these are the same people I'd see at antique/collectable shows in the before times with big vending bins of '80s-'90s commons for cheap.

It's wild that '90s sealed crap is going for $$$ these days, although it seems like bulk loose cards from then are still relatively dirt cheap?

Fun lottery ticket. Maybe your $200 purchase pulls a $3000 9.8 rookie card. If not you still got to open packs of cards and remember some guys.

Makes sense. Although the thought that something from say, overprint Kings Pro Set or Score* being ridiculously valuable is hmmmm to me.

*Aside from their early stuff, and whatever later limited things they had.

Still think the Pro Set saga would make a great 30 For 30.

The National Sports Collectors Convention was in Houston in '94, so I went on multiple days. Pro Set, despite literally being on the cusp of going under, had a huge corporate display, and in lieu of printing up exclusive freebies for the event (as was becoming the style at the time), they just had employees sitting at tables with loads of open wax boxes, tearing open packs and handing anyone who asked 30 loose cards.

Found an acceptable substitute for $15: a mini Funko Pop! Michael Jordan.

(And ordered a mini Julius Erving for myself!)

i knew kids who used to steam open the wax wrappers from card packs, pick out the good cards, replace with commons, and reseal the packs. we sure these ebay sellers aren’t doing that?

If you're going to pay big bucks you want the box with intact shrinkwrap with the manufacturer logo printed on it. My memories of my parents working card shows in the early-mid '90s are hazy but the Upper Decks and higher tiers of cards had unique shrinkwrap IIRC.

Magic is the worst about this. Early packs are real easy to sort without even opening.

I think it was easy to reseal vinyl records.

Iirc, foil and plastic packs were harder to reseal as well.

i have an entire topps 1987 baseball set in absolute mint condition -- the only baseball cards i ever bought. i mean i even resisted putting tony pena in my wallet ffs

can i buy a house with this yet?

purchased out of the back ads of the sporting news even! good god i'm old

that's a beautiful set imo. bonds rookie iirc!

Topps lives on, kind of.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/fanatics-baseball-cards-topps-11641261997

Just uncovered a box of plastic protect sleeved cards from my childhood in our storage locker. This bundle is almost all early '90s inserts/chase cards with a handful of regular series exceptions (including three of the Upper Deck Michael Jordan baseball rookie card).

An amusing oddity are a few cards from a giveaway series from Church's Chicken, which weren't completely licensed, so the team logos were airbrushed off--I had totally forgotten that was a thing then.

Adding to the peak '90s of it all, that Church's set had REFRACTOR CHASE CARDS--I've got multiples of the Joe Carter one.

what do you want for the joe carter?

https://www.topps.com/cards-collectibles/topps-now/goose-on-the-loose-2022-mlb-topps-now-reg-card-1066.html

If the goose were clutching a bat with "fuckface" written on it, maybe, but I think I'll pass.

https://i.imgur.com/OfVoZo0.png

Hell yeah

Not a card, but I bought one of these for $4 in Dollarama today:

https://www.fairshop.ca/new/collectibles-c-1/zack-greinke-21-arizona-diamondbacks-player-replica-mlb-players-choice-p-64

(If you look down below, you can still get a Roughned Odor for $10 before there's a run on them when he retires.)

Starlin Castro!

I still want a Mike Richter starting lineup

Not much of a hockey fan, but you can get a new one on eBay for $15.

I had a Gary Carter Mets Starting Lineup action figure back in the day and sad I don't still have it

Phil Neiko was born in ‘39 so he was probably 47 when that photo was taken assuming during the ‘86 Season. Awesome

Upper Deck ruined the baseball card industry

I found my old cards - i like the matter of fact-ness of the 80’s stuff. Ur right that upper deck ruined a lot of stuff (most specifically brands like score trying to do the photography that UD did but not as well). Also a pack of 89 topps was 40 fucking cents!!

That said having switched to a pack of baseball cards instead of eating ice cream when i’m stressed the topps archive line is pretty dope

For obvious reasons I never collected baseball cards but I have some cultural knowledge of what they mean to people who do; the sell-your-soul-for-it Sandy Koufax card that’s a notable Mcguffin in Needful Things and the Yaz card (“here you go, muttonchops Yaz”) that Milhouse is willing to pay $30 (in the 90s!) for

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr7v7FBcKoI

Anyway at some point randomly last year I received a package in the post from the person who started this thread, with a collection of 2019(?) Portland Sea Dogs cards. That’s the Red Sox double A affiliate and the collection featured a number of guys now on the big team:
https://i.postimg.cc/SRtsyMbq/IMG-4735.jpg

Then clemenza offered to send me some old duplicate cards of his, which I accepted and they are pretty amazing.

https://i.postimg.cc/7Z46qDp5/IMG-4736.jpg

There’s some beautiful cards in this, like the Griffey one on the left, but the NOMAH card on the right might be my favourite of them all
https://i.postimg.cc/yd21tzmY/IMG-4737.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/NjbgYX6n/IMG-4739.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/x8HfSF5G/IMG-4740.jpg

As my message to TH says, they are in perfect condition!
https://i.postimg.cc/JhczsgCp/IMG-4743.jpg

So now I have a very small collection of cards, most of them not worth anything (not the point to me), I’m not sure if I’ll add to it massively but certainly I have been looking out for nice cards for my favourite players and such. Thank you so much to both Tracer Hand and clemenza for your generosity and sharing your love of the game with me!

I have a signed canseco dream team that makes me giggle

Baseball cards got exceedingly ugly for a time--"refractor" cards looked like the worst dollar-bin album cover art--but the Nomar card is a Topps Stadium Club, and they usually looked great in the '90s.

lol. I actually considered sending you a Roy Halladay refractor (but was prevented from doing so because it didn’t ship to Canada!)

I was really, really into baseball cards from about 1983 to the bubble burst in the '90s, which really killed my interest. I had a binder of my best cards that was at one point was valued (at least per the Beckett magazines I used to devour) at about $7,000 - $8,000. Hoping to use it to help pay college expenses, I held on too long and when I finally took in in it was worth about $150 total.

i've still got thousands of cards in my childhood home, gyac if you have a list of favorite players whose cards may be of negligible value from the years 1987-1991 i likely have them. plenty of Score and Donruss and Fleer and particulary ugly Topps lying around.

Really kind of you Omar - if your webmail works, message me that way & we can discuss?

I thought the thread might have been revived for this crazy story, what Canadian dreams are made of:

http://www.cp24.com/news/saskatchewan-collector-finds-rare-case-containing-coveted-wayne-gretzky-rookie-cards-1.6749401#:~:text=Heritage%20Auctions%20took%20the%20hockey,of%20%242%20million%20or%20more

Heard about that on the radio the other day--amazing. ($200,000 worth of baseball cards, too.)

Didn't know there was a baseball card thread so I want to repost this from the 'Rank Anything You Feel Like Ranking' thread just to see if anyone wanted to engage with it. I chose this period only because that's what I'm familiar with - I knew the '70s sets from growing up in that era but I also knew most of the '60s sets from older kids in my neighborhood who had hung on to their cards.

Topps baseball card sets 1960-1980 by aesthetic design:

1. 1975
2. 1965
3. 1964
4. 1971
5. 1972
6. 1974
7. 1960
8. 1976
9. 1970
10. 1967
11. 1961
12. 1977
13. 1966
14. 1973
15. 1963
16. 1968
17. 1969
18. 1980
19. 1962
20. 1978
21. 1979

― Josefa, Saturday, August 18, 2018 1:38 AM (five years ago)

I know the sets from the first half of the '90s much better; collected for about five years in there, mostly overproduced sets from the glut.

https://cdn.acidcow.com/pics/20100809/the_30_worst_baseball_cards_of_all_time_24.jpg

Incredible stache

phwooar

the randiest randy

Has mustaches over his eyes too

https://i.imgur.com/PbRk0uT.jpg

look what came in the mail from user gyac!!!

Just to clarify, I did not deliberately purchase 3/4 of these cards.

What does that Ortíz say on the back

V underwhelming. No stats or anything. The others are great - little retro clip art, drawings, fun facts etc

Is the Seabold a rookie card as well

lol it is. Let's hope he gets the chance to lower his career ERA to something under 8.

Probably not in Colorado

Sends baseball cards very much in character...Thank you to gyac for some cool cards, including these two, which I think are both from heritage sets:

https://i.postimg.cc/sXVkq4zF/buster.jpg https://i.postimg.cc/C596hj3x/tim.jpg

Those were supposed to be smaller and side by side...

(they're side-by-side if you have a big enough screen!)

The Lincecum is supposed to look like an ‘85 Topps iirc. One of my favorite designs. The set with the legendary Gooden rookie.

I sent a few others, as clemenza alludes to, so here’s what I sent and why:

Lincecum: duh

Posey: the Posey/Lincecum battery of the 2010 postseason is my Roman Empire

Brandon Morrow: obviously he was a Jay but I kept reading about him when I started reading about Lincecum. He was a California kid who was drafted ahead of Lincecum, by the Mariners. Lincecum was a stud at UW and Mariners fans had been watching him carve up the pac12 for three years and Mariners fans, to this day, still bitch about (them drafting) Morrow. So you had a California kid go to Seattle and a Seattle kid go to California. Morrow was basically ruined by the Mariners messing him around but the Jays, I believe, helped him get back to what he started out as. The parallels are intense - their careers started and ended at very similar times.

Sergio Romo - my Immaculate Grid stud! And the story about him striking out Miggy with a slow fastball in 2012 remains classic.

I also sent a José Bautista by virtue of him being both a Blue Jays stud, baseball brawl and rule 5 legend?

This is all really cool

I was in the MLB flagship store last week and I bought a box of the new cards, some samples

https://i.postimg.cc/J7Yf69Sk/IMG-5664.jpg

They very thoughtfully chose photos of the Padres players in their City connect uniforms for the most part which appealed to my aesthetic sensibilities.

I gave my husband the Astros fan some Astros players and also Jordan Romano, who he loves “because he always blows the save when we watch him”.

The neon look is pretty cool IMO. This pack cost me $20 for 59 cards, when I was looking at the pack this man came up and was cursing about the price increase. (He asked “Do you collect?” and I said “no,” despite having a box of cards in my hand, he then went into a spiel about what cards you can get in which packs and their value which I forgot as I wasn’t interested.) Anyway I may send some of these on!

The era of speculation is back

Hey, you got Strider...I'd give those a 7/10 aesthetically; reasonably subdued by today's standards. And 30 cents a card doesn't seem too bad.

And old man Acuña just behind him!

Didn't even notice that--those two cards alone justify the cost.

Just for context, two sets I'd give 10/10 for their design: '91 Topps Stadium Club and '93 Upper Deck SP.

https://i.etsystatic.com/16316958/r/il/053774/2227109100/il_570xN.2227109100_qjz7.jpg

https://www.sportscollectorsdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/ud-sp-griffey.jpg

Yeah I loved '93 Upper Deck.

I always had a soft spot for the wood grain '87 Topps.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71pOBCzaVDL.jpg

Clean af

agreed

mid-80s a very good time for ultra-clean designs i.e. ‘85 fleer

https://image.invaluable.com/housePhotos/onesourceauctions/05/667005/H4367-L201361811.jpg

The antichrist of card design, marginally less garish than Las Vegas:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/3c/Topps_1993_refractor_card.jpg/170px-Topps_1993_refractor_card.jpg

See I love that but I love holographic anything (my nails have holographic glitter right now), spare a thought for those of us who are magpies please

They were definitely all the craze for a while--not sure if they've maintained their value.

my favorite card sets might be the 1971 and 1973 Topps, both vv aesthetically of their specific moment in time and in the case of the '71s, notoriously difficult to find in top condition (the black gets dinged more noticeably.)

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/yvcAAOSw0UNjfDml/s-l1600.png

https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.iKKAV4Y29GFIv4z7dbJ6eQHaJ2?rs=1&pid=ImgDetMain

Love that '71 design (don't have any myself). The '92 Bowman set is nice, with at least one famous rookie card:

https://i.postimg.cc/B6syzNnz/mariano.jpg

https://sportscardinfo.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/ss88f.jpg

Thanks again to gyac for more great cards. Can't picture them all, but highlights include my first Trout, Betts, and Arreaz cards, and I think my first Acuna too. Also: Adley Rutschman, Corey Seager, J-Rod, Adolis Garcia, Altuve, and Davis Schneider, cornerstone of any serious collection.

https://i.postimg.cc/Bbqc09z4/acuna.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/jd36G14Y/betts.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/q7y86vVp/davis.jpg

(Should have taken a photograph...postimages is very useful, but they don't always resize in a uniform manner like they say they will.)

Davis Schneider, cornerstone of any serious collection

On a whim yesterday I ordered a 2024 Topps hobby box. I haven't opened a pack of cards since I was in hs (c.1998), and for years I've rued the amount of money I pumped into what had become a form of gambling aimed at 10-year-olds. But I've recently become obsessed with videos of people opening junk wax. It's funny how many of those old cards I immediately recognize...

The modern sets seem pretty confusing (tons of parallels?), but I'm giddy about opening up some packs again.

Yes but what did you get? Show us!

Insert culture is kind of a drag (it thwarts my twitchy collectivitis - you literally cant get them all) and many of them are stupid looking! That said when they hit they hit

Are they still tearing off little jersey shards or have they moved on to DNA samples?

Yeah its wack

Are they still tearing off little jersey shards or have they moved on to DNA samples?

Going to buy a magnifying glass so can check that!

No no, it’s a special big card, yours is just a normal one sorry 😭 I’d keep a card with a piece of a base for myself, sorry

The worst are the ones where there is a “player worn” swatch, not even game used

Not baseball, but I think I'm going to buy my friend's son a basketball box for an upcoming birthday. There are a couple, Panini or Donruss, and both are $40 for 90 cards. I guess that's not bad.

https://www.mlb.com/news/fan-beau-thompson-collects-million-cubs-cards

Really? "ONE MILLION unique Chicago Cubs cards"--even with the glut, that doesn't sound right. For the first 70 years of baseball cards, you've basically got one or two companies producing them. 70 years x 30 cards x 2 companies = 4,200 unique cards. Double that to account for promotional cards locally produced: 8,400. Round that up to 10,000. Which leaves...another 990,000 cards since 1980.

Best rookie cards I own. I eliminated PED guys (A-Rod, Manny, etc...except one) and Alomar. None are authenticated, but I think they're all near-mint. Drives me up the wall that that matters.

https://i.postimg.cc/W3Ch8k4p/01.jpg

Arenado - 2013 Topps
Bagwell - 1991 Stadium Club
Beltre - 1997 Topps
Bonds - 1987 Donruss (seems to have retained some value)

https://i.postimg.cc/N00Fw49f/02.jpg

Freeman - 2011 Topps
Griffey - 1989 Donruss
Jeter - 1993 Topps
Jones - 1991 Bowman

https://i.postimg.cc/0yk2pfCd/03.jpg

Johnson - 1989 Topps
Kershaw - 2008 Topps
Maddux - 1987 Leaf
Pedro - 1991 Upper Deck

https://i.postimg.cc/fWCPVfJh/04.jpg

Piazza - 1993 Topps
Scherzer - 2008 Topps
Thomas - 1990 Topps
Verlander - 2006 Topps

Wish I'd bought a dozen Kershaws when I could have--$4 or $5 online.

No Betts or Trout or Pujols or Cabrera, unfortunately.

Card show! Toronto has a big one at the International Centre twice a year--made the drive in today to meet my collector friend for dinner (he helps one of the vendors there) and buy lots of junk. First one I've gone to in a few years.

Should have brought my camera; there really is kind of a Hunter S. Thompson in Las Vegas feeling when you step inside, a universe unto itself. The three most expensive things I saw, all the same vendor: game-worn jerseys from Tim Horton and Rocket Richard, both $150,000 (I'd say half to three-quarters of what's in there was hockey-related), and a Nolan Ryan rookie card for $130,000. I know it would require a miracle for someone to steal this stuff, but why would you even risk that? Are you hoping for a walk-up sale on such items? ("$130,000? Sure--is there an ATM in here?")

Gretzky rookie cards everywhere, graded from 1 ($500) to 9 ($30,000--except I swear it didn't look like it was in that great shape...do people counterfeit grading?). In the scoundrel department, an O.J. rookie card (5.5) for $750, and an issue of Playboy with Trump on the cover for $450. Every booth had its name displayed. Best one: Vandelay Industries.

And then there are people like me who are there to buy cheap stuff no one wants (often found in boxes under the tables with the expensive stuff). Some of these were $5, some 2/$5:

1) Blue Jay sets (30 or 40 cards each) put out by Oh Henry! Bought seven, from 1995 to 2001. Not sure if that's all of them--if not, I know I'll start obsessively looking for the others.

2) A nice Blue Jay set put out in 2002, can't figure out by who. Halladay and Delgado are in there.

3) Minor league sets: 1987 Bakersfield Dodgers (best player: Juan Guzman), 1995 Charleston River Dogs (Fernando Tatis), 1992 Calgary Cannons (Bret Boone, Andy Hawkins, pitching coach Ross Grimsley), 1993 Ottawa Lynx (Matt Stairs, Blue Jay broadcaster Joe Siddall!), 1985 Utica Blue Sox (literally no one...Ken Brett was manager, though), and a 50-card Southern League All-Star set from '91 (three Frank Thomas cards, also Luis Gonzalez).

4) Two K-Mart sets: 1990 Super Stars and 1982 20th Anniversary AL & NL MVPs.

5) Other stuff: two Barry Colla sets, Frank Thomas and the 1992 All-Star Game (Colla's a photographer who used to put out his own specialty sets); 1994 Topps Stadium Club "Members Only" (it's embarrassing to even type that...); a McDonald's/Donruss MVP set from '92.

6) 10 loose Topps Heritage cards, including Cabrera on the Marlins, Maddux on the Padres, Beltre on the Mariners and Red Sox, and Rogers Hornsby and Mel Ott.

7) Two unopened decks of Toronto Maple Leafs playing cards. That one's really mysterious.

Also two books, $10 each: Sayonara Home Run! The Art of the Japanese Baseball Card and The Card (about the Honus Wagner T206).

Somewhere in the building, today or tomorrow: Dennis Rodman, William Shatner, and some wrestler (couldn't tell you who).

Good thing I'm two hours away, else I'd probably be back Saturday.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5489541/2024/05/13/bobby-witt-jr-game-worn-cards/?source=user_shared_article

In the second game of the 2024 season, Bobby Witt Jr. went 2-for-3 with a pair of doubles. But unbeknownst to anyone watching (well, almost anyone), Witt was playing with something unusual in his uniform pocket.

His baseball cards.

“I grew up my whole life collecting cards,” Witt told The Athletic.

A day earlier, reigning National League Rookie of the Year Corbin Carroll led off for the Arizona Diamondbacks doing the same thing. He played in his team’s 7-3 win over the Colorado Rockies with his own baseball cards in his pocket.

Witt and Carroll thus became — according to trading card grading and autograph/memorabilia authentication company Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA) — the first two athletes to experiment with “game-used cards.”

A card graded a 10 is defined as “a virtually perfect card.” That means four sharp corners, a well centered image, and blemish-free on the front and back. At the opposite end of the scale, a PSA 1 grade means, “the eye appeal of the card has nearly vanished in its entirety.”

It should come as no surprise that none of the cards Witt and Carroll carried on them through a Major League Baseball game earned a PSA 10. In fact, the game-worn cards are now among the lowest graded examples of each card in PSA’s database. For example, a 1965 card that was taped to a wall and ripped off some of the front when removed, with a thumbtack hole and maybe stained by some marker — that gets a PSA 1. For someone to get, say, a PSA 3 with any card made in the last 20 years — you have to really try to get it that bad. Witt, for instance, knocked down the grades on his cards by sliding into second base on one of his doubles and on a stolen base attempt.

But it could have been worse.

“I put them in my left-back pocket, and I slide on my right. So they weren’t as banged up as they could have been,” Witt explained, adding that he didn’t check on them during the game.

Adding to the damage?

“I knew they had sweat marks on them, so they wouldn’t get good grades.”

…

But even with the wear and tear, Witt’s cards graded higher than Carroll’s did.

The final tally:

Corbin Carroll 2019 Bowman Draft: 1
Corbin Carroll 2023 Topps Heritage: 3
Bobby Witt, Jr. 2022 Topps Heritage: 4
Bobby Witt Jr. 2022 Topps Update: 2
Witt added that he and Carroll talk about cards, but they haven’t discussed the outcomes from the game-worn cards yet.

“If one of these had a scuff on it or a bent corner because Corbin was sliding into second, I think that has extra allure to it,” said Hoge. “Collectors will look at how used or how impactful it was for the game-worn aspect.”

Also, I still need to photograph some of the haul clemenza sent me, I put them away ASAP!

Game-used cards ("used"): what a bizarre concept.

My collector friend told me there's been a scandal or two with the authenticators. Not surprising--it really does seem like a bogus adjunct industry, created solely to drive pricing up. I can see wanting to make sure your Wagner or Mantle card isn't a fake, but at the lower end of the scale, should you really need to authenticate Freddie Freeman and Yordan Alvarez cards?

Got some surprise cards from gyac yesterday, all from the 2023 Topps Heritage set. They look great--not sure which of the '70s sets they're modelled on. Four of them:

https://i.postimg.cc/XqZYkxqd/witt.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/bYMJwXVT/bello.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/rwGFjDVn/gallen.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/ZqVYkXy6/kirk.jpg

The Kirk card kills me--that must have been the day we had him at shortstop.

(Notice the classic "Topps All-Star Rookie" trophy on the Witt card.)

1974 design

That's the one, thanks.

https://i.postimg.cc/RZb9XwrT/oscar.jpg

(Sorry, wasn't thinking about the team nickname, just Oscar Gamble.)

Oh that rules, it’s nice to see the design template!

Tracer Hand gave me this book for my birthday, honestly it rules. He was like, you’ll love this, and I’m always suspicious when people tell me that but in this case it’s true.

https://i.postimg.cc/T1NXG3mv/IMG-2248.jpg

The author is a certified yapper:
https://i.postimg.cc/4ydr8R0L/IMG-2251.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/FzBw8n59/IMG-2253.jpg

However like anything this is forgivable because it’s quite charming, once we get into the actual business of favourite cards and players it’s set the table very well. I can’t really do justice to it myself, so here are the pictures:

https://i.postimg.cc/c1bjsj2W/IMG-2254.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/N08qF4T4/IMG-2255.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/sX0ngQnm/IMG-2259.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/NFSPp9mF/IMG-2262.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/9QTsgpxh/IMG-2260.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/wvBfzck3/IMG-2265.jpg

Oh I’m so glad about you liking it! Isn’t it just great?? I also like his entries on John Roseboro and Choo Choo Coleman

Loved that book when I first read it. There's an entry on I-forget-who where they translate what's on the card into what it means...something to the effect that when the third sentence is about your hobbies, that's not good. And there's the Gus Zernial card they try to figure out:

https://i.postimg.cc/wj3xj88N/gus.jpg

Clemenza remind me which continent ur on?

The one to the left of Greenland.

thumbsupgif

Holy shit, clemenza!

Got this envelope this morning and aside from the Canadian HOF magazine (which I loved and will write - or say 👀) more about in my thread later today hopefully), the cards you sent are just…

https://i.postimg.cc/HsfHhmyV/IMG-3444.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/MGYSHjrQ/IMG-3443.jpg
Oh, I don’t know, just a beautiful perfect condition rookie card of my favourite player ever?

And what’s this? His former teammate and star of the 2012 Giants postseason rotation?
https://i.postimg.cc/Gt8VFBzz/IMG-3445.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/MHn293Z7/IMG-3446.jpg

And what’s this, showcased by my ragged-edge, need-redoing nails?
https://i.postimg.cc/KzvyMvds/IMG-3450.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/mgYxpH45/IMG-3451.jpg

This made my morning. Thank you SO, SO much. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ I don’t know if you told me you were sending this because I’ve completely forgotten if you did, but either way, what a great surprise!

I've always loved the design of that Topps 1986 set.

It’s gorgeous. I love the way A’s looks

Glad they got there. I've gotten a lot of good rookie cards over the years from homeruncards.com--much more reasonable than anywhere else online, especially for older rookie cards of non-HOF'ers. The induction guides that he HOF here put out are really nice.

I got a box I’d totally forgotten about ordering today of Topps 2024 s2 - yeah the neon ones. Am willing to part with some of these, and there are more not pictured & I can check my teams. Will likely keep the majority of these in the first two (other half has first refusal on Astros):

https://i.postimg.cc/SQgp0bLY/IMG-4319.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/90K8WbFK/IMG-4320.jpg

Most of these am happy to give away except the random Koufax:

https://i.postimg.cc/BQjkdLQR/IMG-4322.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/509kpjR7/IMG-4323.jpg

I have a ton of Padres, from s1 too, for some reason, but I don’t think they have any fans here.

Wonder if Teoscar is bat-flipping or if he just drew a walk? The crowd would answer that, but they're blurry.

they look like they're standing with arms raised, but it's Dodger Stadium so they're probably just doing the wave.

xp I think the former because he’s gazing skyward at the no doubt moon bomb he just launched

randomly, i popped into the local pizza place for a slice - not because i was hungry, but because there was no line and i grasped the opportunity - and they had an autographed Teo poster on the wall. he'd written "8.3 not bad Go Jays"

Some more great cards arrived from gyac today--the underground ILB cross-continental baseball-card economy is thriving.

https://i.postimg.cc/HnCq0g2c/yordan.jpg https://i.postimg.cc/Y9SGp5gF/soto.jpg https://i.postimg.cc/WbZDb6D5/shohei.jpg

Also: Devers, Freeman, Lindor, Votto, Casas, and some retired guy I don't recognize, Peony or something. They're all from the 2021 Bowman Platinum series, with a nice classic uncluttered look. And very shiny, so I'm afraid to handle them. Many thanks!

You’re welcome! Can I be selfish and ask can you post the others, I know there were two Yordans & at least one was supposed to be sparkly

I took a photo of all seven, but it's just too blurry--sorry. My camera's not great. Anyway, here's the sparkly Yordan card: it's called "ice foil." There's a gold version, too.

https://i.postimg.cc/C5pTg6vg/ice-foil.jpg

Some guys have all the luck.

https://www.mlb.com/news/mike-trout-and-son-find-his-2009-bowman-rookie-baseball-card

tag yourself

https://i.imgur.com/U4qE8Su.jpeg

Colossal look from Tom Hume

https://i.imgur.com/SMwcDRn.jpeg

crazy

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/14/business/sports-memorabilia-collection-discovery.html

Speaking of priceless* collection discoveries I found ozzie smith, kirk gibson, ron guidry and tim raines RC's in a 15 dollar church basement box

*squishy condition aside.

Was I hoping for a Rickey RC, reader you should know I was.

Came home from a stressful trip to the vets to find a parcel from Tracer Hand containing a set of cards for the famously stacked 2024 Portland Sea Dogs roster, of which the most notable:

https://i.postimg.cc/wM0sKssV/IMG-1282.jpg

Kristian “Barry Bonds” Campbell isn’t in this but i had to check and find out he started the season in low-A Greenville before being promoted to double A Portland in June, and then triple A Worcester in August.

Zach Penrod and Nick Yorke have both made their MLB debuts already (Yorke was traded to the Pirates and debuted with them), but the top row (the former big three) should all debut in 2025.

From left: Kyle Teel (now a White Sox), Marcelo Mayer, Roman “gets on his horse” Anthony.

Thank you TH!

It gives me great pleasure gyac!

Absurd:

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6549780/2025/08/13/grading-rainbow-griffey-sanders-psa/

If you can't access that, the title explains all: Why Ken Griffey Jr. rookie cards in bad condition can command premium prices. (The "why": because they're much scarcer than ones in average shape.)

Thanks to gyac for some nice and unexpected cards that arrived in the mail today. Two Casases (Casasses? Casi?), or course--I need him to return for the sake of my growing Casas collection.

https://i.postimg.cc/dVZ7LfC9/casas-1.jpg https://i.postimg.cc/Dzq8cbBJ/casas-2.jpg

A Max card from his Ranger days (or hours):

https://i.postimg.cc/9MCzgFnx/max.jpg

Also: Kutter Crawford and Reese McGuire (both of whom I know), and NaoYuki Uwasawa and Zach Neto (both of whom I don't). I want them all to thrive (in 2026).

Can I just say a couple of those are throw-ins, I absolutely did not buy an Uwasawa card or Reese McGuire! Zach Neto is legit, though, very fun player to watch imo. Also I checked my account to see what I actually bought and I have no memory of any of this so must have been when I was sick so apologies for such a random selection.

Neto has the funniest expression I’ve ever seen from a guy who hits a home run

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgnajJcci24

Is ordering baseball cards in 2025 while in a feverish daze a distant cousin of drunk-dialing someone in 1983?

I quite literally wouldn’t know…