Baseball Cards

[Red Raindog]

These have been in my basement for 26 years. I just listed them on eBay a few minutes ago. I tried Craigslist but a guy in Springfield backed out on the deal. Hopefully they move online.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=181466434893

good luck!

As a kid I collected cards and stored them along with my comics -- until they met the yard sale fate when my mother cleaned all of that out while I was away at college --- boxes & boxes of 1950' & early 60's cards & comics given away without my knowledge --- never had the heart to collect them after that......

I did forgive my mother though ...... now I have boxes & boxes of (like several hundred) Dreamcicle figurines and tons of Elvis stuff from her estate to liquidate ---- she always did get the last laugh

[Kingspoint]

These have been in my basement for 26 years. I just listed them on eBay a few minutes ago. I tried Craigslist but a guy in Springfield backed out on the deal. Hopefully they move online.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=181466434893

I ran the baseball card side of a coin shop/baseball card shop in Vancouver, WA in 1986 and 1987. It was a lot of fun then and there was a lot of money to be made. We'd pay off warehouse personnel at Costco's up and down the West Coast to get shipments of cases before others could do the same thing. Demand exceeded supply. Those people who grew up with Mickey Mantle had a lot of money making the value of older cards rise accordingly. With the increase in prices, cards would come out of peoples' attics that had been there for decades, eventually increasing the supply of vintage cards so that the balance tipped away from scarcity.

But, in 1988 it was all over. It ran it's course. The manufacturers flooded the market. Vintage cards were no longer scarce. Every wholesaler had more cards than they knew what to do with. In order to come up with ways to sell this surplus (the 1979 through 1983 Fleer and Donruss cards were worthless because of too many on the market even during the peak success of card-selling), I made up a "wheel" along with Saturday "shows" in 1986. When the 1987 Fleer set came out, along with the "glossy" versions, they were rare enough, with enough Rookie Stars (Larkin, Bonds, Santiago, Clark, McGwire, etc.) that 1987 was one last go-around of card success.

Beckett saw this coming and they got together in Hawaii in a special meeting along with the top publishers of pricing guides and decided to falsely fix prices for the future in order to ensure that the market would maintain some success. Before then, 50% of the price guide was a safe bet for anyone to receive if they walked into a cardshop and wanted to sell their cards. You could set prices based on the monthly Beckett Price Guide, with the prices changing the very day the new monthly issue would come out. But, before 1987 would come to an end, it was clear that the market was drying up. There were simply too many cards out there. Fleer, Donruss and Topps got greedy and ruined the market.

Was it any wonder that Major League Baseball felt the same feeling and closed their eyes to the steroids players were taking? Anyone who has spent any time at all in a gym knows instantly which members are taking steroids and which ones aren't. There are simply certain things that the human body can't possibly do without the help of steroids, and they are very easy to spot, if you have half a brain and aren't a naive nellie. You don't need "admitted" usage to know who is using and who isn't. It was pretty obvious a guy like Clemens, McGwire, Sosa, Bagwell, Brady Anderson and a majority of other players were using. It was obvious guys like Junior and Murphy were not. (It's why Murphy belongs in the Hall-of-Fame...as he competed against players who were using and he still had some tremendous seasons during that time, while dominating the League for a number of seasons before that, and why Clemens, McGwire, Sosa, Bagwell, and a majority of others of that era do not belong.)

In 1986 and 1987 I was flying to card shows in other cities paying for the entire trip with the cards in my pocket. That ended at the end of 1987.

It's ironic that you have a box from 1988, the first year of the end of the baseball card bonanza.

There's always some other craze to take another's place. But, for that short stint in the mid-80's, it was baseball cards, and it was a lot of fun. I loved the days someone would walk in with a box that looked like it was in the attic, and we would discover new cards and paraphernalia that had been sitting in attics for decades.

[PTjvs]

Beckett saw this coming and they got together in Hawaii in a special meeting along with the top publishers of pricing guides and decided to falsely fix prices for the future in order to ensure that the market would maintain some success.

Do you have any sourcing on this?

jvs

[powersackers]

Fortunately PSA grading has infused a small amount of marketability to these late 80s sets. A PSA 10 graded 88 Donruss can go for $10. A Glavine or Alomar RC about 30 bucks. And there's probably 25 of each in my cases.

[cumberlandreds]

I had a ton from this set at one time. The stars probably have some value. I would imagine the Griffey rookie is a good one. But the commons are practically worthless. I think I donated a bunch like that to Goodwill a few months ago because I knew I could never sell them. Good luck. Someone may buy that hoping they can get a bunch of good rookies.

[bounty37h]

The vintage and autograph market is actually doing as good or better then ever these days, at least as far as prices realized. There is not much value in 80-early 00s cards though, outside of parallels and SP's

[jordan_tm]

I used to collect all the time when I was younger. The market really exploded towards the late '90s when they started putting jersey and bat pieces on the cards with autographs. But like what was mentioned early, there just became far too many brands. There was nothing exclusive about owning a player's rookie card when there are 15 different versions of it.

The second thing that turned me off to collecting was the price. I don't know what they're going for these days, but hobby boxes with 12-20 packs in them went for well over a hundred dollars.

[Kingspoint]

Do you have any sourcing on this?

jvs

I wish I did. Just being in the industry at the time, one was privileged to rumors of all sorts. It was necessary to stay ahead of the others. I needed information as to exactly when Topps, Fleer, and Donruss were ready to ship to Costco's, so that I could plan accordingly. Spies and sources were everywhere. Costco would get the first shipments, usually, for a while there. A lot of information would get passed around from dealer to dealer at card shows. Most of the dealers we knew before the baseball card craze even began, so there was good history through the numismatist dealers. The 20% inflation days of Jimmy Carter were a huge boon period to the coin/metals dealers. There was always a pipeline of information that passed through these corridors.

When I first heard that the Price Guide publicists were gathering in Hawaii, something highly illegal, speculation about why became the first topic. Most of us could reason as to why, and from there, it was just a matter of seeing the proof through the publications. It was pretty obvious to us that the prices being posted in Beckett and other Price Guides weren't true reflections of their values. The rumors of the reasons for their meeting (legally, they can't even meet privately....it's akin to what goes on at the WTO behind closed doors) were confirmed.

Before the meeting in Hawaii, we could predict the rises and falls of individual cards and sets before the publishings came out, as they truly reflected the market values. After the meeting, too many of them made no sense. The first repercussion was that we could no longer pay 50% of Beckett High. Customers didn't understand and thought we were being unfair. It only got worse, as 30% became the norm, and then to not embarrass customers too much, instead of paying 10%, which was the true value based on the risk that it could be resold in a timely manner to recoup the investment, we just refused to buy cards. It came to a point to where we'd buy cards we didn't need in order to try to justify that a market existed ourselves, when in reality, none existed....on the wholesale side. No longer were cards a worthy investment for a customer.

Baseball cards went back to being what I preached to every single customer, regardless of age....a hobby, that one should do for the pure enjoyment of doing it, to not look to profit by it.

If you can't confidently sell an item to a retailer for at least 30% of it's retail value, and preferably 50% of it's retail value, then it's being falsely sold at the retail level. Many of these things vary by type of product because of how many times one needs to turn it over in a single year and it's dollar amount, but a good general rule of thumb applies here.

[Kingspoint]

Fortunately PSA grading has infused a small amount of marketability to these late 80s sets. A PSA 10 graded 88 Donruss can go for $10. A Glavine or Alomar RC about 30 bucks. And there's probably 25 of each in my cases.

As with all collectibles, rarity is the key. Having a more defined grading system creates rarity at the very top. As careful as I was with handling cards, stamps, bottles, coins, etc., as a dealer in the 80's, I find it appalling when I see someone on a TV show, such as Antiques road show, or some history channel show of a person investigating an ancient manuscript, bending a corner of a page, touching any part of the material with their fingers (all skin has oil on it that transfers itself), or handling the item in a manner that "risks" damaging it.

In the case of cards, for example, once it's not a PSA 10, it may as well be a PSA 1, unless it's of a very rare card (that has a market, of course).

[Kingspoint]

The market really exploded towards the late '90s when they started putting jersey and bat pieces on the cards with autographs. But like what was mentioned early, there just became far too many brands.

Once the price-fixing of the price guides no longer had an effect, along with the overproduction of basic cards flooded the market, it became obvious to try to come up with novelty ways to get young people to purchase cards. More than a thousand different ideas made their way into production to try to invent "rarity" and "scarcity", and thus justifying a higher price for a single card or set.

[traderumor]

Spent $100s on cards, never made a dime, and wouldn't change a thing. Many hours of enjoyment with baseball cards.

[Kingspoint]

Mickey Mantle cards became the best card to sell/purchase/invest in, not because he was the greatest player or the cards themselves were the most rare, or the cards themselves were the best looking, but because at the time of their greatest interest, it was the people who had the most disposable income (people in their 50's) that matched up with the player they coveted the most when they were children which triggered the rise in popularity of the Mantle paraphernalia. Babe Ruth should have been better, but when that match would have occurred, it was the 1950's, and disposable income was being spent on vacationing around the United States.

The 1990's disposable income should have been the stars of the 1960's. But, the competition for disposable income was vast, dominated by the purchasing of newer homes. The 2000's disposable income was non-existent thanks to 911. In about five to ten years, the kids from the steroids era should have disposable income with their kids having left home, and they may rekindle their childhoods by seeking Sosa, McGwire, and others' cards, but it's hard to tell. There were just a few of those at the time (the 1984 McGwire Topps, the '86 Sosa Donruss) making them rare, and the black border of the Sosa card, along with the miscuts of the McGwire card make PSA 10's even more rare, that these two cards could fetch a lot of money...upwards of $1,000, but you have to find the right seller's market, such as St. Louis, Chicago, or New York. There are ways and will be more ways to make money at it, but it's difficult and you have to be very shrewd about it. Don't overpay.

[Kingspoint]

Spent $100s on cards, never made a dime, and wouldn't change a thing. Many hours of enjoyment with baseball cards.

And, that right there is how one should collect baseball cards.

[BluegrassRedleg]

I used to spend a ton on cards up until about college... when food and beer and women became the only priorities.

Back a few years ago, I pulled some of my old ones out of storage and really enjoyed going through them. I don't buy packs or anything like that anymore, but I've been trying to complete a goal of mine, which is to have every Reds Topps card back to my birth. I've got almost all of them now from 1971- on.

[757690]

I wish I did. Just being in the industry at the time, one was privileged to rumors of all sorts. It was necessary to stay ahead of the others. I needed information as to exactly when Topps, Fleer, and Donruss were ready to ship to Costco's, so that I could plan accordingly. Spies and sources were everywhere. Costco would get the first shipments, usually, for a while there. A lot of information would get passed around from dealer to dealer at card shows. Most of the dealers we knew before the baseball card craze even began, so there was good history through the numismatist dealers. The 20% inflation days of Jimmy Carter were a huge boon period to the coin/metals dealers. There was always a pipeline of information that passed through these corridors.

When I first heard that the Price Guide publicists were gathering in Hawaii, something highly illegal, speculation about why became the first topic. Most of us could reason as to why, and from there, it was just a matter of seeing the proof through the publications. It was pretty obvious to us that the prices being posted in Beckett and other Price Guides weren't true reflections of their values. The rumors of the reasons for their meeting (legally, they can't even meet privately....it's akin to what goes on at the WTO behind closed doors) were confirmed.

Before the meeting in Hawaii, we could predict the rises and falls of individual cards and sets before the publishings came out, as they truly reflected the market values. After the meeting, too many of them made no sense. The first repercussion was that we could no longer pay 50% of Beckett High. Customers didn't understand and thought we were being unfair. It only got worse, as 30% became the norm, and then to not embarrass customers too much, instead of paying 10%, which was the true value based on the risk that it could be resold in a timely manner to recoup the investment, we just refused to buy cards. It came to a point to where we'd buy cards we didn't need in order to try to justify that a market existed ourselves, when in reality, none existed....on the wholesale side. No longer were cards a worthy investment for a customer.

Baseball cards went back to being what I preached to every single customer, regardless of age....a hobby, that one should do for the pure enjoyment of doing it, to not look to profit by it.

If you can't confidently sell an item to a retailer for at least 30% of it's retail value, and preferably 50% of it's retail value, then it's being falsely sold at the retail level. Many of these things vary by type of product because of how many times one needs to turn it over in a single year and it's dollar amount, but a good general rule of thumb applies here.

I remember all,of the sudden, a few guys started showing up at card shows demanding extreme prices on cards, pointing to the new price guide prices that month. But no one was actually paying those prices, and the rest of us with tables weren't selling out of those same cards at much lower prices. It was then I started to be skeptical of Beckett and price guides.

I went up to one of the guys selling at height prices and told him I had the same cards for sale on my table for half the price. I told him that if he was confident he could sell his cards at his prices, he should be willing to buy mine, since he would double his money. Of course, he declined, and went home without selling any cards.