Great article on baseball cards in SI this week

[loftheb]

Hey, everyone...

I just got my Sports Illustrated in the mail, and saw that they had an article on the baseball card industry. Luke Winn (who sounds very knowlegable) profiles the 1989 Griffey RC, and mentions the Topps baseball takeover. There's some alarming stats on hobby shops... and maybe moreso on Rookie Cards. Derek Jeter had 8 rookie cards. Albert Pujols had 43.

I think the article reads almost like an obituary on the hobby, but maybe that's where we are.

Anyway, if you have a chance to check it out, do so.
-Casey

 

[roro17]

I read that, it's a good read did you see the part about the stores profit from 88-02 being 10,000 to 13,000 a month and now its $3,000 a month.

 

[loftheb]

Or that there's only about 500 baseball card shops left in the US.

 

[zimmerman1995]

good article

 

[valediction]

I just skimmed it, but other than dropping a couple of specific numbers on us, I didn't see anything too eye opening. A good read for a newer collector, but most people who've collected for a time already remember these things. Remember when the National drew 6 figures for attendance? Or when Baseball Cards Magazine went from a quarterly to a monthly? Or when SCD was a weekly with almost 300 pages?

There used to be 4-8 big shows per year in the Twin Cities metro area ( Mark Dolan's spring and fall shows at the State Fair grounds, Mansco Perry's 2 shows at the Thunderbird Hotel in Bloomington, the Regina High School, Bloomington Ice Gardens, Jefferson High School shows, and the occasional attempt by another promoter mixed in. These were 80-100+ table shows, dealers bigger than the typical weekend warrior. Now technically we have Twinsfest, but even that is getting watered down a lot more. That's it. The Twin Cities Sports card Collector's Club has a monthly show advertised at 40 tables, but 12-20 is about average, some months it barely cracks 10. Tom Frantzen runs a show out of a mall here, again, 10-15 tables maybe the last few times I went.

Shops have been dying since about 1992. Pretty much every shop I grew up with is gone, including the chain that sold newspapers, magazines, comics, adult movies, and any collectible that became hot (Pokemon, pogs, beanie babies, etc.etc). Between the internet letting anyone with a computer sell cards, manufacturers making it tough for dealers to remain direct buyers by producing more and more lines and making them buy almost all of them, tougher economic times, and the dealers own shortfalls. (A sad fact is, there were a lot of people in the late 80's who opened sports card shops who failed because they were not very smart business people.)

 

[JJLevitsky]

It was a good if obvious read. I agree that this would be interesting to a new collector but is pretty much old hat for most of us here. Still, it was nice to see the hobby get some press. Like they say, any publicity is good publicity.

Thanks,

Jeff

 

[David K.]

Thanks for the information! Dropping by Target tomorrow to pick up a SI for my reading material. Best regards, David

 

[cadets68]

Thanks for the information! Dropping by Target tomorrow to pick up a SI for my reading material. Best regards, David

Save your money.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1159241/index.htm

 

[cardinals-colle]

Save your money.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1159241/index.htm

Thanks for the link!

Bill

 

[bigalbert]

I just skimmed it, but other than dropping a couple of specific numbers on us, I didn't see anything too eye opening. A good read for a newer collector, but most people who've collected for a time already remember these things. Remember when the National drew 6 figures for attendance? Or when Baseball Cards Magazine went from a quarterly to a monthly? Or when SCD was a weekly with almost 300 pages?

There used to be 4-8 big shows per year in the Twin Cities metro area ( Mark Dolan's spring and fall shows at the State Fair grounds, Mansco Perry's 2 shows at the Thunderbird Hotel in Bloomington, the Regina High School, Bloomington Ice Gardens, Jefferson High School shows, and the occasional attempt by another promoter mixed in. These were 80-100+ table shows, dealers bigger than the typical weekend warrior. Now technically we have Twinsfest, but even that is getting watered down a lot more. That's it. The Twin Cities Sports card Collector's Club has a monthly show advertised at 40 tables, but 12-20 is about average, some months it barely cracks 10. Tom Frantzen runs a show out of a mall here, again, 10-15 tables maybe the last few times I went.

Shops have been dying since about 1992. Pretty much every shop I grew up with is gone, including the chain that sold newspapers, magazines, comics, adult movies, and any collectible that became hot (Pokemon, pogs, beanie babies, etc.etc). Between the internet letting anyone with a computer sell cards, manufacturers making it tough for dealers to remain direct buyers by producing more and more lines and making them buy almost all of them, tougher economic times, and the dealers own shortfalls. (A sad fact is, there were a lot of people in the late 80's who opened sports card shops who failed because they were not very smart business people.)

I used to stop at Shinders all the time when I was in Minneapolis. I assume thats the chain you are referring to?

 

[Tim Carroll]

I agree with valediction - too many shops were opened by people that did not have a business sense. I would also like to add that too many shops were opened by COLLECTORS. This is not the area to be a very active collector and try to make money. Doomed for failure.


Tim

 

[David K.]

Save your money.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1159241/index.htm

Thanks Buddy!

 

[theplasticman]

I just skimmed it, but other than dropping a couple of specific numbers on us, I didn't see anything too eye opening. A good read for a newer collector, but most people who've collected for a time already remember these things. Remember when the National drew 6 figures for attendance? Or when Baseball Cards Magazine went from a quarterly to a monthly? Or when SCD was a weekly with almost 300 pages?

There used to be 4-8 big shows per year in the Twin Cities metro area ( Mark Dolan's spring and fall shows at the State Fair grounds, Mansco Perry's 2 shows at the Thunderbird Hotel in Bloomington, the Regina High School, Bloomington Ice Gardens, Jefferson High School shows, and the occasional attempt by another promoter mixed in. These were 80-100+ table shows, dealers bigger than the typical weekend warrior. Now technically we have Twinsfest, but even that is getting watered down a lot more. That's it. The Twin Cities Sports card Collector's Club has a monthly show advertised at 40 tables, but 12-20 is about average, some months it barely cracks 10. Tom Frantzen runs a show out of a mall here, again, 10-15 tables maybe the last few times I went.

Shops have been dying since about 1992. Pretty much every shop I grew up with is gone, including the chain that sold newspapers, magazines, comics, adult movies, and any collectible that became hot (Pokemon, pogs, beanie babies, etc.etc). Between the internet letting anyone with a computer sell cards, manufacturers making it tough for dealers to remain direct buyers by producing more and more lines and making them buy almost all of them, tougher economic times, and the dealers own shortfalls. (A sad fact is, there were a lot of people in the late 80's who opened sports card shops who failed because they were not very smart business people.)

The card scene around MN is pretty dry. In college I worked for the shop here in Rochester called Best in baseball cards. It was one of the better shops in the state. I think Dean sells insurance now.

Occasionally we'll have a small 10-15 table show at the Holiday Inn here in Rochester. If you want Vikings stuff... you're set.

 

[timfsu2k]

Wow, what struck me from the article is the Goodwin set. I would kill for one of those Iwo Jima cards!! Probably everyone else has already heard of that set, but I'm not up to date on the new stuff. My daughter would go nuts over one of those Miley Cyrus cards!

Ok, off topic...sorry!

 

[mrmopar]

I enjoyed collecting in the early days. By the late 80s, it became work almost. So many different issues were battling for our money. That and the fact I had enlisted in the USN and was traveling around, I basically stopped collecting for a period.

I didn't rediscover cards until after the UD birth, so I was not really playing an active role in the game at that time, but a friend showed me his cards right before I was to separate from the USN. I started buying cheap wax at the time to fill in the gaps. The tough stuff like 89 UD, 90 Leaf, 91 Stadium Club, etc was missing from my collection though and slowly added some singles when I could. Collecting became fun again for a while. The early to mid 90s was a more expensive version of what Fleer and others did in the late 80s with all their boxed sets...inserts were the craze! However, I had more money then and was able to keep up with it all...for a while. By 1997-98, it had become ridiculous again. Bear in mind this was even BEFORE most of the jerseys, autos and 1/1 cards were to hit the market. By the time that was happening, I was out of buying packs again, never to return.

I now buy select single items that I want, having discovered that the lottery mentality of pulling that big hit to resell never seemed to cover the cost of my packs/boxes and I was left with a small stack of worthless commons/singles, maybe a hit or two and I was out $75! Busting packs was always fun, it was not the way to go as prices were creeping past $5/pack with boxes topping $100 on most products!

I believe the card makers moved things along too quickly and burned out the collectors and pushed away the investors/speculators by overproducing everything (who were bad for the hobby from the beginning...it was a HOBBY) once they started pumping huge cash into the system.

I'm just one guy, but I will probably never collect cards again they way I did when I first started in 1978. The card makers don't get a cent of my money...it's all after market sellers who have already paid the "new car" price and I am picking up the "used car" after depreciation. However, I'll probably never be on the front end of the next Albert Pujols or Ichiro either.