Baseball Cards--What's the scoop?

I am interested in where the baseball card industry is, and where it will be in the future. I asked a sports memorabilia company owner what he thought about the industry. Here's what he had to tell me:

As a young kid the hobby of collecting baseball cards was passed on to me like many other kids around the world. This allowed us to collect all of our favorite players, trade them with friends as well as learn the history of baseball with statistics and other important information from the back of a baseball card. Another thrill of collecting was the expected return on investment, a return that never came.

This hurt the industry in the late 90’s, as many of the cards from the late 70’s had little or no value. This didn’t mean every card was worthless, you still had harder cards such as the Cal Ripken Jr Charlotte O’s in 1980 which can stil be quite valuable in the right condition. Cards also hold their value  if they are graded in a gem mint condition with the best grading companies including Beckett and PSA Grading.

An example of a card that still holds value

Despite the big hit the industry took, the baseball card industry is still alive and evolving. It continues to get stronger each year. This is a positive for kids as well as the adult collector. Nowadays, a collector won’t find the variety of brands that existed in the past, such as Fleer, Flair or even Donruss, will find Topps and Bowman are the major players. These are the only companies that haver rights to print MLB affiliations on their cards. The other company is Panini who bought many of the brands including Donruss and Leaf.

Nolan Knows Bo card from 1990, An example of the plethora of cards printed during this time.

Is there another collapse or bubble in the near future?  Is the bubble now growing, making this an optimal time to hop in the industry? Nobody really can see the future, but the card companies have put a lot of additional time and resources into adding additional features to baseball cards to increase their value and thus evolve the industry into something else entirely. These features include authentic autographs from professional baseball players, authentic pieces of game used jerseys from the past and present as well as parallel versions of the cards that might have a different color border than the base card. These cards have different print runs that could include numbered to 50 or 25 or even as low as only one card. This is how baseball cards will continue to build value and the hobby of collecting cards will continue to grow.  Collectors are seeking that rare border card or game used jersey piece card. 

Limited Edition cards are printed to increase value and give collectors that golden ticket search

As far as the hobby in the years to come I can’t imagine it slowing down being around the industry for the past few years working in a sports memorabilia/card store.  I still get a kick out of when I see a father buy a pack of cards for a son and he opens the pack to find his favorite player. The other side is when you get to see a grown adult open a pack and pull a card that sells online for a few hundred bucks. As long as the consumer has a positive experience with a baseball card, there will always be an industry. This is what I tell every customer when they say the baseball card industry isn’t doing well.

One thing is for certain and that is the hobby is safe for fathers, uncles and grandfathers to pass down to their kids to cherish as many of us did as we were kids.

Written by: Peter Tebin