Allow me to preface this month’s column by stating out front that I am a Gen-Xer who has actively collected baseball cards for over three decades. I can’t believe I’m a middle-aged man either, but alas, here I am. I say this because throughout my time as an active collector there has been a mantra that just about everyone and anyone involved in The Hobby has been repeating since I was a kid. Repeat after me if you know the words …
“We have to get kids back into The Hobby.”
I think I first heard this phrase, or something similar, in the early 90s (when I was still a kid) when Donruss introduced the first Triple Play set. And what better way to get Kids Back Into The Hobby, than with a product tailor-made just for them? Of course, Triple Play and every other “kid” set that followed (e.g. Upper Deck’s Fun Pack and Topps Big League) failed, for the exact reason you’d expect. Kids, and I speak from experience since I used to be one, don’t like being condescended to or talked down to. Kids didn’t want their own cards, they wanted the cards everyone else is collecting. Even I knew that as a kid in 1992.
I bring all this up, because if you’ve hung around a Hobby shop or card show lately, you’ve noticed …
THEM.
You know who THEM are. THEM are the small army of tween-aged boys that have invaded The Hobby over the past couple of years. You’ve had to have seen THEM by now, usually with an indifferent mom and/or dad being tagged along against their will.
THEM can usually be seen wearing an Inter Miami jersey of Florida Man (he’s the goat, after all), with a small Zion Case in one hand, and a smartphone looking up comps in the other. You see, all the cool collectors bring their cards in Zion Cases. At least that's what that guy on TikTok says.
And what’s inside those Zion Cases? Slabs. Nothing but slabs. Because, you see, there’s this guy on YouTube who says that if you want your cards to be worth anything, well, you need to send them to PSA. And those cards inside those slabs? Nothing but chrome-stock cards. I mean, nobody collects “paper” cards anymore, am I right?
Also, there is not a single card in their case that is older than they are. After all, only “old heads” collect vintage. Besides, they never got to see Ken Griffey, Jr. or Derek Jeter play.
There THEM are, at the card shows, making deals, setting up trades, and carrying around wads of twenties and fifties. Got to get that grind on!
Here’s one thing I haven’t seen – and you probably haven’t seen either. THEM slumped over a dollar box, going through the stacks, looking for a card to knock-off of a want-list.
We used to call this “collecting” cards.
Oh, we’ve gotten Kids Back Into The Hobby, alright. But my question is, are THEM here for the right reasons? And are THEM going to still be here years from now?
I have some sympathy for THEM. THEM don’t know any better because The Hobby has been down this road before. Back when I was a kid, a lot of people with a lot of money started getting into cards, not to collect them, but as “investments.” These were the days of Mr. Mint, The Hobby’s O.G. influencer if there ever was one, being profiled in Sports Illustrated. I remember Money Magazine hyping up cards as a serious investment. People really thought that if a Mickey Mantle baseball card from 1952 was selling for $5000 in 1987, surely the rookie cards of the stars of the era would have to be worth as much in 35+ years.
Well, it’s been 35+ years. How did those “investments” work out?
(And yes, even I fell for it. Anybody need a 50-count lot of Eric Davis rookie cards? He’s the second coming of Mickey Mantle!)
There’s going to come a day, maybe three-to-five years from now, when THEM are going to wake up and realize that that Zion Case full of cards they bought/traded for isn’t worth what they thought it would be. THEM will never see it coming, which is the worst part, but this Day of Reckoning will come, just like it did for my generation. That mega hot prospect from five years ago THEM went all in on because an influencer said it was a no-brainer investment? He blew out his shoulder and never made it past Single-A. You know all those Aqua/Purple Die-Cut Nuclear Bomb ShockFractors? Collectors (e.g. people like me) aren’t going to want them – regardless of how low serial-numbered they are. (I wrote a whole article a couple of months ago for HND on the over-parallelization of The Hobby, which if you haven’t read, you should.)
I really hope that THEM (or at least some of THEM) stop listening to the hucksters and social media influencers – who don’t have THEM’s best interests in mind, and only have their own -- and learn to appreciate cards for what they are. Maybe start collecting a vintage set, or work on a scarce insert set from the 2000s. Learn the history of The Hobby.
I sincerely hope we can get some of THEM to stick around for the long term. I mean, this is one heck of a Hobby. I have a bad feeling, though, that three to five years from now, we’ll be hearing “We have to get kids back into The Hobby.”
Licenses be damned, Topps is back into football cards. Yaa-Hoo, we’re Ten-Xing The Hobby, baby!
Since their NFL and NFLPA licenses don’t kick in until 2026, Topps’ recently released Composite Football – a Panini Chronicles-type mishmash of various brands -- does not feature any active players (except for that quartet of rookie quarterbacks they signed to exclusive autograph contracts last year) and all team logos had to be airbrushed out.
Because these sets are not fully licensed, cards of those four quarterbacks (CJ Stroud, Bryce Young, Anthony Richardson and Will Levis) are not considered “true” rookie cards – and no, just because Topps slapped an “RC” logo on each player’s card, does not make it a real “RC.” But even if this was a fully licensed set, these cards wouldn’t be considered RCs anyway – Kayfabe or otherwise.
As I write this, week one of the 2024 NFL season is underway. And yet, on the second weekend of September in this Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Twenty-Four, Topps has the gall to label Topps Composite Football and the yet to be released Topps Motif Football as “2023” products. (And don’t think I’m not giving the hairy eyeball to you Panini for also incorrectly labelling Select, Contenders Optic, and National Treasures as 2023 sets either.)
Memo to Topps: You’re not fooling anyone by back-dating these football sets. I suppose you could give Topps some leeway for the recent (partially-licensed) 2023-24 Topps Chrome Basketball, since it is still the offseason in that sport. But there’s no excuse for doing this for football.
What’s next? 1985-86 Topps Basketball with the “real” Michael Jordan RC? Or how about 1950 Bowman Chrome Baseball with “1st Bowman Prospects” of Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle? This is not ‘Nam. This is sports cards. There is a calendar, and there are rookie card rules. If we allow Topps to keep this up, we’re all about to enter a world of pain.
By now you’ve heard of the many “bounties” that group breakers/on-line Hobby distributors/social media influencers have issued for various scarce cards. I’d like to know, how the hell are these even legal?
Even since the dawn of the modern insert card, The Hobby has been riding a legal tightrope of whether an unopened pack of cards is some sort of raffle. A lottery ticket in a fin-sealed mylar wrapper. You’ll notice that if you look at a pack wrapper or empty wax box there’s a lot of “cover-your-ass” legalese. For their part, “Topps does not, in any manner, make any representations as to whether its cards will attain any future value.”
Which is good to know. Maybe Topps should let whoever oversees their social-media accounts know that as well, because they keep prominently showing off all the valuable ones-of-one and autographs you could (but probably won’t) pull from their PowerBall tickets, errr …, products and how much these cards could possibly be worth.
Anyway, getting back to bounties. My question is, if trading card manufacturer “T” produces card “X” in product “Y,” and group breaker/Hobby shop/influencer “Z” offers a bounty of “$,” does that not make product Y an illegal raffle? Manufacturer “T” may not make a representation as to whether card “X” will attain any future value, but “Z” just did. Somebody better get Lesko on this.
Here’s something I overheard at a card show recently. It was at a shopping mall, so there’s a lot of foot traffic, and a lot of non-collectors. One non-collector (or more accurately, a former collector) looking into a dealer’s case and couldn’t believe his eyes: A 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey, Jr. rookie card for only $50!
The non-collector (who was a little younger than I) told the dealer that he thought that card was going to be worth a lot more than $50 by now. Which got me thinking.
If time travel were somehow possible, and if we were able to travel back to the 1991 National Sports Collectors Convention, the peak of The Junk Wax Era, and tell the collectors of 1991 that, yes, Ken Griffey, Jr.’s career would be everything as promised: 600 home runs, first ballot Hall of Famer, iconic player (and rookie card) of his generation. About the only thing he didn’t accomplish was a World Series ring – although, to be fair, that wasn’t entirely his fault.
A rapper who named himself after one of Ken Griffey, Jr.’s teammates, would feature Griffey in a music video, striking the same pose as the 89 UD card.
Knowing all that, how much do you think the collectors of 1991 would think a raw but mint (remember, grading wasn’t a thing back then) copy of Ken Griffey, Jr.’s 1989 Upper Deck rookie card would go for in 2024? My guess is somewhere in the high three to low four figures. ($750-$1200)
That’s all from me this month. If you have any questions, comments, trade offers, you can slip into my DMs, or shoot me an e-mail. All my wantlists (separated be year) are up on my website. I’m now down to four cards to complete my 1994 Pinnacle Museum Collection set – a set that would be great for THEM to start building.
Keep on rockin’ in the free world.
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