Turning Cardboard Into Cash;These Are Boom Days For Baseball Cards
Through a potent combination of capitalism, commercialism and fanaticism, what was once considered a big hobby for little kids-collecting baseball cards of the day's best and most popular players-has been transformed into an industry complete with price wars, intricate marketing strategy and underhanded tactics.</br></br>It's come a long way since turn-of-the century cards were printed by tobacco companies, featuring only select players. The market has become so saturated, cards of most anyone connected with baseball are available: These days you even can buy cards of major league umpires.</br></br>T & M Sports Inc. produces complete sets of the major leagues' men in blue, including a card of Bob Engel, who retired after being sentenced to three years' probation and 40 hours of community service for taking 4,180 baseball cards from a store in Bakersfield, Calif.</br></br>There also are minor league baseball card sets. In fact, for $25 you can buy the 1983 Lynchburg Mets set, which features a young Dwight Gooden; in 1983 the set sold for about $3. For about $80 you can walk off with a Gooden rookie card from 1984. A 1986 Donruss card of Jose Canseco runs about $110.</br></br>And for the special low price of $2 million, you could be the proud owner of a creased, uncut strip of five "T-206" baseball cards from 1910-including a Honus Wagner card, of which only about 40 exist. (Legend has it that Wagner objected to his image being packaged with cigarettes-this was before the days of the bubble gum pack-and demanded the card be withdrawn.) "Sure, we've ruined their hobby," Alan Rosen, one of the biggest baseball card dealers in the nation, told the Wall Street Journal. "But isn't this what America is all about?"