Will 90s cards ever be considered vintage?

[bbcard1]

Actually there are some relatively short 1990s sets, especially around the baseball strike years. I think there will be a certain amount of people looking for stars, especially rookies and a certain amount of people looking for the full sets, which they will buy factory sets. There will be a few team collectors but virtually no set builders. The commons, even for relatively short sets, will be hard to get rid of. It will probably be a great hobby...but a lousy investment.

The cards of the 80s on the other hand are pretty much crap. The rookies had their day and those who didn't get rid of the $30 Boggs will probably get to keep them of a long time (points thumb). I do think the Donruss Opening Day Ray/Bonds error could conceivably be a good investment. Maybe a 1985 Topps Glossy...but there isn't much.

[mintacular]

I don't think 90s will ever really be vintage as most cards were mass-produced during this time era; i also have a gloomy view of the future collectibility of these cards as the hobby continues to loose folks, not gain them. I don't cardboard is a medium that works for young people

[fkw]

The years I describe as "Vintage Cards" will never change IMO

to me vintage means early/oldest ie PreWar. .....anything before Topps is vintage.

1990s mass produced shinny garbage will never be Vintage and in reality are not even true cards in the original definition of a "collector insert card".
ie "a true collector insert card is ALWAYS issued FREE with a product or service of some kind."

Most all cards post 1981 or so... will suffer value wise because of this fact, they are not a FREE insert card, they are THE PRODUCT...... and 99% have been hoarded in NRMT+/MINT and unopened condition.... these last 30 years are far different from the 100+ years before it, when insert cards didnt have "value" and were collected for the enjoyment of collecting, with a high % used and abused and eventually trashed....thus creating true scarcity (not pseudo rare intentionally limited edition hyped 1/1).

Have you ever seen a pinhole in a card less than 30 years old?

Kids are no longer the first collectors and many cant even afford a single pack of cards....Modern new stuff is dominated by adults trying to make a $$

some examples of Era's
1990s-2010s might someday be called the Shinny "hype" Card Era
1950s-1990s Topps Era
PreWar
19th Century

[steve B]

Most of the 80's was just bizarre as far as what was the product. The place I hung out used to let me read the promo letters early on, like 82-83.
Once Topps monopoly was broken we got two "new" companies in 81.
For 82 that was in a small bit of doubt since topps claimed to have exclusivity for cards sold with gum. And there was supposedly some legal thing that there had to be something of intrinsic value sold, with the cards being a free giveaway to get people to buy the product.
Donruss did those puzzle pieces - Jigsaw puzzles were valuable for the play value or something like that.
Fleer added stickers, claiming "educational value"

Both lasted into the late 80's, maybe very early 90's. Donruss puzzles through 92, I forget when the fleer stickers ended.

About 92 the rules changed, or the govt decided that cards were valuable by themselves.

Steve B

[teetwoohsix]

This is funny....the other day while out hunting around I saw an uncut sheet of '87 Topps for sale ...I actually almost wanted to find out the price on it, toyed with the idea of buying it and storing it away as a novelty. But I didn't,,,,,but something keeps nagging at me to go back and buy it !!!

Anyhow, I like to pull out the binders and leaf through the pages of the '90's & 2000's every now and then. I've given a lot of them away, but still have thousands of them.

Here's one I found can't remember where I got it, but it's a pretty cool card from the '90s.

[dstraate]

Ahh, good ol' base stealing skinny barry. His head actually matched his body. I miss those days.

[ls7plus]

Although my focus is primarily on Pre-WWII stars and hall-of-famers, I actually like some of the more limited sets from this era, especially the Topps Tiffany sets produced in far more limited quantities than its regular cards. Many of the Tiffany sets were also truly high-end in quantity well before Upper Deck in 1989 (the '89 Upper Deck Griffey Jr. will always be an iconic card; it just won't have any significant value for a very, very long time, if ever, because of the 1 million + produced). While many of the big stars from these sets were juicers, generations earlier than mine (think Bob Costas) don't and won't care as much about that--after all, we've become a drug-enhanced world in so many respects!

For the same reasons, I kind of like the stars of the '93 Topps Finest Refractors, with only 241 of each player produced. Refractors have been around for 18 years now, and have certainly demonstrated staying power.

The above being said, I wouldn't bet the farm on any of the above. For investment purposes, they are purely speculative in nature. However, its not beyond reasonable contemplation that just as we have our own historic idols of the game in Wagner, Cobb, Ruth, Gehrig, Foxx, Williams, DiMaggio, J. Robinson, Mantle, Mays, Aaron and Banks and the like, maturing generations may well look at players like McGwire and Bonds in a much more sympathetic light. McGwire was truly awesome to watch--I was at a Tigers/Cardinals interleague game at old Tiger Stadium in 1999 in time to watch Big Mac take batting practice. Four over the roof in left, including one in left center, and from where we were sitting in the leftfield upper deck, his balls were still reaching us with the speed of cannon shots, compared to his teammates, whose balls, when they reached the upper deck, didn't have a lot left on them by that time. And Bonds, although he was probably as much pure A-hole as any player who ever set foot on the diamond, is the only guy I personally saw who made major league pitching look like it was slow-pitch softball! He was fascinating to watch, even though you knew it wasn't legit. Kind of gave you an idea of what Ruth and Williams in their prime must have been like! Younger generations may well view these guys as Bunyonesque legends, and give a lot less scrutiny to their integrity and the damage they did to the statistical traditions of the game.

I find this topic especially interesting, as I loved McGwire while he was playing, and have really conflicting feelings now. Comments are really welcomed. Thanks guys,

Larry

[theseeker]

The early '90's was the frenzied period just before the bubble burst. Despite the fact that the period ushered in the era of precedence setting, premium quality cards, aimed at adults (and investors,) manufacturer, dealer, and collector greed led it into the hobbies decline. Gone for ever are the HSN guest HOF'er signing shows, the weekly card conventions, and local card shops at every corner. The hobby has contracted greatly since the three decade build up to the early '90's.

Their was simply too much production, by too many companies, of products that were carefully stored by too many buyers for it to ever be of much value. Still can't understand how so many investors didn't see it that way from the start.

Perhaps a more important question is the future of the hobby. The vital hobby element of human interaction has largely been removed. The demographics point to further fading in the future. The average age of subscribers to Becketts magazine is 38. Young peoples interest in the hobby has been trending ever lower since the strike of '94. How many of the next generation's descretionary income will be spent on a hobby void of any childhood attachments?

[steve B]

I see the demographic as a maturing. Or sometimes as a washing out of the maturity when I'm in a bad mood.

I've been hearing about the demise of the hobby since at least 1981. The ups and downs have followed the economy, and world and hobby events.

I also collect stamps, and I have articles from the 1800's declaring the demise of that hobby for the exact same reason - no young people getting involved. I can say that that hobby is also experiencing a decline related to lack of youth. I'd bet that the average subscriber age to most publications about stamps is way over 38. Probably closer to 58.

But there is some youth involvement. The local large show has a well attended youth area, with some good displays. And our local clubs newest member is under 20.

Another element is the tendency for youth to desire modernness in whatever form is current. In high school I wanted a car with a turbo, and a nice stereo set, a videogame that used cartridges, and just a bit later a laserdisc player. All of these are terribly old fashioned now. Eventually a portion of the young population will abandon the flashy throwaway "now" culture and start looking for stuff with a bit of permanence. LPs are already making a comeback, although not competing with MP3 downloads. My wifes 20 something coworkers don't even buy CDs, and don't really understand why anyone would.

The future of the hobby and products will look very different from what we have now.

Crazy prediction? I see digital interactive cards becoming much better than the current ones. Maybe with customisable messages from the player, or a secured link to collections of HD video that's limited to a certain number of users. DRM Software is already capable of this. It's usually gotten around, and also usually not well liked by consumers, and prone to problems. One retailer of E books withdrew 1984 over a rights issue. They didn't have digital rights- pretty ironic that was the main book withdrawn, done instantly, so you were reading it one day and the next it was just gone...

I'll have to try some of my toppstown cards to see what's deing done now.

And maybe it;s not so crazy. A few years ago around 1994-5 I had an idea for a scheme where a subscriber would get a new digital card each month, with only a certain number allowed to be printed. I envisioned a special printer and card blanks to go with it. Of course I had neither the technical skills nor the follow through to attempt it - Licensing would have been tough too. The couple people I mentioned it to thought it was totally nuts. Of course now we have ETopps, a similar idea, and likely a failure for anyone except Topps.

There will be change, and we won't always like it. There will also always be a hobby and an industry to support it. We might not recognize it, but it will be there.

Steve B

[Gary Dunaier]

How does one define "vintage?" If it's defined as 'coming from a particular era in time,' then at some point everything will be vintage. Even cards that have not yet been printed, of players you've never heard of.

The question is, of course, does "vintage" automatically mean "valuable?" You can buy some "vintage" cards for a few dollars, and you can buy other "vintage" cards from the same set for hundreds or thousands of dollars.

[mintacular]

my def of vintage is old and somewhat rare b/c they were discarded but once said collectibles are perceived as having "investment" $ then the hoarding begins and the "vintage" characteristic ends

[alanu]

It seems to me that the cards will always be collectible, but to a large part there aren't the iconic players today as there were in the 50's and 60's due in part to some of these reasons:

-the popularity of other sports such as football, basketball, x-games etc
-players tend to change teams more often now
-the overexposure of sports & players in particular on tv and the internet, back in the day, baseball cards were a big part of a players exposure

with that said, I think the cards will become "vintage" but the interest won't be there like the 50's & 60's cards.

[northsidebaseball]

I don't think cards from the 90's will ever have much value or be widely collected. There were simply far too many produced and far too many people collecting them. I am new on the site and I seem to be kinda youngish compared to many members here as I grew up primarily in the 80s with my biggest years buying cards as a kid being about 1987-1991 which is probably the absolute worst era to have been collecting cards. I lost interest because of price, being a kid unable to compete financially with other collectors and also lost interest due to other common distractions that come up moving into your teens. Anyway I kinda started to pick up the hobby again about a year ago, but still have no interest in the cards I grew up opening in packs. I really like the design, nostalgic look and feel of Topps cards from the 1950s, 1960s, t206s and the 1933 goudeys etc. 50s/60s cards and collectors have a story: many cards were mangled badly or thrown out by someones mother, whereas the newer ones went straight from foil pack to stiff plastic holder. Cards from the late 1980s and 1990s just feel kinda sterile to me.....just my 2 cents