First two years of Baseball Card Collecting

[Alaskanmade]

Hey everybody, I am a long time TCG (Trading Card Game) collector who made the jump in 2020 into vintage baseball card collecting. I played baseball growing up and try to go to as many M’s games as I can each year, but was never a baseball card collector.

I wish I could say I was inspired to make the jump by something profound, but if I’m being honest it was a very well targeted Ebay advertisement which made me think: “I can buy a 100 year old baseball card for how much?”.

I thought I would share some thoughts from a newbie, which may be interesting for people who have been in the hobby for decades.


New Stuff

First and foremost, its insane that I can buy the card from 1911 of a Hall of Fame player for less than the green foil version of a guy who has played 4 seasons. I am over two years into this hobby and I have yet to figure out exactly how that is possible. Other collectables I am familiar with do not have this phenomena.


Buying / Selling

Baseball card buying and selling is super oldschool. Looking at a store's excel sheet online and then emailing someone to make a purchase and ask for a card reminds me of buying TCG cards in 1995 from a company called Troll and Toad.

Also auction houses and Ebay are still king, while TCG’s have moved onto specialized sites which deal only with TCG’s (as well as Ebay).

I have been buying TCG cards for 25 years and have never had to issue a charge back on my CC or file an Paypal dispute. Two years into baseball card collecting and I have encountered multiple scammers, and had to do two Paypal disputes. Not sure if there are more baseball card scammers, or if they are just less intelligent (They had no idea a G&S purchase had buyer protection?). Never been ripped off, but have wasted a noticeable amount of time.


Graded

The love of graded cards is overwhelming with baseball cards. With TCG’s the only time I have ever purchase a graded card is when I planned to break it open. With baseball cards it seems like the slab is king, and unslabbed cards sell for 50% of the exact same slabbed card. I guess this might be a function of the relative prevalence of counterfeiters and scammers.


Community

The community for baseball cards is much friendlier than TCG’s. With TCG’s there is a division between players, collectors, and speculators, and there is a lot of animosity between the groups. With baseball cards since everybody is a collector of some kind, the footing is much more even. I have seen some jokes about new people entering the community, but believe that most people understand that all collectables need new entrants or else they end up like model trains.

Off topic, but I don't understand why the 1952 Topps Mantle is one of the pillars of the vintage baseball card community. It’s not his rookie card, its not super rare, and Mantel while an amazing player and a hero of the 50’s, does not make it into the top 5 of all time (probably not top 10). I could understand if the card checked at least one of those boxes, but it just doesn't as far as I understand.

I have met a lot of cool people, and what shines through is a love of history and baseball. That may seem like an obvious statement, but I think its worth remembering what you all love about it Thanks for being awesome!

[Casey2296]

Nice post, welcome to the sub Alaska!

[tkd]

Welcome to the community!

[Rhotchkiss]

Great post, thank you.

Maybe a dumb question, but I doubt I am alone, so I will ask:

What is a “TCG”?

[Alaskanmade]

TCG stands for "Trading Card Game".
Imagine baseball card collecting but about 3x less cool

[JollyElm]

Originally Posted by Rhotchkiss

Maybe a dumb question, but I doubt I am alone, so I will ask:

What is a “TCG”?

You ain't alone!!! Had no clue what that acronym meant.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by Alaskanmade

TCG stands for "Trading Card Game".
Imagine baseball card collecting but about 3x less cool

In some ways more cool. When my friends showed me how to play Magic (Right after the unlimited set came out) My first reaction was "wait, cards to collect that I can also play a game with? "

Of curse I had THE card i got from my first pack, and eventually traded it to a friend for what at the time were more useful and slightly higher priced cards. Since I don't play much, that's become one of my biggest hobby regrets.

[Alaskanmade]

I just remembered another thing thats been on my mind.

When it comes to condition most of the criteria for evaluating a card is the same regardless of what kind of card you are collecting. However the one area where there is a huge difference is when it comes to miscut cards.

With a TCG (Trading Card Game) if a card is off center most people do not really care (with the obvious exception of people who send cards to be graded), and when a card is miscut it actually becomes many more times desire-able, and can increase its value by a factor of 10x to 100x.

In vintage baseball cards off-center cards are significantly less desirable then another card in the same condition, and if they are miscut it can cut its value by half or more.

The often stated rationale behind this being that from 1900 - 1940 quality control of baseball cards was very sloppy, and the number of miscut cards is quite high. Compared to TCG's which had much better quality control, and you get the difference in price.

When checking the PSA population report, it is easy to see that this is at least partly true. Looking at T206 cards, around 6% of each card graded has a qualifier. Looking at the PSA pop report for a notible Vintage TCG (MTG) you can see around 1% of cards include a qualifier. There are problems with this direct comparison of course including regrading, the relative popularity of grading between hobbies, what cards are selected for grading, only using PSA information as a reference, and the the other qualifiers which are not Offcenter and Miscut. However based on personal experience buying TCG cards I can contest directly to the rarity of miscuts, and the rarity of offcenter cards.

Regardless of this in both vintage baseball cards and MTG, miscut cards are "rare". In MTG they are very rare, and in vintage baseball cards, they are rare-ish. My guess is that the relative level of rarity is what makes one a desirable oddity, and one a defect.

I bought a T205 Walter Johnson graded PSA 4 with a miscut you cant see from the front, for less than %50 of what it should have sold for. Long story short, if anyboday had a PSA graded misscut T205 Cobb send me a PM

[abothebear]

Regarding the Mantle, another difference between the two kinds of cards is the connection sports cards have to history. And by history, I mean the experience of collectors/fans in relation to both the sport and the hobby in time. There are moments when the consumer base, player, and hobby come together in a way that super-charges a card or cards. The fifties were the first decade of baby-boomers as gum/card consumers, the sport also quickly transitioned into a new era on the field and in the home, with TV playing a big role. Topps became the standard for cards and essentially modeled what the hobby would look like for decades to come. And Mickey Mantle, a NY Yankee, arrived on the scene just in time to be the touchstone star for this serendipitous nexus of events.

The 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Junior is similar. That card should not be as much as it is. And as great as Junior is, there are plenty better. But he was the best at the right time, Upper Deck leads the way in the premium card production movement, ESPN finds its footing on cable television, the steroid era is heading toward its peak (but before people were concerned about it). The cold war ends, Gen X kids are ready with their allowance money.

It doesn't always shake out that the value matches the rank of player greatness combined with card scarcity. It rarely shakes out that way. The moment in time for the sport, the hobby, and the consumer base plays a key role in what players and cards become the top cards. And it often maintains and compounds because baseball card collectors are almost always driven in some measure by nostalgia.

[timzcardz]

I read this puzzled the whole time thinking that TCG was Topps Chewing Gum!

[cannonballsun]

Originally Posted by timzcardz

I read this puzzled the whole time thinking that TCG was Topps Chewing Gum!

+1

[Vintagedeputy]

Originally Posted by JollyElm

You ain't alone!!! Had no clue what that acronym meant.

I thought he was talking about Topps Chewing Gum.

[Alaskanmade]

Why not the '51 Bowman though?
Its about the same level of rarity, its his rookie card, and it doesn't look bad.
Its the brand power of Topp's that strong (or Bowman that weak)?

[Casey2296]

Originally Posted by Alaskanmade

Why not the '51 Bowman though?
Its about the same level of rarity, its his rookie card, and it doesn't look bad.
Its the brand power of Topp's that strong (or Bowman that weak)?

51 Bowman > 52 Topps

[abothebear]

The 52 Topps set was their first set in the model that would become the standard of how we understand cards. The 51 Bowman set was not the first, nor the model of cards to come. But bigger than that, Bowman flamed out a few years later. I wasn’t there at the time, so I can’t say how popular that card was at the time, or how it’s popularity compared to the Bowman cards at the time, but with its link to the present quickly dissolving with Bowman’s demise, it just doesn’t have that same living-link that Topps has. If Bowman still existed today as Topps’ 70 years strong competitor, I bet the Bowman rookie would be more popular than the 52 Topps (and neither would be as popular as the actual 52 Topps).

[Jeff_cvc]

Welcome Alaska, thank you for sharing your thoughts. Really intereting insights and the positive vibe is appreciated.

[rhettyeakley]

Great post AlaskanMade!

Most of your observations are spot on and shared by many that venture into vintage sports cards.

I have a young son and together we collect Pokemon and some other TCG sets and the two communities (TCG and Sports Cards) are similar in a lot of ways but also so different that they seem to be completely different worlds.

Miscut TCG cards are much like Coins & Stamps in that extreme errors are incredibly rare and also highly prized... that has never been the case with Sports Cards, although they are definitely getting more popular with sets like T206 probably indicating it as an area of sports cards that could see some serious growth in the future.

The 1952 Topps Mantle card is simply tradition, it has just always been a popular & prized card going back to the 1960-70's so it has maintained that mystique despite it not really deserving it imo.

[Mike D.]

Originally Posted by Alaskanmade

Graded

The love of graded cards is overwhelming with baseball cards. With TCG’s the only time I have ever purchase a graded card is when I planned to break it open. With baseball cards it seems like the slab is king, and unslabbed cards sell for 50% of the exact same slabbed card. I guess this might be a function of the relative prevalence of counterfeiters and scammers.

Welcome and some good observations.

On the above point about grading, though, you may be an exception as TCG's represent a higher % of cards being graded every day than baseball or any other sport (and #2 usually isn't baseball, it's basketball).

[h2oya311]

Nice to see some fresh blood in the hobby. Collectors will collect. WRT the ‘52 Topps Mantle, I prefer the ‘51 Bowman from a “rookie” card collecting stand-point, but the ‘52 is more aesthetically pleasing, more iconic, and clearly more expensive. The whole Topps>Bowman from the ‘50s is real. It helps that the high-numbers from that set are more scarce and include Mantle, Mays, and Mathews. Those cards are all Awesome with a capital “A”.

[Leon]

Originally Posted by Casey2296

Nice post, welcome to the sub Alaska!

+1.
I am not sure of how much money is in the TCG arena but there are billions in the sports card hobby. And anywhere there is that much unregulated commerce there will be fraudsters.
.

[maniac_73]

Originally Posted by Leon

+1.
I am not sure of how much money is in the TCG arena but there are billions in the sports card hobby. And anywhere there is that much unregulated commerce there will be fraudsters.
.

About 1.2 billion for sports cards and 1 Billion for TCG. Both sectors obviously have exploded the last few years. Anecdotally Ive seen Pokemon etc become a lot more prevalent amongst Gen Z

[Exhibitman]

Welcome to the party!

The 1952 T Mantle is iconic. It is one of the few cards that has attained that status. Just as the T206 Wagner isn't the rarest card (it isn't even his rarest card); none of those matters. The 1952 Mantle has a cachet that is greater than the sum of the parts. It is like the 1986 Fleer Jordan, the 1957 Topps Russell, the 1965 Topps Namath, the 1980-81 Magic-Bird, or the 1979 Gretzky.