Are My Old Baseball Cards Worth Anything?
As a lifelong baseball card collector and reasonably well known personality in the Hobby, there is one question I get more than any other: "Are my old baseball cards worth anything?"
My response used to be rather roundabout and involve significant back and forth. "Can you send me some pictures or describe what you have?" I might ask, and a few days later I might receive a text string filled with blurry cell phone images of yesteryear: musty "monster boxes," plastic binder sheets, yellowed top loaders, and Lucite screw-down holders.
Where discernible, card subjects include all the requisite beasts of my youth: Don Mattingly, Bo Jackson, and Juan Gonzalez, juxtaposed among the hottest players of a long gone Hobby heyday: Ben McDonald, Gregg Jefferies, and Kevin Maas to name a few.
Nowadays, I'm much more likely to dispense with formalities and respond with a single word: "No."
"But you don't even know what I have!"
Yes I do. You see, it turns out all of us--myself included--had exactly the same collection! After all, for much of the 1980s and 1990s, we chased (sorry, invested in) the exact same cardboard: more or less whatever our financial advisor, also known as the Beckett hot list, recommended.
Why even think about 1986 Fleer basketball packs? Everyone knows the Donruss baseball box right next to them has the crazy expensive Jose Canseco rookie! Why save up for a 1963 Topps Hank Aaron when you can hoard 1989 Upper Deck Todd Zeile cards! And Babe Ruth? Who's Babe Ruth?
For a generation, specifically the generation that's always asking if their old cards are worth anything, this was the Hobby. We bought high in hopes of selling higher. We never opened a pack without top loaders or at least penny sleeves by our side. And most of all, our turbo-charged spending on "Rated Rookies" didn't take away from our retirement portfolio. It was our retirement portfolio!
Still, here's the thing. However much the values of our collections have cratered over the decade, we had a blast. What's more, for those of us who kept the cards and still thumb through them from time to time, we're still having a blast. Our "junk wax" collections may never fund our retirements, but they most certainly can "fun" our retirements!
"But won't we need money too?"
Not a problem. I know a guy. 😉
Jason A. Schwartz is a collectibles expert whose work can be found regularly at SABR Baseball Cards, Hobby News Daily, and 1939Bruins.com. His collection of Hank Aaron baseball cards and memorabilia is currently on exhibit at the Atlanta History Center, and his collectibles-themed artwork is on display at the Honus Wagner Museum and PNC Park.