A habit you never want to kick
Today's Sports Illustrated cover centers on ... baseball cards. In celebration of that story, our Tom Borowski penned a short musing on what cards have meant to him. Above, Brett Ballantini paged through some of his favorite and oddball White Sox cards. And below, check out links to some of our past baseball card articles ... and a unique take on one of Tom's favorite cards.
Growing up in the 90s, I was a sports card junkie. I had everything, basketball, baseball, football, and stacks of Beckett magazines laying around my shelves. I loved the excitement of roaming around trade shows or visiting the local sports card store, walls lined with signed baseballs and glasses cases showcasing rare cards with values on them that nine-year-old me couldn’t fathom. Today, those boxes of cards that live in my office are worth less than the square footage they take up in my home.
Jump to two-and-a-half years ago. I was on hour two of my five-hour drive with friends to Vegas for the weekend. The Sox were in the midst of a rebuild and Yoán Moncada was fresh on the scene. Bored, I came across an article about an Aaron Judge rookie card and was shocked at the price it was going for. So I purchased my first lot of Moncada rookie cards, trying to buy in early.
I was addicted again. I started researching and looking for cards of value. Bowman Auto cards became my fixation. I couldn’t believe what some of these cards were being purchased for. (I will preface this by saying I am an obvious Sox fan, so I pretty much only purchase cards I like of teams I like.) The popularity of prospects can definitely be attributed to the meteoric rise in card values. Fans have a lot of information on the young kids who are gaining popularity. If you can grab a card early before the player begins to trend, you can’t make some serious money. Luis Robert was that player for me. The Sox don’t have a huge national fan base, so Robert was a little off the radar. I bought in early and before he even played a game, managed to sell multiple cards to make a few thousand dollars.
Baseball cards are back — for now. But unless you can get lucky with a pack, eBay is your best friend. Social media giants such as Gary Vaynerchuck even hopped on the card collecting trend and validated the childhood dreams of every collector in their 30s.
Today, you can go on Twitter and find breaks from every collector. If you were one of the many trying to log onto the Topps site for the first release of Bowman this year, good luck. The site had so much traffic it crashed and sold out. Topps has even enlisted 20 major mainstream artists to redesign classic cards blending sports cards into pop culture and from what I can gather, have sold a lot of these. There are so many different variations of cards and brands that it's impossible to keep up.
It’s safe to say sports card popularity is at an all-time high. I am curious to see how the economic impact the COVID-19 pandemic will have on the trading card market in the future. It was a big reason I sold my Robert cards last month. At some point, the market will level out and probably begin to fall, that’s just how these things work. In the meantime, enjoy the glory that my take on a Luis Robert auto card:
Interested in owning this art? Check out Tom's site for more details.
Further reading on baseball cards:
South Side Sox
South Side Hit Pen
When Topps Had Balls
Night Owl Cards
Tom Borowski grew up in Northwest Indiana as a die-hard White Sox fan during the '90s. After watching the White Sox win the World Series in 2005, Tom packed his bags and left for California to study at the Art Center College of Design. (As a side note, the two events were not related.) Since graduating, Tom has been working in animation for more than a decade. His resume includes Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, Walt Disney Imagineering, Dreamworks, and Amazon to highlight a few. Working with SI and South Side Hit Pen, Tom will focus on the art of the White Sox — painting and writing about Sox images both current and historical.