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RagingAcid
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interested to hear differnt perspectives
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You mean like now? Back then it was just Canseco who was worth $100+ and can now be found in dollar boxes.There were collectors paying $100 for RC that you could get for $1 now..
Warning: Prepare for a very long stream-of-consciousness post of my experiences and memories of collecting during my personal Golden Era of baseball cards.
Collecting during the hobby's boom days of the '80s and early '90s was heaven, especially least if you lived in a big city with a MLB team like I did.
My got my first cards before the junk wax era, when my Dad bought me my first cards in 1982 when I was 9, a few packs of Topps and Fleer.
But I didn't become a serious collector until 1985, when my Dad took me to my first card shop, First Base. There were a few other card shops in the area that year.
The monthly Beckett Baseball Card Magazine had just come out that year, and that's when the boom started, when the casual collector started realizing cards were worth big money. There was an annual price guide before that, but only serious collectors knew about that. Beckett's monthly magazine was soon at every newsstand and bookstore.
By '86, baseball cards had become a national phenomenom, and card shops were popping up everywhere. I grew up in a Dallas suburb, and by 1990 there were 12 card shops within a few miles of my house. I could easily ride my Huffy to several of them. It seemed like every other strip mall had one.
In the entire Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, there were several dozen card shops.
There was actually a "Baseball Card Store" category in the phone book and it took up a full page.
Baseball card shows were every weekend in Dallas by 1990, sometimes 2-3 shows a weekend because the Dallas area is so big. I was lucky enough to have the National Convention near me twice as a kid (1986 and 1990, both in Arlington, TX).
The popularity caused card makers Topps, Donruss and Fleer to begin printing more cards than ever, ushering in what we now call the Junk Wax Era. For a few years, the tremendous demand actually met the gigantic supply, and prices rose every month.
There were baseball cards made for fast food restaurants and inside cereal boxes, packages of sunflower seeds, Big League Chewing Gum, cat food, dog food, potato chips, cookies, snack cakes, macaroni and cheese, iced tea, granola bars... any food product you can think of. Many big stores like K-Mart, Woolworths, Revco, Toys 'R' Us, Kaybee Toys, Walgreens, etc. had their own exclusive small boxed sets produced by either Topps or Fleer.
The hobby was so incredibly popular that for one issue in 1987 (the one with Kevin Seitzer on the cover) Beckett removed all of the "Up" arrows that showed that a card had increased in value, because Beckett literally increased the price of nearly every card in the price guide. Dr. Jim Beckett explained it in the magazine's editorial column so people wouldn't think it was a misprint. I thought it was a stupid decision because I had to compare the previous month's issue to see what the values were before.
That year, Topps let the printing presses run 24 hours a day, and there was a glut of '87 Topps cards. Even though the set was popular, it was the first set that made people realize that too many cards is not always a good thing.
'87 Topps were literally everywhere. On every counter and candy shop of every supermarket, drug store, toy store, convenience store, gas station, warehouse store like Sam's Club and Costco (only sold by the 36-pack box) most retail stores, and even stores that had nothing to do with toys or candy or food. I bought some '88 Score packs at a Mervyn's clothing store.
Donruss and Fleer were still hard to find at retail in '87, relative to the huge demand. Dealers would buy out a retail store's entire inventory of Fleer and Donruss in backroom deals before the packs even hit the shelves.
Then in 1988, Donruss and to a lesser extent Fleer, started overproducing like Topps. '88 Score, its first set, was always easy to find. From '88 to '91, Topps, Donruss, Fleer and Score cards were extremelu overproduced.
Donruss and Fleer began slightly cutting back production and increasing the quality of its base sets in '92.
Most boys who liked baseball and sports collected cards, and most kids traded with each other. I even sold some cards to kids at school. A few teachers would even hand out cards as rewards.
It was 90% baseball card collecting until 1989, when the "rare" Score football set and cool Pro Set cards came out, and then collectors suddenly realized basketball and hockey cards were cool too and rookies like Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky went through the roof overnight. I'm still mad I didn't listen to my friend who bought lots of '86 Fleer basketball packs at a 7-11 for 35 cents each. The Slurpee baseball magic motion discs were cool though and I soon got the whole set.
Prices for Topps, Donruss and Fleer ranged from 30 cents a pack at the beginning of the '80s to 45 cents in 1989, when Upper Deck came out with the outrageous price of $1 a pack. Some dealers quickly doubled that price. In 1990, Donruss came out with its high-end Leaf set. In 1991 Topps came out with Stadium club and Fleer has Ultra. Score follored in '92 with Ultra.
But all of this excitement didn't last long for people who thought they'd become rich. There were too many stores and too many cards, and by 1991-92, many store owners started closing their doors. The end of a glorious era.
A few years later, eBay was launched and it made it even more obvious how many billions of cards are out there and how cheap and easy they are to buy online, and most of the rest of the card shops died.
Being a kid collecting baseball cards from 1985 until 1991 when i went away to college, was the best of times. Especially since I could share it with my Dad and younger brother, who collected.
Most cards from that era may be practically worthless today, but my original sets and cards from then are priceless to me and bring back so many great memories. I look at my binders of sets from the the '80s much more than any other cards because of the nostalgia.
Former collectors and even many current collectors may look at the junk wax era in disdain, but it was some of the best times of my life.
Think about all of the friends you have today. Now imagine they are all avid card collectors like yourself.