Collecting collecting coverage
For whatever reason, the mainstream sports press recently went deeper into baseball card collecting than usual….
• The best baseball card story I've read in a while: Dave Jamieson's "Requirem for a Rookie Card" on Slate. It's an indictment of everyone involved, including collectors, young and old, but especially of the card companies.
"The baseball card industry lost its way because the manufacturers forgot that the communal aspect of collecting is what made it enjoyable," Jamieson writes. "How can kids talk about baseball cards if they don't have any of the same ones?
Most stories about how the industry changed in the early '90s don't go this far. One after another, they examine the history and then back off. They fall into the "Did the industry change or did we?" trap. The trend shows up in all the articles following here, as good as they are. The general age of the writers means they were out of casual card collecting before the industry changed. Long before, most of the time. And now they aren't sure how much their own growing up made them lose interest in cards.
I don't know how old Jamieson is, but the touchstones in his story put him around my age. Working from that experience, he's able to point a convincing finger at the industry. Our generation of card collectors has the experience to point. We know how those prices jumped way beyond what we had in our kid wallets. We know we got thrown out.
• Apparently always writing, Yahoo's Jeff Passan does a card column:
Before I got to the National, a card-collecting friend issued a warning.
"All those cards we grew up collecting," he said. "If you look in the Beckett, you won't see them. After four pages, it jumps to 1997."
He was right. Today's Beckett Baseball Card Monthly is a thorough compendium of the current market with barely a nod or wink to the past. Fifteen years ago, it was my bible. New issues arrived with all the promise of an oil well. If the price of a card I owned included an up arrow, I felt like I'd struck.
The story balances the writer looking back with his experience this summer at the National Sports Collectors Convention. He meets a dealer nicknamed Big Loot — he got nickname in prison after serving drug-related charges — and another dealer who in his ads fans out "at least $10,000 in hundred-dollar bills." He also talks to James Beckett, who sounds like he's fine with it all.
• ESPN's Eric Neel writes about his collecitng days and rounds up his colleagues' memories:
I used to put hexes on Michael's Will Clark. He once threatened to tear my Orel Hershiser in half. I mocked him for Kevin Mitchell's sleepy look. He was all over me because Alfredo Griffin's 1988 card actually was shot when Griffin was still with the A's. We thumbed the cards like rosaries. We shuffled pinch-hitters and relievers in and out. We were at war. We were compadres.
When Michael died suddenly in a car accident five years later, it wasn't the eulogies at his funeral, the old photographs or the stories and memories of friends that made it possible to wrap my mind around him being gone. It was a card. Back at Michael's house after the services, I stood in his den and looked at the CDs and books on his shelves, and then I saw it, the Will Clark, perched on the shelf in front of his Coltrane discs, sitting there like some sacred object on an altar. Like Michael, Clark looked like he was jawing at me, like he was having a last laugh, like he was giving me the business. And like me, Clark looked incredulous, too, like he couldn't believe he and I were the only ones left, like this was madness.
Others comment on the beauty of the multi-player future stars card, Billy Ripken's obscenity card, Ken Griffey Jr.'s rookie 1989 Upper Deck #1, and the awesome look of 1986 Topps, sadly before my time.
• Jim Caple takes a tour of the Topps offices.
Luraschi is giving me a tour of the Topps baseball card headquarters in Manhattan, which is a bit like being allowed inside the gates of Willy Wonka's factory. Only instead of Oompa-Loompas waddling around, there are teams of 20- and 30-something baseball fans and art designers studying computer screens of statistics amidst desks scattered with old cards. One editor is poring through minor league stats, searching for the next rising star. Another is looking through photos of Ted Williams for use in a new set of cards. A designer shows me how they use Adobe Photoshop to place new caps and uniforms onto players who changed teams over the winter — and in Johnny Damon's case, they also give him a George Steinbrenner-approved shave and haircut with a single keystroke.
There's an interesting bit about the players who don't make it on cards, but a discussion about a marketing correction, about "getting back to making cards for kids," is frustratingly short.
There's also a collection of reader memories.
In the middle of reading it, I got to thinking that I wanted to buy a whole box or case of Topps from 1988 or some other worthless year and just give them away to people. I sent an e-mail to the House of Cards. Then I went on eBay and poked around there, first for boxes and then Mussina memorabilia. Didn't buy a thing over this half-hour but did great at improving the morning.
