Baseball Cards

Two of the more interesting stories of recent days were about baseball cards. 

A man found an 1865 baseball card in a photo album that he bought at a yard sale in the small town of Biddeford, Maine.  According to Saco River Auction Co., which is handling the find, "six figure bids are expected."  The rare card is a team photo of the amateur baseball club, the Brooklyn Atlantics.  It shows nine players and their manager.  Not your typical baseball card but a wonderful peak at an earlier era.  The only other known copy of the card is in the Library of Congress, which designated it as the "earliest dated baseball card." I'll say - 1865 was the year the American Civil War ended!  It's easy to forget that long before it became the national pastime, baseball was a team sport played by amateurs solely for the love of the game.

Well I thought that was a pretty amazing amount of money until I read of the top-grade 1909 Honus Wagner card going up for auction.  That could bring in near 3 million dollars when it is auctioned in February by Goldin Auctions.  Here's a picture of the card just in case you run across it in your attic.

Image is from Wikimedia Commons

Honus Wagner was a superstar of his era but why is his 1909 card so much more valuable than anything else out there?  Well, for one thing it's pretty rare.  About-dot-com explains it this way:  "The earliest baseball cards were produced and distributed by tobacco companies, and according to legend, the Honus Wagner card was pulled from the American Tobacco Company's 1909 set due to Wagner's objection to the use of his image for the promotion of tobacco products. It is estimated that only 50 to 100 of these cards exist today."  The other part of the equation is that there are people willing to pay the price - i.e., there must be some great (and rich) Pittsburgh Pirate fans out there,

Most of us have stories of our mother's throwing out or "garage sale"-ing the baseball cards of our youth once we'd left home.  I don't think I had any worth anywhere near that kind of money but I did have some pretty good ones.  Maybe my 1955 Topps Willie Mays card would have brought in some money.  Hmmm, about $380 according to the Free Baseball Card Prices website.  Not enough to finance a college education (even back then) but a good investment, nevertheless, when you consider you got six cards plus a piece of bubble gum for a nickel. 

Back in the days of black and white TV, before video games and the internet, when baseball was still the king of the professional sports, baseball cards meant a lot.  You could invent games scaling or flipping them (actually a form of youth gambling since you could win the other kid's cards or lose your own), you could trade your "doubles" ("got it, got it, don't got it, got it"), you could memorize the stats on the back of the card and impress your uncles.  I can remember at least two players from my first pack of cards bought in 1954 - Bill Taylor, a utility outfielder for the New York Giants and Joey Jay, a pitcher for the Milwaukee Braves and the first Little Leaguer to make it to the major leagues.  One of our friends, when asked what he would do if a fire broke out in his house, said he would run and get his baseball cards. Okay he was maybe nine or ten at the time but if he had several Willie Mays's or, in his case, Mickey Mantle's, it may have been worth it. 

On a day when the Hall of Fame selection committee deemed none of those eligible to be worthy of the honor (one of the sports magazines called it a "slap at the steroid era"), it's good to think back to a time when baseball was, and life seemed, a lot simpler.

Other Links

ESPN/AP story on the 1865 Brooklyn Atlantics card

Pittsburgh Business Times article on the Honus Wagner card

NYTimes article on Hall of Fame vote