Monday, Aug. 22, 1977
Baseball Card Investors
Not just kid stuff any more
In baseball's pantheon, John Peter ("Honus") Wagner, the bowlegged shortstop of the Pittsburgh Pirates (1900-17), is a superstar's superstar. He was eight times National League batting champion, and among the first to be elected to the Hall of Fame. As a shortstop, he was unparalleled; as a hitter, formidable; and as a coach, respected. Yet today a growing number of savvy professionals value Wagner for an entirely different reason--the rarity of the 1910 baseball cards bearing his phiz.
Wagner, it seems, disliked smoking cigarettes and threatened to sue the manufacturer of Sweet Caporal cigarettes, when it used his picture on one of their premium cards. Since only a few were printed before the company suspended production of his card, the estimated two dozen that are known to exist have become coveted investments. If they are in good condition they may sell for $4,000 apiece.
The buyers? A new breed of collector. No longer confined to nostalgia nuts and little boys with a passion for bubble gum and baseball, baseball card collecting has come of age. Of the more than 100,000 baseball card collectors in the U.S. today, some make as much as $20,000 a year dealing their wares. At the dozen major annual U.S. trading conventions, the casual aficionado can wander down aisles crowded with tables of cards--some heaped in shoe boxes, others displayed in expensive leather briefcases. The hardcore collectors adjourn to private rooms where big deals among three or more people are negotiated during all-night poker games. "When the hobby started, it was all trading," says Frank Nagy, a 54-year-old Detroit mechanic who in 40 years of collecting has amassed over a million cards. "Now the only way to get the old stuff is to buy it."
Most collectors sell and swap in order to complete "sets"--series of cards distributed by one company in a single year. Over 2,000 such sets exist today, including some dating back to the 1880s when Old Judge Tobacco first printed crude photographs of players on cards, which were used as stiffeners in cigarette packages. Since then baseball cards have come with everything from Pepsi-Cola cartons to Burger Chef disposable trays. And, of course, bubble gum. Topps Chewing Gum, Inc., which prints 250 million cards a year and pays players $250 plus royalties to pose, makes the largest set --660 cards this year.
While the same number of cards is issued for each player, cards of superstars are naturally in greater demand. Moreover, many sets include one or two "stumpers"--cards that because of printing errors are rarer than the others. The Honus Wagner card is probably the greatest stumper of all tune, and along with two others forms "the Big Three." The second is the 1910 Sweet Caporal card of Philadelphia Athletics Pitcher Eddie Plank, whose printing plate broke during production, making the card a rarity currently worth $1,900. The third, worth $1,500, is the card of Cleveland Second Baseman Napoleon ("Larry") Lajoie that was issued by the Goudey Gum Co. as a special edition in 1934 when several collectors complained of Lajoie's omission the year before. (Most 1934 Goudey gum cards are worth about $2.50 to $6.)
"It's like the stock market. Sometimes it pays off big, and sometimes it crashes," says William Mastro, 24, a Chicago respiratory therapist, who once spent four fruitless days combing a New Jersey dump after hearing that someone had thrown out an old box of cards. The value of certain cards can drop unexpectedly: the 1933 Tattoo-Orbit Gum cards, for instance, were selling for $10 apiece until 1,500 were discovered in an attic, and the price dropped to $3 overnight. Still, these are risks the collectors are willing to take. As they say, it is all in the cards.
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