On Our Current Baseball Card Renaissance

While the big-money players in the baseball card industry have been in a bit of turmoil lately, the guys on the fringe have been quite industrious.

When I started blogging in 2006, there were two baseball-card-related books out there that you'd find with the normal books (not the hobby-specific catalogues): The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book by Harris and Boyd, and Card Sharks: How Upper Deck Turned a Child's Hobby into a High-Stakes, Billion-Dollar Business by Pete Williams. And that was it.

Since then, there's been The Card by Thompson and O'Keeffe, and a slew of others: Mint Condition by Dave Jamieson, Cardboard Gods by Josh Wilker (which I haven't seen for sale anywhere), and my personal favorite: The T206 Collection: The Players and their Stories by Tom and Ellen Zappala.

I got an advance press packet for T206 and I have to say it looks awesome. The authors set out to document each player who appeared on a card from the original tobacco set, with a picture of the card and a short biography of the player. It's a huge undertaking, to say the least, and I've heard that the initial print run is going to be very low. It's going to be a coffee-table-type book: over-sized, full color on every page, the works. Sounds really cool.

Also, yesterday I got an email from Gary Joseph Cieradkowski, the graphic designer behind Oriole Park at Camden Yards, announcing Series 1 of his Infinite Card Set. And yes, I bought a copy immediately. Take a look at it here.

And speaking of baseball-card art, I've finally figured out how to present my "Casey at the Bat" project in a tangible form. I'm planning on offering the set as a poster and as individual cards (in their correct sizes). If you're interested in obtaining a copy of the finished piece (or pieces), let me know.