What Ben's Thinking About

It's no secret: my interest in collecting sports cards waxes and wanes like the cycles of the moon. But there are certain things about the hobby that pique my interest. Here they are for the week of July 28, 2013.

1. I've had another epiphany about my card collection this week: I need to cut back. I've collected sets in the past, have an extensive Red Sox and Celtics collection — I'm trying to get one card of every player on each team since their inceptions — and have a shoebox of vintage stars. But I also have pre-war nonsports cards. And lots of Topps basketball from the 1970s. And other cards I'm quite sure what to do with. The epiphany came about because we have been doing a little spring cleaning (in the middle of the summer) and have sold a few things on eBay. Some cards have left the house this way, but it isn't satisfying. Not really.

I feel like if I'm going to make big strides in completing the Soxlopedia, as I'm calling it, then I'm going to have to make some trades. So here we are. Is there anyone out there interested in trading these days? I'd be looking for Red Sox and Celtics players, and maybe a few upgrade cards for my 1965 and 1956 Topps sets. I have some vintage stars and Hall of Famers and T218s and T118s and a huge lot of 1984 Topps baseball, which I know isn't that exciting, but let me explain.

2. I've made large strides in my "Mega Master Set" idea for 1986 and 1987 Topps baseball (and even 1977 and 1978 Topps baseball, to a lesser extent). But where I've found satisfaction in those years, I've be met with a deep sense of ennui with 1984 Topps baseball. Not that I haven't had success with 1984 Topps baseball—I have. I've just found that I don't really care very much if I finish it or not. (I'm a great salesman, I know.) I'm two cards from completing the base set, and have added the 50 cards in the 1984 style from the 2012 Topps Archives set. I've also added a few original 1984 Nestle cards, plus the Larry Bird "Missing Years" card from 2006-07 Topps Basketball, plus even some Topps Tiffany cards. And a handful of the Traded cards. All in all it's about 900 cards, give or take a few. It makes for a nice starter set on the Mega Master Set, I'd say. So, if you're interested in trading for these cards, or would like to know if I can help you with other stuff, and you have Red Sox to trade, I'm all ears. By the way, if you want to see a list of Red Sox players I still need, check out this list.

3. I've been thinking long and hard about this, but 1986 Topps is my favorite set. Ever. It was my first set, and I have cards with their fronts ripped off to varying degrees from this set than any other in my possession. So if there's some sort of Tiger Beat that cares about what I like, 1986 Topps baseball is what I like...

4. Also, here's something to consider: Did you just get $75 worth of baseball cards from that box you just paid $75 for? If not, how much value do you think you got? I bet it wasn't anywhere close to what you paid, unless you count a box's anticipation markup — my name for the traditional profit-ensuring markup that plays to the expectations and excitement of the consumer towards the product. That's probably harder to determine, right? If there are 192 cards in that box (let's say you bought Heritage), then you just paid $0.39 for each card (sure, that's a steal if you get a Sandy Koufax autograph exchange card, but you're more likely to "hit" on a relic card of Raul Ibanez). So if you can get base cards on eBay for closer to $0.07 or $0.10 apiece, then you're paying an anticipation markup of anywhere from a quarter to thirty cents per card. You might scoff at this logic, but for your $75, your box probably contains $18–$25 of value in it. It's a sobering thought, especially as I look towards 2014 Topps Heritage...

5. I just finished David Maraniss' Clemente and recommend it. Actually, if you're interested in reading it, I will make it available for trade. See the linked list above of Red Sox players I'm missing and let me know if you're interested.

Baseball: The Early Yearsby Harold SeymourA Baseball Book Review

How much do you know about the history of the game of baseball? I thought I knew a lot, but after reading Baseball: The Early Years  by Harold Seymour (Oxford University Press 1960), it turns out that what I knew was just a lot of jumbled anecdotes, odd statistics, and answers to trivia questions. Reading Seymour's work, volume one in a series of three, is like sitting with a master of the history of the game.

As a game and as an idea, baseball is just about as American as you can get. In that, it's something (rounders) that already existed someplace else (England), that was adapted and tinkered with until it was different enough to be called an original creation. And though Organized Baseball (as the professional leagues came to be known) created and promoted the Abner Doubleday myth as a fictitious centennial in conjunction with the opening of the Hall of Fame in 1939, Seymour is completely thorough in researching the true creation of the game through its many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century incarnations: rounders, town ball, and base.


I had heard about this book because Zev Chafets mentions it as the de facto baseball history text for the library and research staff at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in his book Cooperstown Confidential: Heroes, Rogues, and the Inside Story of the Baseball Hall of Fame (Bloomsbury, 2010). Does it matter that Baseball was published in 1960, fifty-one years ago? Hardly. If anything, its age strengthens what it has to say. In 1960, the 1880s were only eighty years in the past; the history it describes was still relatively fresh.

It says on the dust jacket of my copy that "[Dr. Seymour] ... received a masters degree and Ph.D. from Cornell University, where he was the first to be awarded a doctorate for a thesis on the history of baseball." Though used mostly as a 'gee wilikers' nugget to help sell the book, this is an important point. Harold Seymour was not some ghost writer, some fly-by-night hack someone hired to write a book about baseball. He was a scholarly individual who happened to have firsthand experiences with professional baseball, and was interested in it and how it came to be the most-loved sport in the country.

I would recommend Seymour's Baseball not just because it's a thorough telling of the game's earliest days, but because it gives life to the men behind the history. It's a lively read, one full of characters each fully vested in the success of the sport. Men like the early amateur Knickerbockers, who were stubborn when faced with spreading the game across the country in a professional way, and power-wielding individuals like Al Spalding, Henry Chadwick, John M. Ward, and Bancroft Johnson. Or my new favorite nineteenth-century loose cannon, the Saint Louis Browns' Chris Von Der Ahe; he's well-deserving of his own biography.

There are very few baseball books that could be called 'definitive' without much argument. Harold Seymour's Baseball: The Early Years is on this very short list.

The Baseball Card Blog Interview with Michael O'Keeffe

If you haven't already heard about it, picked it up, or read Michael O'Keeffe and Teri Thompson's new book The Card: Collectors, Con Men, and the True Story of History's Most Desired Baseball Card, you're missing out. It's a great, comprehensive and controversial read about the hobby's most prized possession (the former Gretzky/McNall T206 Honus Wagner) and the many men who made it that way. Michael O'Keeffe answered The Baseball Card Blog's questions about the book and his take on the state of the hobby.


BBC Blog: Tell me about yourself.

O'Keeffe: I’ve been writing about sports cards since the late ’90s. This has never been a full-time pursuit, but sports collectibles is one of the beats I’ve followed and written about since I joined the Daily News. I did collect baseball cards as a kid, and to a lesser extent, football cards. But I gave all that up by the time I was about 13, 14 years old. I have very fond memories of collecting, trading and flipping cards, and at least indirectly, those memories did play a role in the writing of the book.

BBC Blog: So much of the hobby has built on the intrinsic value of one word: authentic. Does this word have any meaning?

O'Keeffe: I’m not sure what you mean here. Are you talking about “authentic” in terms of a grade from a grading company? Or “authentic” from a memorabilia authenticator? “Authentic” cards are cards that are lower value because a grading service said they were genuine but trimmed or altered. “Authentic” memorabilia means simply [that] some authenticator said it is what a consignor or auction house says it is.

I think the word has meaning when it comes to cards – at least you know what you’re getting, even if it was trimmed or altered. I don’t think it means a great deal when it comes to memorabilia – there are so many unqualified and unscrupulous authenticators.

BBC Blog: One of the questions I ask myself from time to time is, Did Topps invent Mickey Mantle or did Mickey Mantle invent Topps? You could make a pretty strong case that were it not for Mickey Mantle anchoring every Topps set 1952 to 1969, the company would be in a very different position today. But also, were it not for Topps, would 'Mickey Mantle' be synonymous with 'baseball', 'nostalgia' and 'Americana'?

O'Keeffe: I think he was such a phenomenal talent that he would have been a star regardless of baseball cards. He was not only a great ballplayer, he was the right man for the right time – a big, strapping, handsome, easy-going hero for a generation that wanted to return to normalcy after the violence and uncertainty of WWII, Korea and the Cold War. I think he would be an iconic figure regardless of baseball cards, although cards certainly played a role in his fame.

His image certainly helped Topps maintain its monopoly for many years and you’re right, it’s something they can go to every so often to gin up consumer interest and press coverage.

BBC Blog: Similarly, Bill Mastro seems to be the man behind the curtain in the hobby's secondary market; is this a fair assessment of him, or is he just a product of the industry? If not for Bill Mastro, would card and memorabilia collecting be where they are today?

O'Keeffe: As far as Mastro goes, I believe he has played a vital role in the industry’s evolution. He’s a smart and aggressive businessman who has brought a lot of innovation to the hobby. He’s also a very personable guy, and his larger than life personality has attracted a lot of collectors into the hobby. He’s got a lot of critics, too. We compare him in the book to George Steinbrenner – some people love him, some hate him, but you can’t deny he’s played a big role in collectibles.

BBC Blog: Do you think Ray Edwards and John Cobb have gotten a fair deal?

O'Keeffe: Not really.

I can’t say if their card is real or not. It probably isn’t, if you look at the numbers – there are only a few dozen real wagners still in circulation, but thousands of reprints still exist.

To me, their story is interesting because of the lengths they have gone to to prove their card is real. It’s like that Lucinda Williams’ line, “June bug vs. hurricane…” The hobby has jumped on these guys with a viciousness that is frightening. A paper expert and a printing expert have both said their tests indicate it is consistent with a 1909 card – that raises interesting questions to me. Many have ripped their card without ever seeing it or examining it in person. Why should industry executives be the final word when the industry has so many ethical lapses, when authenticators typically spend just a few seconds examining the average card, when the grader/auction house relationship is so fraught with conflicts of interest?

I was pretty horrified by the way collectors and dealers attacked Ray and John on Network 54. The overt and suggested racism in some of the posts was pretty disappointing. The hobby is dominated by white men, and in reading some of those posts, you get the feeling the only way a black guy would be welcome in the club is if he is a superstar athlete or a waiter. If the Cobb/Edwards card is so obviously a fake as Network 54 members say, why get so angry? Why rant on and on about two guys who will probably never sell that card, at least for not more than a few bucks? Why call them “Stimeys?” With all the problems in the industry, why pick on a couple of working guys from Ohio?

BBC Blog: Could the sports memorabilia and vintage card secondary markets survive if Mastro admitted to trimming the Wagner, and PSA admitted to knowingly rewarding a trimmed card with an 8 NM-MT?

O'Keeffe: Yes, I think the markets would survive. I’m not sure much would change. I get a lot of calls from collectors who say this auction house ripped them off or that authenticator made a mistake and I should write a story exposing them for the crooks they are. I always ask this question: Why do you buy this stuff if the hobby has so many problems? “Because I really need it, because I don’t want somebody else to get it…” is usually the reply. It’s a joke.

These guys act like vintage cards or old jerseys are as vital as food and water. Some people might drop out of the hobby but many won’t. Some collectors are like junkies. I think it’s rather sad that so many people tie their happiness and identity to an old cardboard card.

BBC Blog: Should we be more worried about the demise of Topps?

O'Keeffe: It doesn’t keep me up at night. But it would be a shame if a venerable old company many of us grew up with would be swallowed up by Upper Deck. UD strikes me as a sterile, soulless corporation; at least Topps has a great history.

BBC Blog: Nearly all of the available writing about the baseball card hobby is resoundingly positive in nature, even though by many accounts what has happened to it over the past twenty-five years or so has been negative (per-pack and per-card prices driving young collectors away, too many sets and a rapidly shrinking list of national manufacturers). It's almost as if collectors, dealers, publications and auction houses have their heads in the sand when it comes to the state and future of their hobby. Why do you think the hobby is like that? Is it really all about the money?

O'Keeffe: It is really about the money. Collectors and dealers are heavily invested in the status quo; if a grading company is exposed as chronically sloppy or incompetent or corrupt, the cards it has graded become suspect and the value of those cards becomes uncertain. The hobby publications are more interested in advertising dollars than real, honest coverage. The mainstream press is not interested in educating itself about the problems the hobby faces; it’s easier to write a “gee whiz, isn’t it crazy that a baseball card sold for $2 million” than do real reporting. Still, I’m encouraged by a lot of the coverage I’ve seen in recent years. The collapse of Topps, the rise of Upper Deck have sparked some good stories. Pete Williams' Card Sharks, although over 10 years now, is a vital read for anybody who cares about the hobby. Kevin Nelson’s book Operation Bullpen is also quite good.


BBC Blog: Could the Wagner phenomenon happen with any other card?

O'Keeffe: I don’t know, but certainly the Gretzky T206 Wagner benefited from the perfect storm.



The Card: Collectors, Con Men, and the True Story of History's Most Desired Baseball Card is available through online retailers and at bookstores around the country.