The ground covered includes huge declines in volume of cards sold, some blame attributed to too many different types of cards being produced and although not mentioned I think kids are generally less interested which if correct could matter at the margin.
All the articles seem to tie the peak of the industry to the issuance of the Ken Griffey Jr Upper Deck rookie card from 1989 pictured below. In conjunction with that the Forbes article also points to the joint purchase of the famous Honus Wagner T-206 card by Wayne Gretzky and Bruce McNall in 1991 as being the top.
The tie in to the title of this post is the interesting notion that too much competition actually hurt the industry. Competition is supposed to spur innovation and so by extension a better and less expensive products.In the case of baseball cards, competition appears to have snuffed out the industry. I wonder about the nostalgic interest on the part of baby boomers to own cards from the 1950s-early 1970s (like maybe through 1971 or 1972). These cards are from the boomers' youth. I found a 1963 Topps Mickey Mantle in "good" condition on eBay for $200 (there was another for $5000, yikes), a 1959 Topps Sandy Koufax in "excellent" condition to buy now for $125 (there was a cheaper one and an autographed one for $349), and as a last example a 1956 Topps Willie Mays ranged from $10 up to $800 (presumably depending on condition).
The prices seem low to me for people who love baseball, have a nostalgic sense of the game and are interested in spending a few hundred bucks. This would seem like it would be enough to put a bid under the hobby but maybe not.
What I think we might be seeing here (and maybe this can be a microcosm for a few other things) is a meaningful shift in how interests are pursued. For many years now Madden Football has been far more popular than card collecting. Whatever the reason people of many ages devote time and money to the video game and fantasy outlets. This is potentially meaningful longer term. I have a FaceBook friend whom I believe is in his late 20's. He's had several status updates mentioning the Madden game and fantasy football. It would be reasonable to think that he, and anyone else doing this, will keep on doing this and introduce their kids to it as well thus killing the future of sports cards.
This is a long way of saying I think what has hurt the sports card industry is competition for time from other related hobbies as opposed to competition from within the industry.
From my own viewpoint I loved cards when I was a kid and I enjoy seeing the old cards (I use pictures of cards in posts all the time) but get no such sense with new cards and have no interest in anything more than owning a handful of cards.
18 comments:
"What I think we might be seeing here (and maybe this can be a microcosm for a few other things) is a meaningful shift in how interests are pursued."
That's exactly right. This story has been explored ad nauseam on one of the leading comic book collecting forums (fora?), and that is the consensus there as well. It's hard for baseball cards or comic books or any other static medium (including novels that don't have teenage wizards or lovelorn vampires) to compete with Xbox, PlayStation, PCs (where kids are on FaceBook, World of Warcraft and the like), texting on their cell phones, etc.
Blaming the demise of the baseball card industry on capitalism is, as those kids would say, a total fail. It was capitalism that brought those kids a better mousetrap. Topps and Upper Deck were, if anything, oligopolists. What they could not or would not adapt to were Nintendo, Sony, Apple, Blizzard, and RIM, not to each other's innovations.
Baseball Card Industry?
6:12,
Dozens of companies, previously very big dollars flowing and as a subset of all sports collectibles; i think the word is reasonable
maybe it relates to the decline of america and capitalism in general...to quote the famous author and activist terrance mann
"The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh... people will come Ray. People will most definitely come..."
I think what really happened was the effect of the Internet and eBay. This has greatly lowered the value of most collectibiles. Especially collectibles that more than 2000 were produced. When people finally realized that the card makers were making a million of each card, what was considered rare or collectible quickly became too common.
When I was a kid there were 8 teams in the league and I knew all the starting lineups. And one card publisher. Any card you got meant something.
Now, 14 teams in the league--who can be bothered to care about all those players?
Like too many stocks in one sector; hardly anyone would try to track them all.
Competition didn't kill the baseball card market. There wasn't much competition. The few companies involved in the market simply flooded the market. We went from 1 or 2 sets/company/year to god knows how many.
Case in point. A few years ago, I thought "you know, I should pull out my Pujols rookie card and preserve it". 'Cause I usually buy a full year set every year. And I had a 2001 set. And Pujols was with the Cards for every game that year.
Except that, to increase sales, they didn't put Pujols in the regular set. They put him in some rookie/traded set. So I had nothing.
Once I figured that out, I stopped buying sets, and now only buy a few cards once in a while off Ebay.
As Joe said, comics are going through the same thing. Tons of different issues. You don't buy a Spiderman comic or Superman comic. There are 10 different "timelines" of each.
Anyway. Back to work. heh.
so buy what you like (for the few people who care about this at all) and don't think of it as an investment. I like ABA basketball cards (I have one Dr. J card) and I would like to buy one Sandy Koufax and one Jackie Robinson and be done with it.
Exactly. It stopped being an investment and became a "I like baseball and maybe I can give this to my kids" thing years ago.
DUnno if my girls will end up being interested in baseball, of course. hahah.
Outdated product. It had nothing to do with too much competition or too many cards.
I think too many people started to think that cards would be worth a great deal of money so they were buying sets each and every year. Trouble is, once everyone does this the value doesn't come to fruition.
Of course, by slowing the production, the remaining cards will, once again, become more valuable as the exclusivity returns.
I think they could have kept sales up if they just put better gum in the packages. :)
I don't think baseball cards were the problem, it was just that the demand could not grow very much, and most of the new collectors in the early 90's were interested in a fad, not the sustainable cottage industry. After the strike, the fad died, and the number of card companies resulted in huge overcapacity.
I remember when I used to collect Nolan Ryan and Jose Canseco cards like they were going out of style (I guess they were).
Similiar decline with NASCAR collectibles, starting soon after the death of Dale Earnhardt in 2001.
PS: Thanks for sharing your views, knowledge, and insight (and pics).
Anon 12:43. If you intend your comment to be a joke, it is not funny. If you intend it to be taken seriously, find another blog.
One of the main premises of capitalism is "creative destruction". New ideas and methods will supplant current methods. This aspect of achieving new growth is good for long-term viability. However, capitalism is not concerned with human capital, which is considered to be dispensible. This is why I believe that if our soceity is to grow and flourish, we need to maintain a combination of capitalism and "people power". Some refer to this as socialism, but this term has too many negative connotations. Most don't realize this "people power" is needed to maintain society, such as in traffic laws, the fire departments, police departments, tax collection, residential building codes, etc, etc.
A capitalist will provide the "means" for growth and innovation and requires ample reward, usually in monetary compensation, althought political compensation can be accepted. A true capitalist has no concern for what is destroyed in the process.
The U.S. is at the point of trying to determine what balance of each we should maintain in society.
That's a really good point Roger. I think that the internet and video games are, as you say, competition for kids time and as they gain mind-share baseball cards could lose them.
But I had a Nintendo and played Mario Brothers and Legend of Zelda endlessly when I was a kid, and I still loved collecting cards.
There could be many causes for the decline of the baseball card industry. But oversupply is definitely a factor because it killed the value of these cards. The economic lesson of the Forbes piece, and one part that I find interesting, is the analogy to inflation.
Thanks for reading and linking to my post.
Greg Feirman
Top Gun Financial
I think one should say BASEBALL ITSELF is the analogy for capitalism, dividing the country into haves and have-nots pretty dramatically, with all the ugly greed associated with the financial crisis apparent in the sport.
When 4 hour playoff games end at 1am on a regular basis, on school nights, for maximum ad revenue, and when 'family of four' costs of attendance run into the thousands, and when players sign autographs only for pay, the nostalgic baby boomers are less inclined to encourage their kids to participate in ANY baseball related activity.
I think a fatal flaw in this argument is when baseball cards raised the prices of the packs where the majority of kids couldn't afford them.
I grew up in the heart of this: Weekly allowance $2 a week. Topps wax packs were $.50 and then $1.00 and the $2.00 and so on. As I recall as a youth, standing in front of a display case and wondering how ANYONE could afford $7.00 pack.
This is a simple equation of greed wiping out the industry and for greed's sake - they killed the golden goose.
Next - Goldman Sachs looting the US treasury using Wall Street as a conduit to the point Americans can't afford anything.
Those that don't take the lesson that GREED IS BAD will wake up homeless with nothing to eat. Start the clock.
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