Stuff You Should Know - An Interesting, Vastly Incomplete Look at Baseball Cards

Episode Date: March 23, 2023

One of the all-stars of the hobby world is collecting baseball cards. Over time it’s gone from a kids’ hobby to a major investment vehicle, complete with its own bubble that recently burst. But at the heart of it is something both engrossing and endearing.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Dr. Romany, and I am back with season two of my podcast, Navigating Narcissism. This season, we dive deeper into highlighting red flags and spotting a narcissist before they spot you. Each week, you'll hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love bombing, and their process of healing. Listen to Navigating Narcissism on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. MySpace was the first major social media company. They made the internet feel like a nightclub. And it was the first major social media company to collapse. My name is Joanne McNeil. On my new podcast, Main Accounts, the story of MySpace.

I'm revisiting the early days of social media through the people who lived it. Listen to Main Accounts, the story of MySpace on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Steve Reich, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and it's just us today because we left Jerry back in Vegas, and one of us has to go get her, and we haven't tossed a coin yet to see who that's going to be. I'm not going back to Vegas. I'm not either. The smoky casinos destroyed my already weary, allergy-ridden throat. Yeah, it wasn't pleasant for my throat either, but we should probably tell everybody why we were inhaling second-hand

cigarette smoke in Las Vegas recently and why Jerry's still there. Go ahead. Well, it's because we were honored this year by the Podcast Academy's ambies, basically the Oscars of podcasting, with the Governor's Award, which basically says, hey, you've been at this for a while, and we think you're doing a pretty good job. And why don't you think about hanging it up, and here's an award on the way out the door. Right, and we were like, but we're mid-career, and they're like, no, too late. You got the award. You've accepted it. You have to stop now. Yeah, it was really cool. It's kind of a lifetime achievement, and we've gotten the webby or two

here and there and some other things that, you know, it's always nice to get those things, but this, this felt like a genuine honor and like the one that we should go pick up in person. And we had a great time and an epic dinner, celebration dinner afterward with Jerry and her friend, and my friend, and Nathan who does our marketing, and it was just a really great celebration. It really was. It was a wonderful experience. So thanks a lot, Podcast Academy, because that was really cool. So it was really neat. Yeah. And it's got heft. Did you pick, they didn't give us one on stage because they're mailing them, but did you pick that thing up in the green room? No, did you?

Yeah, dude, it's it's heft. It's got heft. I mean, it looks like it. It's like a genuine bonafide statuette. Yeah, all my other statues, you can blow on them and they tip over. You're like, oh, it's hollow. Yeah, this one's got heft. That's awesome. Yeah. Thank you again to the Podcast Academy and honestly, thank you to everybody who's ever recognized us with an award that's really meaningful every time. So thanks everybody. Well, and we said this, you know, on stage. In fact, you buttoned it up nicely, but you know, the listeners are the reason we have this career and this job that we've been doing for so long. And I know it sounds trite, but like we wouldn't have gotten this award or

even be doing this job if we didn't have the amazing support over the years from you guys. Absolutely. Means a lot. So we should probably get going on baseball cards, right? Yeah, another quick COA for baseball cards. We have learned over the years the hard way that when you do a topic that is it's not just like, yeah, it's not like, oh, ballpoint pins or this or that when some people are very passionate about this thing that we can get ourselves into trouble because we get little things wrong here and there that they think are major things. So we respect the baseball card community and just want to not apologize in advance, but just say that, you know, we don't know nearly as much about this as you do. So be kind. I think it's well put. I'm just

going to come out and admit right now, I cannot find the difference between a bonus card and insert in a subset card. Okay. They may be all the same thing, but I am terrified that there's a slight difference in that we're going to get chewed up for it. Well, I didn't even know that we were going to be comparing those three things. So I'm in big trouble. Did you did you collect baseball cards as a youth? Here's my deal is I have somewhere a box of probably, I don't even want to hazard a guess, maybe 500, 200, let's say 200 cards of different kinds. I have some old Star Wars cards. I got a few football cards. Yeah. I have some baseball cards, but I was never a collector. I would just get them as any kid who wasn't like, oh, I need to start collecting something gets them,

which is like, oh, sure, they're in the stocking or might buy one here or there. But to answer your question, no, I was never like a collector of baseball cards or any card. That Star Wars card and things sounds familiar. I think you've talked about, did you discover your collection again recently in the last couple of years or something? Not recently recently, but I could see you've been doing this a long time, my friend. Yeah. Recently, meaning like since 2008. Yeah. We've been doing, how long have we been doing this show? Governor's award long is what I'm just going to say from now on. So, okay, so I actually was a collector.

I was a kid collector in that like every month I could not wait for the new Beckett price guide to come out that to me was like the Bible. Wow. I had friends that would like steal cards from me, like a real collector at like age 1112, right? Now, why? Because you weren't that into baseball, were you? No. No, no, I wasn't. Just a thing to do. There's something different. You don't have to be into baseball to really be into baseball cards. It's a really weird thing. Like it's impossible not to know a lot more about baseball than you otherwise would if you weren't collecting baseball cards.

I know what you just said. Well, no, think about it. So, like if you weren't, if you were just into flying kites, you probably know almost nothing about baseball if you weren't into baseball, but you can collect baseball cards and you're going to know a lot more about baseball and baseball players. Oh, I get you. And you would if you were just into kites, but that doesn't mean you're actually, you want to sit down and watch a baseball game at any given time. Yeah, yeah, I get you. Baseball cards are like that. It's really weird. I think that the majority of people who collect baseball cards are into baseball,

but it's not requisite. Yeah. When I went through mine recently out, because I guess it was semi-recently, because I was like, I wonder if, you know, I have some gem in here worth 20 grand. And I didn't. I think the best card I had was a Wade Boggs. Rookie? No, it wasn't a rookie, but it was like a first year card, but that's a rookie card. No, no, no, a first year, like in the big leagues card, it's not like their rookie minor league card or whatever. No, I think first year in the bigs is the rookie card. It wasn't worth anything. Let's put it that way. You're like, please, I want to end this conversation. Yeah, because I looked it up

and I think I sent it to my friend who's a Red Sox fan. I was like, here you go, you can have this. Oh, that was kind of you. Yeah. I discovered my old collection. I had several hundred and they were just loose. Any good ones? I started to go through. I was like, I don't feel like doing this. So I just donated them all because I knew that there weren't any like amazingly ridiculously valuable ones in part because when I was collecting, it was smack dab in the middle of what's called the junk era of baseball cards because the market was so flooded and we'll talk all about it. But to me, Chuck, just researching this and going back and seeing

like the design of some of those cards, like seeing how Don Mattingly is like just in the midst of like tossing his bat to run to first base and I think the 1988 Tops card, like just I seeing these things, it's just these neural pathways that haven't been like stimulated in decades are going off and I'm just like in nostalgia, heaven looking at all this stuff because I forgot what all of it looked like. So it's been kind of a nice little journey down the yellow brick road. But I want to circle back to our COA and say that doesn't mean that I remember like all the ins and outs either. I'm no expert. I just was a big time fan back in the day. That's cool. That surprises me too, but I love it. Another little Josh factoid

stick in my hip pocket. We need a little jingle for that like we have for Colin. So we're going to kind of breeze through the earliest days of baseball card trading. So we're not in here for two hours. But the earliest, earliest sort of ancestors of baseball cards were trade cards that, you know, today you might see a business that hands out a calendar with like the local sports team or something or Matt refrigerator magnet or something. These are kind of what trade cards were. They were business cards. And they said, hey, why don't we just stick something interesting on here? So people will keep it. And sometimes that became a baseball player or a baseball team. And these cards weren't, I mean, I guess there may

be a market for them in some circles, but it's not like this is considered like a tradeable baseball card today. I don't think right? No, I think that there's probably a there's collectors out there who collect that in the same way there's people out there who collect like old timey potato chip tunes. It's like super antique. And I think it's probably a niche market in the baseball card market. You know what I mean? Okay. So sub jaune. Yes. But they are, it's questionable whether you can be like, this is a baseball card. And there are a lot of people kind of putting baseball teams and baseball players on things at around the same time. So there's a lot of different competing first baseball card ever. But the one that usually gets pointed to is a 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings

card by Peck and Snyder, who were and apparently still are a sporting goods manufacturer who took a team photo, super Victorian, there's like heavy curtains on the edges of the photo and everything. Oh, yeah, super sepia. I mean, just sepia to the max. And then on the back, there's like a drawing in an advertisement for Peck and Snyder's location on Nassau Street in New York. And a lot of people are like, this is really it. This is the genuine progenitor of the baseball card. Yeah. And that one, I believe, and Ed helped us out with this one, he found that was valued at a couple hundred grand. Certainly no slouch card wise, if you happen to have this one. In the 1880s is when things really kind of started taking shape. And that's when tobacco got involved. There was a

farmer named James Buchanan Duke, who started putting just cardboard cards and cigarette packs to keep them from getting, you know, been up and stuff when you sit on them. And they started printing pictures of things on those cards to make them interesting. And sometimes it might be a movie star. And sometimes it might be a sports star. And I believe in 1886 is when the old judge cigarette company started including baseball players. And this is also looked at as a kind of a milestone for a couple of reasons. One was because you got a random car that you didn't know you were going to get. It's not like it was a cigarette pack for, you know, I know I can't name a baseball player from back then. So I'm not even going to try. It was random just like kids like you later

on would buy packs of cards like not knowing who you're going to get. And the other thing it was called a premium, which is basically like, this is just an extra thing and something you were already buying. Right. Although I will argue that the gum part was not why kids were buying baseball cards. Right. That gum was not good. No, it wasn't. But that's how baseball cards later on would kind of get their restart will as we'll see. But that I mean, but so that's kind of how it went for about a century. Like they were random and then they were extras to what you're buying. An old judge actually, like you said, I think it was 1886 that they released their first. That set it's called the N167 set is considered the first official set of baseball cards.

Pretty cool. Yeah. So you can thank cigarette manufacturers for introducing baseball cards to the world. But the thing is, it's not like it was like, okay, it just it just started from there and it just kept going and developing. That's not the case because baseball wasn't the only thing that you would find on these cards and cigarette packs. Eventually, because they were premium, they were like, well, here we want you to have something that you actually want. So here's a movie star who you've never heard speak out loud. Here is a bird. Here is a train. You don't know where a train is. Well, buckle up because you're going to within the next few years. It wasn't just baseball players and it wasn't just baseball card collecting that kind of it didn't develop

immediately, I guess is what I'm trying to say. There were other like detours and sidetracks and stuff like that. Yeah. And they you know, these early ones kind of look like you would think they were black and white. Sometimes they had a sepia tone. Color photography wasn't really a big thing, at least a widespread thing at this point. And so these cards didn't last long. They faded out in sunlight and just basically being you know, on planet Earth, they would degrade because they weren't very high quality. And a lot of times they weren't even prints. They were actual like photographs that were glued to cardboard. So it's kind of a quaint early days of baseball card kind of thing. The Library of Congress, if you ask them, they will say that the first baseball card

was a printed photograph of a baseball team that was a souvenir handout. And I'm not one to usually quibble with a library of Congress. I'm not sure I would count that as the first baseball card. Some people do. Some people don't. I think the one from Snyder or Peck and Snyder's typically the one that most collectors think of as the first one. I'm sure we'll hear from people. For sure. You know. Yeah. Oh, I know. So there are a lot of different eras in baseball card collecting and they're not, they don't necessarily follow chronological order weirdly. They more are referred to by where the cards came from. And like I was saying, there are a lot of blind alleys and sidetracks and just weird, weird evolutions of baseball cards. And one of the

ways that's evident is that in the late 19th century and early 20th century, there were a lot of different random places that you would get a baseball card. It wasn't standardized yet. So you might get one from the magazine that you subscribe to or from your cigarette pack or you bought like a box of biscuits and a baseball, baseball card fell out. So I think, I think people who collect those kind of cards are okay with things not being particularly standardized and kind of hurly burly instead because that's how baseball cards were kind of kind of like a train just is kind of like chug, chug, chug, chug, chug with each like additional chug, a bunch of new baseball cards spat out in different weird random places from non-existence.

A lot of train refs so far today. Well, there's a lot of train stuff going on at the same time. Sure. It's of the era. Should we take a break? Oh, yeah. All right. I'm going to go study trains, I guess, so I can keep up and we'll be right back. This case has all the markings of a ritualistic, a cult murder. Part psychological thriller, part supernatural horror. The truth? Sometimes it's revealed in the intersection of facts. Sometimes it's hidden to the lore. Starring Westworld's Jonathan Tucker and Eddie Gathagy from Twilight.

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One of the things I love the most about this show is that we get to learn from the masters. I look at being on this show as my graduate program in music. All right, so if you're looking at a modern baseball card, and, you know, we're not jumping forward in time that much yet, I'm just kind of talking about the labeling of the cards. You're going to probably see the company that made it. You're going to see the player's name, maybe a collector's number on the card if there was one. There might be some additional things on there like, you know, how many sets were made that year.

It might be a set name or a subset name. So you might see something like Ed gave an example. 2004 Bowman Chrome, number 264, Hector Jimenez is like the official sort of name of the card. Right, so what you got is the Bowman is the maker of the card. Chrome is the type of card of the addition. Number 264, if I remember correctly, that would be Hector Jimenez card was 264 in the set of say like 300 or something like that. Okay, those tobacco sets that we were talking about that came with cigarettes are very popular.

It's called the Tobacco Era T sets. So for instance, Ed lists the T206, very famous set from American Tobacco Company. And this was for a couple of years between 09 and 1911. And this has the very legendary, the card that you may have heard of, even if you know nothing about baseball cards. You've probably heard of the Honus Wagner because it is, I guess, not the most expensive or valuable baseball card of all time, but maybe the most well known. And it's certainly up there.

I think it was the first baseball card to crack a $1 million sale all the way back in 2000. But one of the reasons why it's so well known is because there just weren't that many of them. The legend goes that Honus Wagner said that he didn't, well, some people say that he was opposed to tobacco products. So he didn't want his card being sold within packs of cigarettes. And he may or may not have been opposed to tobacco. He just said that he didn't want his picture in cigarettes. But the real truth is probably that he didn't like not being paid for his likeness,

which was being used to market and sell cigarettes now. Regardless, either way, there are not that many Honus Wagner cards, T206 Honus Wagner cards. And then one of the other reasons that it's really valuable and probably overvalued is because of a price guide from 1937, right? Yeah, there was a price guide that it seems like the author who wrote this just himself could not find this card readily and kind of, I guess, misstated its rarity because of that. Because there are other much rarer cards from those sets even that aren't worth what the Honus Wagner's worth.

And then it just became one of those things where the legend grew of the Honus Wagner card. And it kind of became famous and valuable because people said it was famous and valuable. Right, exactly, because that T206 set, which was, I think, from 1909, you can get cards from that same set for $100 or less today. But that Honus Wagner sold most recently for $7.25 million in the last few years. So it really is just basically, it's become iconic and legendary just because people thought it was rare. And even when they found out it wasn't that rare, it doesn't matter, it's still a Honus Wagner card.

Should I buy you a T206 card for 80 bucks online? Sure, a stretchy brown stash card. Stretchy brown stash, oh man. I'm glad we circled back to that because you were like, I can't hazard a guess at a name of a player from back then. And I was like, thinking about it, but then the time it passed and then bam, it came back again. So it's a brown stash time. Okay, so that was off the dome eight minutes ago. Exactly.

Okay, very nice. Way to hang on to that. See, you don't throw away jokes. Not if they're okay or better. Because you never know when it might come up. That's exactly true, man. And that's not just the case with jokes too, Chuck. That's the case with just information in general, something that may seem trite or boring even at one moment. Down the road, you might be like, oh, I know the answer to that. And then bam, someone's falling in love with you. Well, you know, what's funny too is, you know, I've never done improv, but I know a lot of improvers,

and they all have a little hip pocket stuff, you know, like they're, they're certainly improving, but they all have their little bag of tricks that they keep and little gags and jokes and names. And when we did our TV show, Caitlin Bitzeguy, who was played our boss, Steve, on the show, and was one of the legit talented actors that surrounded us. Caitlin, I don't know if you remember this, but in one of the episodes, she, she threw out the name Mike Vlasny. No, I don't remember that. And that stuck with me all these years is somebody who's like, something's up,

then Mike Vlasny said, and I asked her, it just killed me for some reason. It was just, I had a funny ring to it. And I asked her after word, if she had just made that up. And she said, she's like, no, she's like, I've been using Mike Vlasny for years. She's like, it's a good one. It is a good one. It's like my Todd. Yeah. Well, you true Todd, but now you've got stretchy black, what? Brown stash.

Brown stash. It's good stuff. Hang on to it. Thank you. Ironically, he was blonde. Oh, wow. See, this story gets richer and richer. Yes, and so let's get back to baseball cart, shall we? Yeah. Oh, I was gonna start up again. Oh, well, hell, go ahead.

No, no, go ahead. The T206 was one of the ones we were mentioned with the Honest Wagner card included was one of the last tobacco sets. And then World War One comes along and kind of puts a halt on production because it seemed like wars back then just put a halt, like world wars, put a stop on lots of production of things that weren't needed when you needed other things. Not to mention the 1918 flu pandemic too, right? Sure.

So I saw Chuck somewhere, the time between basically 1900 and World War One as the golden era of baseball card collecting. Between what years? 1900 and basically 1917, 1916. Oh, interesting. Yeah, I thought that was interesting too, because again, these are the ones that are like, they follow very little rhyme or reason, like Nabisco was putting out like baseball cards. Biscuit sets.

Weird, yes, they're notated with a D and that's your bread baseball cards or bread-like products, whatever. But apparently that's the golden age of baseball card collecting. I disagree. I think when I was collecting, it's the golden age of baseball card collecting, but it could just be my skewed opinion. Your first person point of view? Right.

But the thing is around this time, people started saying like, oh kids, maybe we should stop forcing them to start work at five. And maybe we should have a problem with them smoking tobacco. And about this time, people said, well, these kids are starting to really get into this baseball card thing. They like baseball. They like things that remind them of baseball. So hence their fascination with baseball cards.

But I don't really think we should be pushing old judge cigarettes on them so that they can get their baseball cards. What if we package these things with candy? And here was a huge, huge step in the evolution of baseball cards. Yeah, they said, why try and sell cigarettes to 10-year-olds? They shouldn't start smoking till they're 12. So let's start putting them in caramel packages and things like that. And that kind of birthed some real kind of fun oddities, at least fun to me.

I don't know how the baseball card community looks at this. I can't stand it. Oh, really? I like things to be standardized and follow like a certain set of rhyme and reason. So sometimes these things were round, which is kind of fun, I think. And then sometimes, like in the case of the 1920 American Caramel or Caramel set, they were die-cut cards that were just in the shape of the player.

It was a little cut out of a player. Will haunt my dreams. Hurt your sensibilities? I just don't like it. No, I don't like it at all. It's just too random. I think it's neat. I know, and I can understand how somewhat would.

It's my own foibles for sure. No, I got you. So it was basically like the Wild West for baseball cards. All the way until about World War II and actually past World War II. But a little after World War II, Bowman, a gunmaker, started taking over baseball cards. They started adding baseball card sets. They started kind of professionalizing the whole thing. And in very short order, another gunmaker called Tops said,

oh, I like what Bowman's doing. They're really like increasing their sales. Let's see if we can figure out how to build a monopoly out of this. And they actually did. Big time. Tops had a monopoly on baseball cards. Like literally, you could not get a baseball card that wasn't a Tops baseball card from about the early 50s till about 1980.

They were all that they had because Tops had figured out that they could go to individual players and say, hey, sign this contract so that we're the only one who can reproduce your likeness and we'll give you X number of dollars every year. And players would be like, sure, why not? I don't have any allegiance to Bowman or Fleer or anything like that. And Tops just dominated the market. Somehow survived an FTC investigation. They were a literal monopoly.

They would get sued all the time and they just withstood all of it. Until finally, the players union was like, hey, guys, these other companies are willing to pay way more. Stop signing these Tops contracts. And it wasn't until the players themselves stopped signing these contracts with Tops that the monopoly ended up getting broken up in that way. Yeah. I think it was just kind of what you did.

Like you went to Major League Baseball and you signed with Tops. It was just part of your deals, like signing with an agent or whatever. Right. Now, were there not any other companies making cards for nobody baseball players even? I don't know if they were for nobody. The way that Ed puts it is that basically you had to not even be a prospect in the minor leagues. Like maybe a mascot level player, right? I'm just wondering if there were any other baseball cards aside from Tops during that 30-year period.

Truly, there was something, right? Not that I understand. There were like football cards, there were hockey cards, but baseball seems to have been totally locked down by Tops essentially. Because think about it, if you're, say, FLIR, Arrival of the Tops, and you want to put out a baseball card set, but you can only sign seven players out of all the players in Major League Baseball, like you're not even going to go to the trouble.

Nobody's going to buy it, right? Right. So I would guess, no, I think that it was basically just Tops this whole time, as just exclusively with baseball is all I'm saying. Well, what was FLIR making? Were they making other sports cards? Probably hockey and football, yeah, and maybe basketball. Because those cards have been, I think,

hockey cards were almost as old as baseball cards. They were put in tobacco packs too. Yeah, you know what's funny is now that I'm remembering my pseudo collection, I had a few NBA cards and a few NHL cards in there too. Everybody's got them. I remember seeing the random toothless hockey player, you know, mulleted toothless hockey player from that era. That is standard issue stuff right there.

It's pretty good. And I also get the same neural pathways when I open that box. It's like, it's pretty strong stuff. One other thing I ran across though, Chuck, is that ironically there's a company from Italy called Panini, and Panini has a lock on the licenses for NBA and NFL until 2026. So Topps got beaten at their own game. They can't produce NFL or NBA official cards until 2026 now.

Look at you, Panini, locking down the sandwich making process and the football cards. That's right. There's a little sidebar I had included, which I think is interesting, which was that, you know, you mentioned, I don't know if you actually said it, but Fleer sued Topps in 1975. And a lot of case law has to do with baseball cards, including a very interesting side note that the whole idea of name and likeness and like owning your image and being able to profit from your own image

and keeping people from profiting from your image came from a baseball card case in what, 1953? Correct, yeah, Halen Laboratories, which is a terrible name for a gum maker, but that's who they were. They bought Bowman, and Topps was poaching their players that they had contracts with, and they sued Topps. And Topps argued, look, Bowman doesn't own that person's likeness. Yeah, they have a contract with the player. But what the player was saying is, I won't sue you, Bowman,

for making a baseball card with my likeness. Not that I'm giving you any ownership over my likeness. I'm just waving my right to sue you with this contract. And Topps said, you can't sue us because you don't own the likeness. You can go sue the player, but you can't sue us. And the court said, you know what, you're absolutely right. It resides in the person, and the person not only owns their likeness, but they're able to sell it or lease it to third parties.

And it was all because of baseball cards. It took a little while to develop. Remember our legal precedent episode? Oh, yeah. Where I think the decision came from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. So it wasn't binding in other courts, but it was eventually cited as precedent and spread and spread and spread. And then in the 70s, it was like a thing.

Yeah. And, boy, talk about a monumental case, like, especially these days. I mean, the human beings are brands these days with influencer, and not just influencers, but I hate even saying that word, but just celebrity image or whatever. And that was a huge, huge case. And I think, you know, one of the most important reasons is it kept, like, it meant you could profit, but I think the big thing was it kept other people

from being able to steal your image. So if you just want to be like a George Clooney class act and not put your face on a, he probably does those ads in Japan and stuff, though, I bet. He does nepresso ads here. Oh, does he? Okay. It's so weird. It's so random because it's like the only thing he does.

Yeah. That is weird. Maybe he's just into it, I guess. I just think classy. I think Clooney. That's it. It just comes out of my mouth. He's cold. Oh, should we take another break on that wonderful joke? Yes. All right. We'll talk about the kind of getting into the modern era right after this. Stuff you should know.

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This is Questlove and, you know, at QLS, I get to hang out with my friends. Sugar Steve, Laia Fontigolo, Unpaid Bill, and we, you know, at Questlove Supreme, like the nerd out and do deep dives with musicians and actors and politicians and journalists. We give you the stories behind all your favorite artists and creatives that you have never heard.

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Then you're a lot like me, but you're also a fan of Questlove Supreme. One of the things I love the most about this show is that we get to learn from the masters. I look at being on this show as my graduate program in music. Listen to Questlove Supreme on the I Heart Radio app, app or podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Chuck.

So this guy is my guy that we're going to talk about. His name is Cy Berger or Berger. I'm going to say Berger. He codified things and you love him for it. He did. That's absolutely right. He said, hey, everybody, let's start acting like we actually care about the product that we're putting out and start standardizing

some of this stuff. Let's get the look up to date. Let's, oh, I don't know, put the logo of the team on the card. Let's start using color in normal, coherent fashion like we are all sane. So Cy Berger, he was the one, he worked for Tops appropriately enough.

And he did such an amazing job that he set just basically standards that are still around today. Yeah, those stats on the back that you love so much, that was Cy Berger, the little printed signature. Cy Berger. Well, he wasn't signing them, Cy Berger. Oh, it's a Cy Berger card. The size, the three and a half by two and a half size

became standard in 1957 because of Cy Berger. Well, that was a cost saving measure too, right? Well, yeah, I mean, it definitely made sense because I think it just, there was less waste, right, on the printing sheets. Yeah, you could just print more cards per sheet. So you could save some money with printing when you're printing millions of cards, you know?

The thing is, Chuck, is I think also that's another reason why I love baseball cards starting in this era because they're all the same size too. It's very much like my love for the right size G.I. Joe's and not the overly large weirdo G.I. Joe's of the days of yore. Look at you haunting me. Well, I mean, I think there's, I'm not like particularly OCD, but I have a little bit of that stuff.

We've talked about it before and then a stacked thing, if there are irregularities in that stacked thing, it drives me crazy. So I kind of get where you're coming from there. Yeah, imagine like a die-cut arm sticking out of your shirt. Oh my God. Now you know how I feel. Geez, that's gonna haunt me.

One of the other things about Seiberger's success, Chuck, is that it was, his transition, this is the 1952 set that debuted his work, I guess, the first one. Yeah. He was so successful that Tops was like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. Our sales are through the roof. Let's release a second set in 1952.

We'll catch everybody just in time for the playoffs, so they'll be all super psyched about that and we'll just sell even more than we normally do. And they missed the mark. I think they came out a little late. They missed playoff fever and instead ran into baseball, or football fever. So people weren't really interested.

So they actually took all of these leftover remnant, this is like the ET, the game version of baseball cards. They took all of these just overstocked leftover sets and they warehoused them for a few years, I think. And finally in 1960, they're like, we're paying for these cards that we're never gonna do anything with. Let's just put them on a barge and dump them in the ocean.

And they did. They dumped them in the ocean. It's so strange, like little decisions like that. Like not to bury them, not to incinerate them, to dump them in the ocean. Yeah, not to go through them and maybe pick out ones that might be valuable. Exactly.

Well, that's the thing. They didn't know that any of these things were gonna be valuable, but it just so happened that the most expensive, the most valuable baseball card of all time, the 1952 Mickey Mantle, is down there at the bottom of the sea in droves. But because they're at the bottom of the sea,

the ones that are topside still are incredibly rare and incredibly valuable. So much so that the 1952 Mickey Mantle sold for $12.6 million last year. Yeah, that was a 9.5 on the condition scale. And it is not even a rookie card, but it is that first Tops card that had that sort of modern baseball look in 1952.

Yeah. So it's considered, or at least valued as the most expensive Tops Honest Wagner even. Yeah. Yeah, it topped Honest Wagner. And I think the 1933 Babe Ruth is third for most valuable card. Right, which makes sense.

So now we're going into the next era of trading and collecting, which was, hey, you kids, I know you're kind of into this thing, but you put them in your bicycle spokes and you play games with them and you handle them and muck them up. Adults are going to start collecting these and keep them in pristine condition

because there's an actual trade and buy and sell market here. And we'll even have a convention in the very first West Coast Sports Collectors Convention was in Brea, California in 1969 at a guy's house named Jim Noel because he was there wasn't enough people, basically, I think a couple of dozen people. And he was a prominent collector

who I guess had a good enough house. They point to 1980, 11 years later, as the first true convention in that I guess they held it at a hotel, the National Sports Collectors Convention. And between that time, there were little shows here and there, but they point to 1980s, the first real deal convention.

Yeah, totally. And I saw an article on counterfeit cards which we'll talk about in a little while, but just right off the bat, I mean, within a year or two of that first convention, counterfeit, I think Pete Rose rookie cards started showing up in conventions. Yeah, just almost immediately.

But it's like you said, it went from just something that kids got as kind of like, imagine collecting ring pops. Okay. Okay, it's virtually the same thing where kids would just go buy it and mess around with it for a little while. And then that was it.

It was discarded, whatever. Imagine if adults suddenly were like, we want to buy those. Sorry, you don't have adult money. Maybe you shouldn't have stopped working starting at five years back. And you would have adult money, but you don't. So now these things are really going to go up in price.

And it didn't happen immediately, Chuck, but slowly but surely, starting around 1980 and then onward, it went from a hobby or something fun for kids and grownups alike to something incredibly amped up and almost on cocaine. Yeah, that's an interesting way to put it, but I think I agree. The market is generally driven by exactly what you think,

which is rarity, which we'll talk about, and condition. Condition, because, like I said, kids actually played with the cards and things like that and traded them and touched them. So a lot of these cards were not as valuable because they were mucked up. Sometimes these little cards were designed to be folded as little stand-up things.

And this is one of the things that can drive rarity. So if you have a card that was supposed to be folded in half as a little stand-up tent or something, like a little pop-up, but you never did that. It's like the grito that you never opened and played with as a kid or whatever. That means it's a low supply. It's just very simple supply and demand kind of thing.

And Ed, very stutely, points out it's not exclusively, but a lot of baby boomers and their kids are the ones that are really into this community. And they created a very big demand in those two decades, in the 70s and 80s. And manufacturers were like, hey, we can make more money here. So then they ruined it by overproducing in the 90s.

Upper deck came along and did a really good job of debuting like next level cards that just looked awesome. The photos were better. They were on higher quality card stock, as opposed to just like junky cardboard. Sometimes they were hand autographed. Those are the really, really expensive ones now. And they would include little bits of like a shard of a baseball,

a splinter of a baseball bat that was used by a player, or a little tiny little thing of a baseball jersey. So these little extras started popping up. And it was really cool, but they not upper deck, but just the market was flooded overall. And there were just too many baseball cards. Yeah. There's one with like a lock of Jose Canseco's hair.

Oh, really? Is that one? Do that would not surprise me. It wouldn't me either, man, after reading this. I had no idea that this was the state that baseball cards were in, but they just embed the weirdest stuff into cards now, and it makes them just incredibly valuable. So what's happened is the companies that make cards have, they used to just make cards.

They said, oh, there's X number of major league baseball players. We're going to make X number of cards. And then for some of the ones that are stars, we'll put them in a different outfit. We'll say, here, hold this feather duster like a bat for this one. We'll use like slightly different colors and things like that. For a few of them, and those will be produced in a little lower quantities, but it's just been so juiced now that they're like,

yeah, give me a little bit of Brett Favre's game jersey, and we're going to embed it in a card, and we're going to make two of them. And what's interesting is they put them in packs still. It's not like you can only, you have to walk on foot to the company's factory and buy this thing with gold bullion. They put them in packs, but then they automatically become incredibly valuable on the secondary market. And so people buy packs in the hopes of like,

they're about to like strike it rich because there's a million dollar card stuck in there. Yeah, it's hard not to be a little cynical as a non-enthusiast and be like, they kind of ruined it in a way, in my opinion. Because it's, you know, the old days, it was like you would open a card or open a pack or whatever. And it was that what you wanted to find was a player that ended up being really good. And you're like, wow, I've got this thing now of this Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card.

Well, they kind of knew he was going to be the, because of his dad and his legacy or whatever. But you know what I mean? Like the player that kind of, yeah, sure. Why not? Mark Grace. Is that the only baseball player you can think of? No, no.

Mark Grace's, I think, 88 rookie card was just... Oh, is it expensive? Yeah. And I, it was very sought after at the time. Okay. I thought you just like pulled that out of your back end. I thought that was pretty good. Oh, thanks.

But anyway, now it's become like, almost like gambling, like buying a, like looking for a lottery ticket or something that's a winner. And because of that, there have been RICO anti-trafficking laws and like lawsuits brought up saying the same thing, which is like, you're kind of running a gambling business these days. Yeah. And all those lawsuits have failed, but Ed pointed out there was one against Panini just like a few months ago this year.

So people are still trying to, to paint them as, you know, gamblers or not gamblers, but whatever it's called. Casinos? No. Sure. Lottery ticket printers. Card sharks. No, that's not it either.

You know what I mean? Everyone knows what I mean, I think. Card sharks. So the, one of the things that's lost though, Chuck, and I don't mean to get cynical about, you know, the present or the future in favor of the past either. But it's hard not to because as a kid, you could go to the grocery store on your bike and buy some packs of baseball cards and go have fun opening them. Good luck finding baseball cards in the store these days.

Oh, really? Yes, you go to a really well-outfitted hobby shop or you're just buying it online, basically immediately from the secondary market. And yes, you can still have the thrill of like buying an unopened pack or whatever, but you have to buy it online and wait for it to arrive in the mail. And it's just, it's just a different thing to me. I guess it's not necessarily worse. It's just the reality now, but I just feel like kids in particular,

and then also like people who just don't have nearly as much income are having trouble keeping up. You can't buy baseball cards unless you're fairly well off these days because the possibility of buying a really valuable one is very high or getting a really valuable one. And then you can just buy valuable ones right out of the gate, too, off of the internet. So it just seems different to me. Well, it's less magical, for sure, and it is hard not to say that it's worse. Yeah, go ahead and say it.

Sorry, everybody. We try not to be terribly opinionated, but this one really was pretty opinionated, if you think about it. Yeah, we talked about rookie cards. They're usually the most valuable and sought after. And one of the reasons is because, like I was mentioning earlier, you don't know necessarily you might get a King Griffey junior that you have a pretty good idea that he's going to be a great player because of his family.

But usually it's like, well, you know, baseball is a hard sport, and a lot of really good prospects don't pan out. So you don't know for sure if the player is going to pan out and be a hot commodity as a baseball card. So that's why rookie cards are worth more. And then also Ed points out, too, there's just sort of the tradition, like the rookie card is more valuable because we say it's more valuable. It's not necessarily because it's the rarest thing out there.

It's just very collectible. Yeah. And then Chuck, we talked a little bit. I mentioned counterfeit cards being a thing. I mean, they were a thing back in the day when the first convention started. Now that cards have gotten like ultra valuable, the counterfeits are becoming even more difficult to detect, in part because it's just worth the effort now because of the payoff.

And then secondly, because the technology to make really good fake cards is becoming more widespread and cheaper. So there's more people putting more time into counterfeit cards. So as a result, there's a cottage industry of basically valuators and what's the word where you verify authenticators? Yes, authenticators has grown up as well. And there's one company called Professional Sports Authenticator. They're not the only ones.

I think Beckett, who used to make my, and I think still do make my beloved Beckett price guides, they also authenticate too. But there's a need has developed for professionals who employ experts to look at these and say, yes, this thing is for real. And by the way, it's also a nine in mint condition basically. I'm surprised they haven't started putting a chip or a little stripe that the money has, the little, when you hold it up to the light,

stuff like that to legitimize it because it's such a big money industry. I guess maybe the Professional Sports Authenticator company has a great interest in that not happening because, well, it wouldn't drive them out of business because of all the previous cards, I guess. But I'm surprised there isn't something like that embedded in the card these days. I think that the really high value ones do have some sort of security measures. I know they have things like holograms and foil printing and stuff like that. It's hard to duplicate.

It is hard to duplicate, but it is possible too, especially if you're not a professional authenticator. It's probably harder to detect, but I think if you are a professional, it's probably not that hard. Like I saw, for example, I think a PSA slab. So if you have a card that the PSA is authenticating, they encase it in plastic and basically say, this is forever more verified. This card is verified.

They call them slabs that you can buy. On PSA slabs, it has their patent number for the case that they use. There's a counterfeiter out there who uses the same patent number, same font and everything embossed on that plastic case, but they forgot the period after PAT. And that's the way that you tell that it's a counterfeit. Everything else is like that amazingly well done. Instead of spending so much time trying to rip people off,

it seems like you have enough ingenuity to make money doing something else. If you're good enough to be a counterfeiter, maybe it's the thrill of crime or something, I don't know. I think for some people, crime is very romantic, especially baseball counterfeiting, very romantic. The last thing I have is just a kind of cool little footnote that Ed points out, which is in a lot of trading markets, or collectible trading markets, the rarity and value come sometimes from mistakes and errors,

like the stamp that is misprinted or the the java that looks like it had an erection that they quickly stopped on the assembly line. Not always the case with baseball, and there are exceptions, but generally baseball card errors are not so valuable. There is at least one exception that I came across, Billy Ripken, Cal Ripken's brother, his 1989 FLIR card. He's holding a bat, and on the bottom of the bat, written in Sharpie, it said F face, but it was all spelled out.

It was not abbreviated, and he basically just trolled the FLIR company, and they printed it, no one noticed it for a while, and they finally, I think, I'm not sure what they did with it, but that's a very highly sought after card, too. The F face? Yeah, it's the latest, they call it the Billy Ripken FF89 FLIR or something like that. Oh, wow, I love that, the triple F. Yeah, yeah, it is. I didn't notice that third F.

You got anything else? I got nothing else. This was fun. I hope we got it mostly right. Yeah, and don't forget, I mean, there's podcasts out there dedicated to baseball card collecting. We're just giving a general view of it. So if you like it, go seek out some of those baseball card podcasts, and enjoy those as well. And since I just said that, of course, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this a follow-up on the Catherine the First lineage.

Remember, I couldn't quite remember all that stuff. From the Amber Room? Yeah, from the Amber Room, and I'm a big, huge fan of the TV show, The Great. Oh, yeah? And it comes back for season three, I believe, in May. Okay. So it's also a good way to plug that show, because this will come out kind of closest to them.

This is from Rebecca. Hey, guys. I've been listening for quite a few years now, very informative, and I'm not generally one to write in with corrections, but the Russian succession in the Amber Room area, such a good story, could be an entire episode. Peter the Great imprisoned his son in air after a failed revolt, and he died after torture. After Peter died, the crown bounced around various family members, including the wife that survived him, the peasant born, Catherine the First,

for whom the Catherine Palace is named for. Finally, Elizabeth secured the throne, ruled for many years, she apparently lived extravagantly with something like 200 shoes, or I guess 100 pairs, never wearing the same dress twice, but she never married. So to ensure the succession, she named her nephew her heir, and also arranged his marriage to a German prince's name Sophia, who converted to Russian Orthodox and took the name Catherine. Wow.

So after Elizabeth died, her nephew was so unpopular, that only a few months later, he was overthrown by his wife, who ruled as Catherine the Second, aka the Great, and that is where the TV show takes place. That's awesome. Had a chance to visit the Catherine Palace a few years ago, see the recreation of the Amber Room, it's smaller than I imagine, but still beautiful picture.

Your frames and tables are also made with amber mosaic. Thanks for the podcast. P.S., if you're not, P.S., you're not supposed to take pictures in the room, but I attempted to sneak a pic before I was caught and scolded. Oh, wow. Lucky to scold it and not thrown into the gulag. That's right, Rebecca. I'm pretty good about rule following in those cases,

because I like to, I'm a rule follower generally, but I snuck one photo in of one of Elvis's jumpsuits in Graceland. Oh, yeah? Yeah, you know, I was like, I did a quickie, and that was it. I wasn't trying to get too greedy, but I had to have one. And you took a photo too? Yumi said on his bed, I think I told you, on the 747 and set the alarm.

Oh, I don't think I remember that story. Maybe get off that plane pretty quick. That's funny. D-board. So just one thing, since we're talking about Russia, I want to make a correction way from way back in the past. I think in our Louisiana Purchase episode, I mentioned that NATO is fighting a proxy war with Russia through Ukraine.

Right. I grossly misused the term proxy war. I did not know that proxy war, in every case, means that the person fighting the proxy war started it. I do not think that NATO started this war at all. I think Russia was the aggressor, and I am definitely not pro-Russia in any way, shape, or form. As a matter of fact, I have a tremendous amount of admiration for Ukraine,

and I hope that dumb American politics don't get in our way of continuing to support Ukraine, FYI. Yeah, you were very misunderstood, and I felt terrible for you, because we got quite a few letters, and that is not what you meant. But also, I learned my lesson too. I should probably double-check big words before I use them. So, yeah, apologies to all Ukrainian-Canadian listeners. Apparently, there was a bunch of you for any offense I caused.

Yeah, good stuff. Yeah, good stuff indeed. If you want to get in touch with us like any of our Ukrainian-Canadian listeners, or Rebecca, you can send us an email to stuffpodcastatihartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Listen to navigating narcissism on the I Heart Radio app,

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