Wall Street Journal

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

Well, it's not the article about the altered card scandal that I helped with (but was killed) but I am featured in article in the WSJ this morning. Unfortunately it's behind their paywall online.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/nostalgia-boosts-baseball-cards-of-the-80s-and-90s-11589544000?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=1

[Mark]

Congratulations! The article is really focused on your insights. That is great. The article is on the bottom of page A12 of the print edition, in case anyone gets the Weekend Edition delivered or buys one at the supermarket. [BTW, I highly recommend the Review section of their Weekend Edition]. And Scott's article takes up an interesting phenomenon: new, widespread interest in the new stuff (80's and 90's). Who would have thought?

[trdcrdkid]

https://hosting.photobucket.com/images/gg98/dkathman1/19F572EE_CA60_4F14_9FEE_1903B98BE086.jpeg

[STL1944]

Thank you for sharing your insight! Great article.

[conor912]

Would someone mind copying and pasting?

Also, would love to hear about this article that got killed...

[trdcrdkid]

Here's the text of the article in case anybody can't easily read the photo I posted above. (It looks perfect on my desktop computer, but is hard to read on my phone even when I zoom in.)

********************
Nostalgia Boosts Baseball Cards of the ’80s and ’90s

Ken Griffey Jr. has been retired for a decade but his 1989 rookie Upper Deck card has doubled in value since March

By Michael Salfino
May 15, 2020 8:00 am ET

The coronavirus has turned baseball into a mere memory. But the combination of sheltering in place and eBay has made a hot commodity out of something sports collectors normally refer to as “junk wax”: baseball cards of the 1980s and 1990s.

The face of this new market is Ken Griffey Jr., a Hall of Famer who, like Mickey Mantle before him, debuted as a teenager to great fanfare and captured the imagination of a generation of fans. Griffey’s 1989 rookie Upper Deck card has about doubled in value since March. In perfect condition, the card that was routinely fetching $700 months ago is going for about $1,400 now, according to paid prices tracked by card-grading company Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA).

“People are home sorting out their closets,” says avid baseball card collector and MLB pitcher Pat Neshek, currently a free agent. “They’re reminiscing. A lot of this surge for non-vintage (pre-1970 cards) are people who are bored at home buying cards they couldn’t have when they were younger, totally nostalgia driven.”

The cards of other Hall of Famers from the era have also appreciated. Randy Johnson’s highest-graded rookie card from the same set as Griffey’s has also doubled, to about $100. And Frank Thomas’s 1990 Leaf rookie card, which could be fetched for $120 in March, is trading at about $400.

The question is whether this will last. “If demand craters even the slightest bit, the supply will overwhelm it causing prices to crash,” says owner of Birmingham Auctioneers Scott Russell.

That seems like a reasonable possibility. There are 3,795 perfect Griffey rookies graded by PSA alone, never mind the other grading companies. And there are 24,123 “mint” cards just below perfect in quality. The most sought after Mantle card, the 1952 Topps, has only 1,683 in any grade, according to PSA, just three of which are perfect.

That’s not the end of it. Russell adds, “We’ve sold unopened boxes of all of these products in the past year not to mention lots with as many as 20 ungraded Griffey rookies. So the graded population of Griffey rookies, unlike the population of Mantle rookies (the 1952 Topps and 1951 Bowman), still has room for astronomical growth. The majority of Griffey rookies in existence have not yet been graded.”

And they’ve been cherished by their owners all along. “They weren’t thrown away or destroyed like so many of the Mantles.”

Plus four other companies made cards in the 1987 to 1991 period, Russell said. “Collectors have plenty of opportunity to pick up all the Griffey rookies they want. Even if you only wanted an already-graded perfect 10, there are tens of thousands of cards to choose from.”

So while a Griffey rookie card clearly works as nostalgia, it’s unlikely to continue to keep working as an investment.

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

Also, would love to hear about this article that got killed...

Did a ton of work with the same writer (I got a couple other N54 members involved as well) and while they were vetting the article (they took over two weeks) the Washignton Post ran their article (which was considerably less in-depth) so the WSJ decided there was no need to run the article. It was then shopped around and it looked like Atlantic Monthly might have picked it up and expanded it, if I recall correctly, but then that fell through too.

Was very frustrating because there were some very good people involved and it contained, by far, more information than any mainstream media piece I saw. Writer was very discouraged. He did the thing on spec because it wasn't his department. If I remember the FBI refusing to comment was a sticking point for the Journal, which seems odd since the FBI NEVER comments on an ongoing investigation.

This was all about a year ago right as things were breaking.

[mrreality68]

Very interesting insight.
Congrats on being featured.
I am more a pre-1930’s collector but always good to learn about what’s out there

Thanks for sharing

[marzoumanian]

Nice insight, Scott. Wise words. Thanks. I will stick with my vintage baseball cards, thank you very much.
This WSJ piece made me think back to when I bought a 1989 Upper Deck factory set in the mid-1990s for $200. The frenzy was on back then. Kept it in my closet for about 15 years and then decided to sell it. I got $35 for it from a dealer at a Chicago Sun-Times show. And so it goes!
Stay healthy.

[conor912]

Here's the text of the article in case anybody can't easily read the photo I posted above. (It looks perfect on my desktop computer, but is hard to read on my phone even when I zoom in.).

Thanks, David.

[ALR-bishop]

Great job Scott.

Mark--agree on weekend WSJ Review section. I look forward to it every week

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

Didn't follow up, I was actually also featured in a different article in theathletic.com about the PWCC Scandal a few weeks later. Unfortunately it is also behind a pay wall.