The Last Iconic Baseball Card

[Dustanh1]

I don't think the Pujols is an iconic card. Yeah, it's an important card, but the Griffey UD transcended the hobby. The first card of the first UD set, Griffey with his big smile and his great decade that followed. The card is affordable enough and widely available to anyone who wants one, as opposed to the Pujols only having 500 copies (and not all 500 were redeemed), some fakes out there, and a very high pricetag. Plus I think with many people viewing Griffey as one of the few clean players during the steroid era, I just think that there is no way you can compare Pujols to Griffey. I don't think the Pujols Bowman Chrome could ever hold a candle to the Griffey.

[toppcat]

The '89 Griffey Upper Deck may well be the last of the real iconic cards, I have seen articles to that effect in a few different places saying as much. That was really just before all the new stuff got fragmented into niches and to be iconic a card really should be widely collected.

[packs]

I remember for a while the 92 Bowman Piazza was a slightly iconic card but it fell off quick. I'd say the 92 Bowman Mariano Rivera would have been an iconic card if the image wasn't so terrible.

[JLange]

Thanks for bringing this article to our attention. I started collecting as a boy in the 70s, and really don't have a lot of my early friends still into collecting right now. Still, I don't think the demise of baseball card collecting is upon us anytime soon. There are new fans of baseball every day. All it really takes is for your hometown team to do well (finally, in some cases) to re-awaken the collecting spirit amongst the fanbase. Souvenirs fly off the shelves, and savers turn into collectors. It only takes a few of those casual fans to turn into serious collectors to make any auction competitive. As for the "iconic" cards out there, if may very well be that the 1989 UD Ken Griffey Jr Rookie is the last highly recognizable, sought after card. But certainly not if you are a rookie card collector (plenty more to get since him), or a team collector, or specific player or set collector or type card collector. There are so many niche collections and ways to collect. This hobby is arguably down from its heyday in terms of numbers of collectors, but baseball is part of the culture and history of this country, and collecting is one of the many ways fans express themselves. You don't discover that when you are a kid collecting cards, you discover that when you are old enough to appreciate, pursue, preserve, and share your own niche collection with others.