The Art of Manliness - Episode #28： Mint Condition with Dave Jamieson

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another episode of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:19.860 for most men in america baseball cards played an integral part in their boyhood

00:00:24.340 whether you put the cards in your bike spokes or took part in high-powered trades with your

00:00:28.440 friends with the beckett monthly in hand baseball cards were part of the male experience in america

00:00:33.100 and if you're like most men you still have boxes of cards in your old bedroom you held on to them

00:00:38.520 thinking that they would you know someday fund a purchase of a bentley or trips to hawaii years

00:00:42.500 later our guest today tried to sell his old baseball card collection when his parents cleaned

00:00:47.400 out his old room but he quickly found out that his childhood investment was just worth the cardboard

00:00:52.320 it was printed on not very much dave jameson is the author of the book mint condition how baseball

00:00:58.300 cards became an american obsession dave is a freelance writer and has written for the

00:01:02.420 washington post slate the new new republic in the huffington post and he is the recipient of the

00:01:07.300 livingston award for young journalist in the sydney hillman foundation sydney award dave welcome to the

00:01:12.160 show hey brad thanks for having me all right well dave what inspired you to write the hit about the

00:01:18.000 history of baseball cards in your book you talk about kind of the story where you you went to go

00:01:23.680 get some baseball cards your mom found when she was cleaning out your old bedroom yeah that's right

00:01:28.640 i you know this all started when my parents were selling the house i grew up in in north jersey a few

00:01:34.560 years ago and uh really you know my mom wanted me to clean out my closet and uh i hadn't really been

00:01:42.840 in there in years and and there was an enormous box in there i mean the size of a small car and it was

00:01:49.400 just filled uh with baseball cards mostly common cards from the 80s but also some uh what i thought

00:01:55.940 were some little prizes uh you know rookie cards uh from the 80s like you know mattingly and clemens and

00:02:03.320 puckett and and uh ripken and i thought those were going to be pretty valuable at this point in time i

00:02:09.420 that's why i'd stowed them away as a kid uh but when i started calling up the card shops uh i started

00:02:15.140 getting disconnected numbers and i saw that that the cards i had even sort of the special ones were

00:02:21.340 going for very little money on ebay and on craigslist in fact craigslist was littered with

00:02:27.740 guys like me who were trying to unload who were 30 years old trying to unload these cards they'd had

00:02:32.920 from childhood and that's when i i got interested in finding out what had happened in this industry

00:02:38.200 and eventually finding out sort of where these cards came from uh over 100 years ago and uh where

00:02:44.640 they eventually went to and this um book started out as a magazine article was that article is that

00:02:49.320 correct that's right yeah i originally wrote a piece for uh slate.com about sort of how this industry

00:02:56.880 unraveled in the 1990s um and uh and from there so expanded it into a book so dave what's the origin

00:03:05.020 of the baseball card well the origin um the the short story is that cards uh first began appearing in

00:03:13.140 large numbers uh in the 1880s this was at the time they were packaged with tobacco and this was a

00:03:20.520 really brilliant idea at the time and it wasn't just baseball players that were on cards it was also

00:03:25.900 actresses uh native americans uh you know army and and navy figures and what these tobacco companies

00:03:33.760 would do is take uh print these cards package them with cigarettes uh which was a new tobacco product

00:03:40.660 that at the time relatively new tobacco uh cigarettes i should say weren't you know as popular as they

00:03:47.300 are today after the civil war and this was a marketing technique to popularize them and so these

00:03:54.360 cards were slipped into into cigarette packs and the idea was to create some brand loyalty

00:03:58.940 and to get people buying more more packs of your own brand and kids would buy these you know the

00:04:05.620 cards would be numbered one through 10 or one through 50 and uh you'd buy more packs of these cigarettes

00:04:11.040 so that you could complete the set and it started a fad in the 1880s where little kids would beg their

00:04:17.940 fathers to buy one brand over another and kids themselves this being the 1880s would buy the packs

00:04:24.100 of cigarettes themselves and you know this it was very controversial at the time i mean even though we

00:04:29.720 didn't know everything we know now about smoking people knew put one and one together that this was not

00:04:34.820 good for you and there was a lot of heat on these companies because they were they were really

00:04:38.720 attracting kids towards cigarettes but um you know baseball cards pretty much took off immediately

00:04:44.000 and this marketing technique would be replicated over and over in in other industries uh gum candy

00:04:52.120 uh chewing tobacco uh to to slip baseball cards uh into the packs that that's how how it all began

00:04:58.740 and what i thought was interesting i mean um is kind of the history of the transition from going

00:05:03.900 from tobacco to candy um but how did baseball cards become an industry in itself i mean how did

00:05:11.660 baseball cards move away from you know pushing tobacco or pushing gum to becoming industry in and

00:05:17.740 of itself it was it was kind of gradual um what i thought was interesting in my research is even

00:05:23.520 though this stuff there were certain golden ages of baseball cards the 1880s being the first one i think

00:05:29.740 uh around 1910 being another and uh and again during the great depression you know during the

00:05:35.620 depression that's when they started being packaged with bubble gum it was very popular at the time for

00:05:41.500 a penny you could get a stick of gum and a card and this being the depression kids couldn't go to

00:05:46.380 ball games and and cards really served as a way for them to stay connected to the sport but during all

00:05:52.640 these years the first half of the 20th century cards were always used as um as what what what

00:05:59.000 marketers would call premium uh in other words you were buying this pack for the gum but the baseball

00:06:04.100 card was there to sort of sweeten the pot and that started to change uh around the time tops came along

00:06:10.180 in the 1950s uh this was a bubble gum company like a lot of others but they really sort of bet their

00:06:16.440 future on baseball cards and they thought that that's where the future was and you know they had they had

00:06:21.600 wonderful timing this was uh you know the early 1950s baseball's in the middle of a golden era you

00:06:28.140 know you've got these great uh yankees dodgers rivalries going on and tops at that point put a huge

00:06:35.540 investment into getting contracts and really by by 1960 uh it was a great a great line by by the head of

00:06:43.580 tops at the time um arthur shoren he said told a newspaper reporter the cards wag the gum which was his

00:06:50.840 acknowledgement that they were no longer really pretending to sell bubble gum kids were really

00:06:55.020 after the baseball cards and that's sort of when when as you said baseball cards became an industry

00:07:01.220 in their own right and what i thought was interesting you mentioned tops um that's one of the big players

00:07:06.020 in the baseball card industry what i found was interesting in your in your book is that i've always

00:07:10.500 had this kind of wholesome image of baseball cards and baseball card companies you know kind of all

00:07:15.200 american thing but in your book you describe the baseball card business as this kind of gritty

00:07:20.200 and often cutthroat enterprise can you talk about some of the big players in the baseball card

00:07:24.940 industry and what things they did both good and bad that impacted the hobby yeah it was pretty

00:07:30.280 fascinating a lot of what i learned came out of a a case file now in the national archives it was a

00:07:38.440 a monopoly investigation started by the federal trade commission in the 1950s they were investigating

00:07:44.400 tops um which you know the idea of there being a baseball card monopoly uh that that that got the

00:07:51.520 government's attention and took years of resources is is kind of amazing and gives you an idea of how

00:07:56.260 vicious the competition was tops basically uh the contract fight was was so rough with these other

00:08:03.100 companies names you'd know like fleer and bowman uh that tops basically developed its own scouting

00:08:09.160 system they had coaches on the payroll coaches managers and professional scouts so basically when

00:08:16.500 you got when you when you were a teenager taught not only were major league ball ball teams looking

00:08:21.840 at you tops is looking at you as well and they wanted to sign you for as little money as possible

00:08:26.440 and you know high schoolers and minor leaguers when they signed got a check for five dollars from

00:08:31.680 tops and it was called stake money because that's about what it would get you in those days

00:08:35.400 a good stake and uh basically they were signing as many you know young rising stars as they could

00:08:41.260 and this went on through the 1950s and 1960s and tops was so aggressive uh in signing that they were

00:08:48.880 effectively able to shut everybody else out and they had such airtight contracts that places like

00:08:54.060 like fleer just simply couldn't manufacture cars and that's why tops you know you'd see uh if you

00:09:00.900 collected tops was the only brand out there really until uh 1980 when a federal judge basically decided

00:09:07.020 to break up tops's monopoly and allow other companies to manufacture cars and that's sort of

00:09:12.740 what brought on the the boom of the 1980s which if you're in your 30s now you'll probably remember

00:09:18.220 collecting fleer and tops and donners and all these different cars and that's essentially why is

00:09:22.920 that tops's three decade monopoly was finally broken that's really interesting and another part

00:09:27.780 interesting part of your book you don't just talk about the big baseball card companies but you

00:09:32.620 talk about some of the biggest collectors in the history of of baseball cards um and they had some

00:09:38.120 just really interesting personalities you know who are these men and how did they affect the hobby

00:09:42.560 um well the big is sort of the guy that's known as is the grandfather of uh of card collectors is a guy

00:09:49.720 named jefferson burdick who was a uh relatively poor bachelor from syracuse who

00:09:57.220 pretty much spent his uh his entire life traveling the country trying to to to collect every card he

00:10:05.440 could get his hands on and this wasn't just baseball cards it was cards of all sorts and it was tobacco

00:10:10.600 cards gum cards he basically wanted all wanted every bit of it and what he was trying to do is catalog it

00:10:16.460 all he was kind of creating sort of like a dewey decimal system for trading cards the collection he

00:10:23.160 is actually at the metropolitan museum of art it's called the burdick collection and and what he did

00:10:29.420 was he was the first guy to really try to get a handle on everything that was out there and he took

00:10:35.380 it all in and he gave it all he organized it all and gave the sets different names and and you may

00:10:41.120 have heard of the 1909 uh honus wagner card it's called a t206 card and that t206 designation comes

00:10:48.880 from jefferson burdick so he was the guy he sort of broke the wood is kind of how serious collectors

00:10:54.100 look at him and he's you know he's kind of a hero to to a lot of guys today who who are very serious

00:11:01.260 collectors and of course there's been plenty of other uh collectors who've sort of built on what

00:11:06.540 he's done but he's he's sort of considered the grandfather yeah and there was one guy in particular

00:11:11.840 that was really interesting forgot the name escapes me at the moment but he's the one who spent

00:11:15.820 enormous amounts of money buying um sheets of baseball cards and just like the rarest thing

00:11:21.000 he could find in um the honus wagner card he i think he invested in what was that's right yeah

00:11:26.200 that would be uh mike gidwitz okay yeah gidwitz you know very uh interesting thing a lot of these guys

00:11:33.660 it's a very different industry now basically what's called the secondary card market is is where uh

00:11:40.860 guys with a lot of money buy and sell uh these days uh baseball cards you don't see them in cvs a lot

00:11:47.180 there's not a lot of of sales going on in that department but the the buying and selling of

00:11:52.740 vintage high price cards it's almost like the fine art world these days and mike gidwitz is one of the

00:11:58.660 guys who has a lot of money and has been throwing it around on baseball cards for for many years and i

00:12:04.440 visited his apartment in chicago uh it's a he has a penthouse overlooking uh lake michigan and another

00:12:11.880 penthouse up there which is basically just for his baseball cards and um he he was the first guy to

00:12:17.500 sell a baseball card for a million dollars and that was the honus wagner card which he bought at one

00:12:22.360 point for about six hundred thousand dollars uh which just kind of gives you an idea of of the

00:12:28.380 seriousness uh of some of these collectors and you know his his apartment really is like an incredible

00:12:33.940 museum you mentioned the uncut sheets those are are sheets of cards that were never cut into

00:12:40.180 individual cards and uh they're very rare because uh basically they were never supposed to see the

00:12:45.920 light of day uh you know they were they were supposed to be turned into cards you know they're

00:12:50.200 very beautiful and they're very rare and he's got them you know plastered all over his walls you know

00:12:54.760 tobacco uncut sheets from the uh from the 1800s and and and top sheets and and gowdy sheets from the 30s and

00:13:02.500 it's really kind of amazing and and you know it just sort of reinforces why so many people love

00:13:08.020 these cards and pursue them and spend enormous amounts of money on them is that is that really a

00:13:13.200 lot of them are are kind of beautiful uh and they really display very nicely we're gonna take a quick

00:13:18.380 break for a word from our sponsors and now back to the show and what do you think drives these you

00:13:24.840 know super collectors who will spend any amount of money to finish their their set or get the the rare

00:13:31.080 uh baseball card i mean what what drives them to spend so much money on on pieces of cardboard

00:13:36.680 you probably there's probably some psychologists who could explain it better than me but yeah a lot

00:13:43.000 of a lot of these guys are driven in the way that that other collectors whether they're they're

00:13:47.680 very elite collectors of vinyl records or wine or whatever uh it really becomes a life pursuit for

00:13:53.860 them and you know it was interesting i found a lot of guys carve out their own sort of niche a lot of

00:13:58.860 people are what are called type collectors they will they will want one card from every set that's

00:14:04.300 out there a lot of people pursue certain players a lot of people want to complete you know individual

00:14:10.620 sets which was always the idea of card collecting from the very beginning and and what's fascinating

00:14:16.320 about baseball cards is there are certain sets out there like say the old judge set from uh the late

00:14:22.000 1880s where where we're still discovering cards to this day they will turn up in attics cards that

00:14:29.320 where you'll see ball players and poses that we we simply have never seen before and so sets like that

00:14:35.540 that that's a set for instance where there's maybe a half dozen people who are pursuing it in hopes of

00:14:41.300 completing it where that it's it's that extreme and and they probably never will just because we'll never

00:14:46.600 be able to wrap our hands around what's out there and i think that that's that's on a fundamental

00:14:51.420 level which draws most of these serious collectors is is kind of a um a search sort of a search for

00:14:58.480 the unknown and i think a lot of them know that they will never perfect their their collections but

00:15:03.260 it's sort of the pursuit that matters to them and and they're very very competitive you know these

00:15:08.760 honus wagner cards the 1909 card there's there's we believe there's 50 to 100 out there

00:15:14.460 and uh a lot of these serious collectors they know they know pretty much where all those cards are

00:15:20.640 and they know when one is going on the market uh and it's a very very serious world like that so you

00:15:26.080 talked a little bit about how there's this golden age in baseball cards particularly you know starting

00:15:29.480 the 80s when the monopoly on tops broke up and other card manufacturers got into the game

00:15:34.440 and they kind of went on uh through the late 80s and early 90s but then like 1994

00:15:40.700 kind of their beginning of the unraveling what happened why did the baseball card industry just go

00:15:47.240 bust and it's in the shape it is today i you know i a lot of people compare it to kind of a tulip

00:15:53.060 craze i i joke that before um tech stocks and mcmansions there were baseball cards because basically

00:15:59.560 it was sort of a classic bubble throughout the 80s these things were these cards were appreciating

00:16:04.920 in value in a way that really didn't make sense and the hobby grew uh to to such huge proportions i

00:16:11.120 mean you know if you grew up in the 80s like i did you'd remember even as a kid uh there came a time

00:16:17.120 where rather than than playing around with cards and tossing around and and not caring for them you

00:16:22.860 started slipping them into like hard plastic cases yeah um a lot of people were buying new cards new

00:16:29.220 product by the box full by the case and like putting it in their basement just waiting for it

00:16:34.560 to turn to gold and that really that that obviously doesn't make any sense uh and the fact that millions

00:16:41.160 of people were doing it should have been you know kind of a warning sign and part of the problem was that

00:16:46.600 the card makers at the time were rolling out so much product and they weren't really disclosing how

00:16:52.200 much they were rolling out and so all this stuff was really never never had the chance to be rare

00:16:59.060 you know what made the cards in the 1950s and earlier so valuable and special is the fact that

00:17:04.720 most of them never survived they were thrown out by you or your mother uh and they were never really

00:17:09.720 taken you know good care of and so those cards became scarce this stuff in the 80s was junk that

00:17:15.580 really was never going to have the chance to become scarce and so this all kind of came to a head

00:17:21.140 in the early 90s when uh one figure i came across is that 81 billion cards were being manufactured each

00:17:28.500 year and so you had a lot of people uh people on every level whether it was the card makers the card

00:17:35.140 dealers uh collectors or especially the baseball car uh the the baseball players union which was giving

00:17:41.800 out a lot of licenses everybody was trying to cash in on it which was really uh what would turn us into

00:17:47.880 such a spectacular bubble and everything kind of started to come to a head uh unfortunately around

00:17:53.200 the time of the baseball strike of 1994 and that's when things started heading south and and since then

00:18:00.080 these card makers haven't really recovered uh it became a hobby geared towards adults kids kind of ran

00:18:06.660 for the exits and they still haven't come back and that's why cards now if you go into a card shop the new

00:18:12.200 stuff aside from the very basic lineup that they're still you know aiming towards kids a lot of this

00:18:18.500 stuff is kind of weird stuff uh you know if you're not into this world you know you this this steven

00:18:23.860 strasberg card you know the pitcher for the gnats uh card sold a couple weeks ago for for twenty

00:18:29.580 thousand dollars because it's a gold refractor card i don't even know what that means you know

00:18:34.160 and i like i wrote the book on this stuff so it's a very strange world like that i mean they have cards

00:18:40.940 they call them dna cards where it'll be a card of abraham lincoln with a strand of his hair on it

00:18:46.640 i mean just really bizarre stuff that goes for thousands of dollars and obviously kids aren't

00:18:51.880 into that stuff they can't afford it and it's they they don't pursue pursue stuff like that so it's

00:18:57.780 become a very a hobby very much geared towards adults which i think is part of the problems that

00:19:03.080 they're having these days well speaking of that i mean is there any hope for resurgence i mean are

00:19:07.700 baseball card companies trying to do things to bring kids back into the hobby i mean or is baseball

00:19:13.560 card collecting going to be relegated to his you know the dustbin of history along with you know

00:19:16.840 blue laws or male garters right well that's the that's the tough question i mean they they have

00:19:22.760 been i think they recognize that the only future for this hobby is with children you know i i talked

00:19:28.820 to guys older guys um serious collectors who would wonder to me uh whether we were seeing kind of a

00:19:34.380 twilight of card collecting and a good reason for that is because um you know most collectors

00:19:41.260 right now are adults and they're not going to be around forever um and when you lose one generation

00:19:46.540 of kids it's very hard to get the next one that's coming through what tops has done lately which is

00:19:52.100 pretty smart is they've they've simplified their product line for one thing major league baseball

00:19:57.640 decided they were only going to deal with tops they effectively shut upper deck out and i think the idea

00:20:03.020 is to uh to simplify things for children to to sort of uh de-glut this market right now uh and tops has

00:20:12.340 has slashed some prices on some of their lineups you know you can now once again get a pack of cards

00:20:17.800 for a dollar which is very reasonable and that's what they're doing to draw kids back in and they've

00:20:22.540 also added lineups that have kind of a an online fantasy baseball element to them where you can register

00:20:28.460 your cards and compete with friends and that's all pretty smart but you know the bottom line is there's

00:20:33.680 so much competing for kids attention these days between the internet and these incredible video

00:20:38.860 games it's pretty tough to uh to give them you know some cardboard and uh expect kids to play all day

00:20:45.920 with it so i think the challenges are pretty huge well dave after i read your book um it really got me

00:20:54.040 you know nostalgic about my baseball card collection so i went i when i was visiting my family over the

00:20:59.540 fourth of july july weekend i went got my collection out and uh when i collected baseball cards there's

00:21:05.020 just a few players i collected and the big guy that i collected was frank thomas and the other one was

00:21:10.220 nolan ryan uh did you have a particular player or team that you collected when you were a kid

00:21:14.240 i did being from north jersey i was a big yankees fan so yankees team sets were always pretty important

00:21:20.740 to me and every year i i'd assemble i'd assemble it several times over but my hero of the day was uh

00:21:27.320 was don mattingly the the most special card for me and i still have it today is my 84 uh tops mattingly

00:21:34.720 rookie and i remember riding my bike down in the card shop every so often and and looking at it under

00:21:40.980 the glass it was about 30 bucks and uh just wondering when i'd have it and finally i got it for for

00:21:46.540 christmas one year and uh and i still have it to this day and and it's probably i don't know it's

00:21:52.100 probably worth like 12 bucks these days you know none none of what we have from the 80s is worth what

00:21:57.340 it was at the time uh but it's really it's a lot of fun to pull it out every once in a while and what

00:22:03.040 i always tell people is you know guys in their 30s who i've talked to about the book you know they'll

00:22:09.280 they'll say tell me similar stories that they went and pulled their stuff out and you know some people

00:22:14.060 think about selling it and i always say it's it's not even worth what you you know it's not worth

00:22:18.380 selling it's much much more valuable as kind of a keepsake and uh and it's really nice to to hang

00:22:24.680 on to and and every few years you pull it out and it kind of reminds you of being uh you know an

00:22:30.280 eight or nine year old kid and how you spend all day trading cards with your buddies awesome well dave

00:22:36.060 thanks for your time it's been a pleasure hey brett thanks a lot for having me

00:22:39.900 our guest today was dave javinson dave is the author of the book mint condition how baseball

00:22:46.420 cards became an american obsession and you can pick up dave's book at amazon.com or any other major

00:22:52.020 bookseller well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips

00:23:02.180 and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website at art of manliness.com

00:23:07.040 and until next time stay madly

00:23:11.040 you

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

Episode #28： Mint Condition with Dave Jamieson

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