When The Adults Take Over
I’ll never forget the day when I was eight years old, and my local card shop owner, Bob Beck, handed me over a garbage bag filled with baseball cards after I had walked down the street to pick up a couple of packs of Topps baseball cards. I have no idea what was in those packs to be 100% honest; there could have been a Yadier Molina rookie card, or a plethora of Hall of Famers ranging from Derek Jeter to Trevor Hoffman. What stands out to me about that day was rummaging through the garbage bag when I got home. Plus, let’s be honest, even if I did pull the Molina rookie, he would have been just another random rookie card that eight-year-old me would have tossed aside in the junk pile. Oh well, we live and learn.
Deep inside that bag, I encountered what would become the first graded baseball card in my collection, which while not as vast as it is today, was still in the couple thousand card range. For those of you unfamiliar with the hobby, a graded card is when a service, in this case, PSA, rates a card on a 1–10 (One being the worst, ten being the best) scale based on four criteria: edges, corners, surface, and centering. Once a card is graded, it is slabbed and encased, where the only way to get the card out is to smash its protective casing. In other words, once a card is graded, it rarely way sees the light of the day again. Think of The Prospector in Toy Story 2 as an example.
Now, back to the story at hand. Most of the garbage bag was filled with commons from the 1980s, where print runs were through the roof in what collectors have coined the “garbage” era of the hobby. But that one graded card, the one that stood out in the pile? It instantly became the most treasured card in my collection; a PSA 8, Alex Rodriguez rookie card, which I had acquired for a whopping total of $0. Instantly, my face lit up like a kid running down the stairs to look under the tree on December 25th, with what I’d now describe as a “shit-eating grin.” And before you say it’s A-Rod, he’s a cheater, blah blah blah, you have to remember, this was 2004, A-Rod had just been traded to the Yankees and was the reigning MVP, and for fuck’s sake, I was eight-years-old, so cut me some slack and let me relive my childhood!
At this point, you’re probably wondering why I’m telling you this story. If you’re curious, the A-Rod card is no longer the most valuable in my collection but is one of the only graded cards I own to this day. Mainly, the reason I bring up this anecdote is that through graded cards (and decimating products on the retail level) the adults in the room are helping to guarantee that kids across the country never experience the feeling of joy that the sports cards industry brought me as a child, and still brings me to this day.
As I’m sure many of you know, when the pandemic hit our country in March, sports were put on the back-burner. The NBA season was put on pause until the summer, spring training was canceled and baseball players were left scrambling, and much to the chagrin of degenerate gamblers like myself, college basketball careers were ended once the buzzer never sounded on March Madness. With fans looking to get their fix, the sports card industry began to boom for the first time in years, as collectors began buying packs and boxes of cards in troves. For those who couldn’t physically get their hands on cards, they began to participate in online box-breaks, paying for a team, player, or division in high-end boxes, watching the cards being opened live, and hoping luck broke their way. Overall, it was a great time to be a sports card fan on the surface, as it seemed like more people were getting involved in the hobby than ever before, which in theory would lead to growth for the industry itself. But under the surface, problems were brewing, as the adults in the room began to take over.
Just last week, I went to the newly opened MLB flagship store in NYC, excited to see what I kind find. Immediately, I headed right to the back to check out the massive Topps display and was horrified to see the cost of one box of 2020 Topps baseball: $110. Now look, I realize that cards aren’t going to be as cheap as they were sixteen years ago when I was eight (thanks again inflation) but at the same time, I thought to myself how a kid under ten years old could afford to buy baseball cards regularly. The unfortunate reality is that they cannot, and the reason is simple; the sports card companies know that adults are buying products like never before, and marking them at an “adult” price, knowing there will be a market no matter the cost. And for kids who can afford the $110 a box sticker price, more often than none they are shit out of luck because the day products hit the shelves, adults go and clear out the stores while kids are at school, preventing them from having a fair shake at a product that was, and always has been for kids to begin with. The worst part of all is that most of the time when adults clear out the shelves, they’re not even doing so to open the cards, but rather to even further mark up the prices of the packs on the resale market, making it even more difficult for kids to get back into or remain a part of the hobby.
All of which brings me back to that A-Rod card. Once upon a time, baseball cards were traded and collected because people loved baseball and collecting, not because they were looking to profit off the industry. Now, it’s all about getting the newest card, sending it to get graded as soon as possible, and flipping it for thousands of dollars. What was once a hobby is now almost strictly a business, with people spending upwards of $60–100 a card just to send them in for grading. Whereas collectors used to buy cards no matter the condition because they loved a certain player or a team, now it seems it’s all about buying what’s going to sell the best, or what is going to get the highest grade. Think about it; if adults are willing to spend thousands of dollars just to get a card graded, what’s the limit they’ll spend to acquire cards if it even exists? And if you’re a kid, how do you expect to survive in the hobby, when individual cards (from the past decade, not vintage) are being sold at auction for over a million dollars each?
Over the past few years, as viewership has waned, the MLB has adopted a new slogan; let the kids play. I wish the baseball card industry got the same memo.
