Baseball card collecting
The first thing you notice when you walk into Middle Georgia Cards & Coins in Milledgeville is that there are very few cards and very few coins.
On the left side of the store is a glass counter with NASCAR racing car models displayed on top and inside. Behind the counter is a shelf with more NASCAR merchandise.
The right side of the store is packed with comic books, new and old, and in the center is a shelf stocked with game cards like the popular Yu-Gi-Oh.
“I’ve had to get into other things like comics and NASCAR,” said storeowner Bill Massey. “We’ve had to diversify to stay alive.”
The easiest way to find the baseball cards is to ask Massey. He’ll guide you to a small glass counter at the back of the store.
Individual baseball cards are on display inside the counter, featuring mainly players from the Atlanta Braves and the Atlanta Falcons.
Beside this is another glass counter that contains different sets of baseball cards and an assortment of coins.
“I used to sell several cards out of that case every day,” Massey said. He stood behind the counter, his arms crossed. “I’d sell anywhere from $500 to $700 worth of packs everyday.”
Massey rubbed his chin and pointed to two large plastic tubs filled with loose packs of baseball cards.
“Now I may sell one card a week and a handful of packs from there,” he said.
The sign attached to one of the tubs read, “$1 a pack or 12 for $10.”
According to an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the baseball card industry is in a decade-long slump, with revenue declining every year, and card storeowners are paying the price.
When Massey opened the store 15 years ago, baseball card sales accounted for 85 percent of his business, he said. Now they make up about one percent.
Massey said the problem is that the baseball card companies saturated the market by putting out too many products.
“Back in the early ’90s when it was booming, the card companies overproduced,” Massey said. “There were too many sets. They flooded the market with it, and it just drove people away. One by one, the card companies started dropping.”
According to the Associated Press, there were more than 4,500 card stores nationwide in 1995. Today there are just 1,200.
But baseball card companies are also feeling the pinch.
In May 2005, Fleer, saddled with more than $30 million in debt, went out of business. Then in July, the Major League Baseball Players Association announced it was not renewing its contract with Donruss/Playoff.
The loss of Fleer and Donruss/Playoff left only two card companies, Topps and Upper Deck.
Topps, the oldest card company, reported a 20 percent drop in first-quarter earnings this year, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
Besides overproduction, the other problem is pricing, Massey said.
“You went from selling a box of 36 packs of cards for 30 bucks to today where there are boxes that are $200, $300 or $400 a box, with just three or four packs in them,” he said.
According to the Associated Press, in the mid-1990s, a pack of baseball cards cost between 89 cents and $3. Now the average price is $5, with some packs costing up to $150.
The cost of a pack of baseball cards went up because of inserts and special cards that may be embedded with a sliver of Babe Ruth’s bat or a piece of Hank Aaron’s jersey.
Basil Congro, a commissions business analyst for IBM, has been collecting baseball cards for 24 years.
“It’s just big companies trying to artificially alter supply and demand,” Congro said. “Only making 1,000 cards of Barry Bonds with foil on the edges with the intent of the packs going for four times the amount of the list price is awful.”
“I believe the player and his career should dictate the value and not the card company. Making two cards in 2005 and charging $1 million is nothing like a 1983 Topps Tony Gwynn rookie card.”
Massey believes that the card companies are responsible for most of their problems because they alienated the consumers.
“They ran the kids out of it. They ran out the people who were trying to collect sets. And then when they got out, the value went down, and all the people who were collecting for the value got out, too,” Massey said.
Massey leaned on the glass counter and looked down at the handful of baseball cards.
“It used to be a booming business, and the card companies just cut their own throats, and now they’re bleeding to death,” Massey said.
A boy entered the store and paused by a comic book display.
“Can I help you find something?” said Massey.
“No, sir,” the boy said. He made is way to the back of the store, stopping every now and then to look at a comic book.
He never even glanced at the baseball cards.
He bought a piece of chewing gum out of a machine at the front of the store and left.
“The kids now are into computers and videogames,” Massey said. “Sitting down and collecting baseball cards is not something kids are into now.”
Congro, who still buys baseball cards occasionally, said he understands how hard it is for baseball cards to compete with video games.
“I suppose I spend more time playing video games and conquering the world with nuclear weapons than collecting cards,” Congro said. “You can’t do that with a baseball card.”
All of the blame does not lay with the card companies or video games, Massey said. Major League Baseball has to take some responsibility.
“Fifteen years ago, it was an honor for a Major League Baseball player to have a baseball card,” Massey said. “Now the companies have to pay the players for the right to do their card.”
MLB and the Player’s Association each charge manufacturer’s licensing fees to produce cards.
“You’ve got players making $15 to $20 million a year, but they want you to pay them $10,000 to make a baseball card,” Massey said.
In the end, Massey believes there is one underlying theme to all of the industry’s problems.
“You can sum up what killed baseball card collecting and why it won’t come back with one word – greed.”
Posted by Colonnade Archives
on Nov 4 2005. Filed under Sports.
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