As long as baseballs been around, so have cards. Baseball cards first appeared in cigarette packs. In this article, you will learn about cards and how to take care of them.
What’s a Baseball Card?
A baseball card is a piece of cardboard with a picture of a player and his position on the front. On the back of the card are the stats and birthday of the player.
Golden Rule of Card Collecting
If you want to be an expert card collector, follow the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule is never get rid of any rookie cards or draft picks. A lot of parents and grandparents got rid of their baseball cards thinking they were worth nothing. People might have gotten rid of a Mickey Mantle Rookie card thinking nothing was good about. But really they just trashed or traded over 500,000 dollars! Draft pick cards are even more valuable. A Derek Jeter draft pick card could send you to every single bleacher seat Yankee game for about 20 years!( Not including Derek Jeter Day.)
The Two Terrible T’s
In card collecting, there are the two terrible t’s. They stand for trash and trade. Never trade baseball cards unless the player took steroids, you have a double card, or the player is a backup player. If you don’t want to trade, then you would think to trash it. But you should change your mind. As the saying goes, ”One man’s trash could be another man’s treasure.” Try giving it to your little brother or a friend. Baseball cards aren’t exactly cheap these days. Today, you have to pay three bucks for ten cards while in the old days you could buy fifteen cards and a pack of bubble gum for a quarter. Plus, if you are an inexperienced collector, you may not know who this is or what it’s worth.
Baseball Card Companies
Today, there are a lot of card companies. I recommend getting Topps or Upper Deck. Bowman used to be the best one until the rival company Topps bought it. Topps is the most common card company. Plus, Topps offers more relics such as parts of bats and jerseys.
Cash Cards
Everybody wants to know what the most valuable card is. The answer is a 1909 Honus Wagner card. It was found in a box of cigarettes. Only 43 were ever made. The stopped the production of them because Wagner didn’t give them permission to use him. It is worth over 2 million dollars!!!
Tips from a Collector
As a collector myself, I know a few tricks to preserve your cards.
- Never trash baseball cards.
- Keep your cards away from pets.
- Never show your cards to someone you don’t trust.
- Keep your cards out of direct light. Doing so could fade them or even catch fire.
- Don’t put cards in your pocket. They could get folded or go in the washing machine.
- Try not to keep buying cards from the same series. You could end up with triplets.
- Buy team packs when you stop buying random packs. You might get a double.
- Organize your cards.
- Keep Rookie Cards.
- Keep draft pick cards.
Greatest Question: Shoe Box or binder?
One of the greatest card collecting questions: Where do I put them? Everybody says,” Put them in a shoebox with rubber bands.” Do not listen to that. The binder is the way to go. In shoe boxes, they get tumbled around. Also, when you put the rubber bands on, the cards start to crease. If you leave them in the sun, the rubber bands might melt while nothing happens to them in a binder.