We’re headed back to the 1980s … we want to hear what YOU think

I started collecting in 1978-1979. I can remember that the 1980 Topps set was the first set that I completed. I would get packs from my uncle when he came to visit and from a lot of the local stores (I think they were like 25 cents a pack). I collected it all back then-all sports. Of course, most of the Philadelphia teams were doing well around then, so that helped me be interested.

I remember this one local store that my friends and I would go to for cards-looking on the shelf to see if the new ones had come out yet. I remember getting a 1981 Pete Rose in a pack from the first box of the year that showed up on the shelf-I was so excited.

Donruss and Fleer (and their numerous error cards) followed. Their gum was much better, but of course that wasn’t saying too much!!

I do miss the collecting for collecting’s sake. I miss the many card shops (or even the sorta card shops) that were within a modest bike ride of home. Sadly, my two boys pretty much could care less about cards (to my moderate shame). My daughter does collect the Bella Sara horse cards, so at least there’s one collector in the family. She also trades those cards with her friends too, so it is nice to see.

One thing that I’d like to see more of is wrapper redemptions. I was thrilled to see Topps do that again with the 2011 Topps wrappers!! I used to get the Topps Glossys or if I won on the contest card in the packs. It was cool to get cards in the mail.

I know what you mean about the nostalgia aspect of the cards that were produced then. However, I don’t really feel too nostalgic during the Topps Million Card giveaway (or the new Diamond Giveaway) when I get a 1987 Bruce Ruffin on 1989 Jeff Stone card.

1. I think the year I most got crazy into cards was ’87, but was buying packs before then.
2. For me ’80s cards begin and end with the ’84 Donruss Mattingly.
3. I miss collectors getting excited about good old fashion non-auto/patch rookie cards.
4. Topps Double Headers and the old school boxed traded sets.
5. Beware of the super hyped prospect (Gregg Jefferis) and the error card craze should never come back.
6. Going on ebay and picking up cards I lusted after as a kid has given me a lot of joy for a pretty small sum of money. A 1983 Topps Traded Strawberry was always out of reach as a kid, but as an adult I picked one up for a few bucks and its was a childhood dream come true.

I love these question, rambling about ’80s card collecting on my blog is my favorite pastime.

Kevin from Virginia

The eighties brought us the overprduction, misleading statements of print runs, and the one of a kind error card that was later released again. As we look back the primary goal was to get the collectors dollar, produce as many as possible to include off center, poor picture quality, and too many areas to even dwell upon. Did not participate in any collecting or investing since 1988 (learned a leason) until 2010 when some viable collecting items were again out on the market. Hope the card companies do not ruin it a second time.

I live in San Francisco, CA.

I started collecting in 1989. My first real set was 1989 Topps. I bought a little Donruss, and a bit of Score, but I never saw Fleer and I remember seeing Upper Deck only once in stores. Although I tried to dabble in basketball, I’ve been baseball only my entire collecting career.

Even though I didn’t enter until the end of the decade, I’d say the 1986 Donruss Jose Canseco Rated Rookie is the most iconic 1980s card. The easy answer might be the ’89 Upper Deck Griffey rookie, but that card fits more with the new 1990s style of card (high quality, limited production). Others might turn to early 80s rookies (such as Mattingly and Clemens), where the real idea of a super-valuable rookie card started, but the Canseco fits somewhere in between. The “rookie” concept had developed, creating hype for a set that could be called Rated Rookies, and this was the card to own after his 40-40 season in 1988.

I miss most the ability to walk into a corner store and just pick up a pack of cards. Sure, now I can go online, or drive to a superstore or card shop, but 25 years ago they were found in convenience stores, supermarkets, and gas stations. At the supermarkets, you could find a box of cards mixed in with the candy at every register. Cards were accessible and visible to everybody.

I would love to see a return to the inexpensive kid-friendly card. It may not be the most profitable, but it’s always fun to open a pack of cards, and it would help build the base of future collectors. Opening Day isn’t bad, but I think you can go even “cheaper” than that. Return to the “throwback” cheaper cardboard used for sets like late-’80s Topps with a full 792-card set (possibly issued over several series to keep things fresh on shelves), filled with some interesting subsets (instead of inserts). Put cards on the box bottoms and gum in the packs. It may take some negotiating with the players associations to bring licensing fees down, but if it’s in the best interest of the hobby and the sport, immediate greed should be left behind for future gains.

Obviously, there was a glut of product, especially in the late ’80s. But Topps has almost always had a history of overproduction. They even glorify it on an insert this year. It may not be a bad thing, though, with a cheap basic set for younger collectors. You don’t want to overproduce and have a lot of returned product, but the problem in the 1980s came from speculation and hoarding. There were tons of articles that decade about the next great rookies to collect (there still are) and the word around was that you couldn’t go wrong investing in trading cards. I think we’ve learned that the value in older cards comes from scarcity, but we’ve also seen that manufactured scarcity doesn’t create as much value in a product. We also keep our cards in “mint” condition, so there are more, better quality cards out there to choose from. Everyone bought, collected, and properly stored complete sets of cards in the ’80s, and the speculators are now “stuck” with lots of “junk” that they thought would be worth thousands. But if you rewind to the 1980s, people only had a few sets to choose from – Topps, Donruss, Fleer, and eventually Score and Upper Deck. There was one set released from each manufacturer, which was inexpensive and easy to collect. There are hits and misses with designs, but card collecting didn’t need to be done with white gloves. Competition and advances in card quality brought about interesting better looking, better-quality cards, interesting insert sets, and autographed cards.

As I said before, overproduction wasn’t really an issue at the time. Cards were always returned to the manufacturers, repackaged and resold at a reduced rate, and now sit somewhere in warehouses. It wasn’t an issue until everybody started hoarding cards in mint condition in hopes of a great return on investment. I still don’t see it as an issue. With a lot of quality-condition cards available, it’s inexpensive, but there’s nothing wrong with the cards. Many of the designs are interesting, and there are some great players in the sets. Most thirty-somethings started collecting in the ’80s, and eventually there will be a renewed interest in these cards, much as there was with the ’50s and ’60s issues with the Baby Boomers. Meanwhile, kids who are just getting into the hobby or have limited money don’t necessarily care that they have the latest and greatest cards, and the inexpensive product can provide collecting joy and history for newcomers.

1. I started collecting in 1987, at the ripe age of 10. Dad got my younger brother and me into it that year, and I focused primarily on our favorite team, the Cubs, from any of the big three: Topps, Fleer, and Donruss. Didn’t really matter who it was, we just wanted Cubbies cards.

2. As iconic as the ’89 UD Griffey Jr. card is, it came at the end of the decade and really opened the gate for higher-quality (albeit wildly overboard and the cause of my long-term hiatus) cards of the 90s. In my opinion, there is no one card that says “1980s” the most. Take your pick from any of the RCs of 80s-90s stars: Ripken, Gwynn, Mattingly, Bonds, McGwire, Maddux, and my hero, Ryne Sandberg.

3. I miss the simplicity of the era. You had three brands with ONE set each year. I miss the low cost. I miss the challenge and excitement of finding important BASE cards in packs, rather than people pulling only for the big hits and complaining about the rest. That’s what got me out of it in the early-to-mid-90s. That and we don’t need 10 different parallel versions of the same card in all the colors of the rainbow.

4. I’d like to see that simplicity brought back: One base set (although I do like the Heritage stuff) and a factory set for TRADED and XRCs only. Not in packs…one, preloaded set.

5. What did we learn? We learned that people will pay exorbitant amounts of money for the CHANCE to pull a major Rookie Card, and then throw a fit when all they get are commons and “semistars.” What exactly is a “semistar” anyway?

6. I loved the Topps MCG program, because I really thought about the fun of pulling those old ’87 cards. I never did attempt to completely finish that set, but it’s something I’m probably going to be able to do now that I’m in my 30s and have a little extra money compared to when I was 10. How about Topps skips their Heritage brand from ’62 this year all the way up to ’87 next year?

1. Being born in 1985, I don’t remember much about collecting in the 80’s but I do remember my first set of baseball cards was an 89 score set.
2. 1989 Upper Deck #1 Ken Griffey Jr.
3. I liked that a players rookie card was from his rookie year and not draft year.
4. Bring back 36 pack boxes of 15 cards per pack. I also liked the card stock which enables you to have a card signed without the use of powder.
5. Large sets are nice but only having 1 set per year is not the way to go.
6. I’m not sure the 80’s product will revive the hobby but around January/February when new baseball products are non-existent, it is fun to spend a couple of dollars on those products you remember so well from your child hood.

– George, MD

1. When did you start collecting — and was there one set or card that you keyed upon early on during the 80s? I started collecting in 1988, My favorite set of all time is the 1988 Topps Football with Bo Jackson’s RC. My grandmother purchased the complete set for me as a kid.
Overall Football seems to have a better assortment of Rookies in the 80’s and I started collecting football again after 10 years before I got back into to baseball in 2009.

2. What card — any sport — do you think says “1980s” the most?
The 1989 Ken Griffey RC the holy grail of collecting during my younger days never had one though. It is the first Baseball card I purchased some 20 years later in 2009.
The 1986 Jose Cancesco Donruss RC is #2 it symbalizes the 80’s era of steriods and over produced cardboard that the values dropped like a rock in water. Picked 1 up for $6 when I was kid it was well over $100.

3. Is there anything you miss about the 1980s card landscape as a collector?

.50 cents a pack going to wal-mart or the local card shop with $5 bucks and coming out like a bandit and pulling a Griffey Jr, Canseco or McGwire card.

4. Is there anything that you miss about the 1980s products that you’d like to see revived?
I think the focus on set collecting, with a lower end product that doesn’t still cost $3 a pack.
Opening Day is ok, i like the Fleer Tradition sets, I prefer the cheaper looking no gloss card stock etc.

5. It’s clear that the hobby as we see it today was born and exploded in the 1980s. What, in your mind, were some of the lessons that we learned from then to now? (Overproduction, fewer products … things to be aware of. On the other hand, things that worked … )
I think over production is the first lesson if its worth .10 cents who is gonna want it and it just clutters up my “man cave”. I think the explosion of inserts was the best thing they used to be exciting and difficult to pull. I love the current Auto’s you can pull just wish there was less filler and more star autos.

6. Some people see 1980s wax/sets as a wasteland of overproduced stuff, but part of me wants to say that perhaps those grounds are possibly a key part of reviving the hobby beyond just new products. The stuff is largely readily available, often very affordable and is probably what a lot of 30-somethings remember as kids. Thoughts

It is definetly where I started when I got back into collecting in 2008.
I prefered 80’s and 90’s football so I picked up a Montana, Elway, Marino, Rice, Aikman, Sanders and Emmitt Smith RC’s as my first purchases. I then got into more modern day cards looking for the next big hit and focusing on my team the Cowboys. As far as Baseball I really just wanted the Griffey Jr RCs (all of them) and I was a huge A’s fan as a kid already had the McGwire RC and so I got the Cancesco Donruss RC. I haven’t picked up some of the key RCs of the 80’s because I have focused on the prospecting guys like Strasburg, Heyward etc and Josh Hamilton and Texas Rangers autos. That’s my two cents.

JB
Fort Worth, TX

1983, I graduated from high school and went to Ft. Benning, GA for basic training and stayed in the army for four years.
I missed collecting, but recall a soldier trying to sell 1977s in bad shape.
1981, my younger brother and I held a table at a card show in a school. We barely broke even.
We just had 1975 minis and 1977s and 78s and 81s. Fernando Valenzuela was the big seller then.
The thing that worked for the hobby: Donruss and Fleer successfully sued for entry in the market. Prior to this only Topps had exclusive rights and cards had to be sold with candy or gum. The competition improved the quality of the card!
The overall quality of the card improved another step when Upper Deck entered in 1989!
1980s, when there was overproduction of poor quality, brought in more speculators. Although, I believe, speculators drive much of the hobby today, collectors have the last say!

Stockton, CA-

I started collecting in 1982, my Grandmother bought me 6 rack packs of 1982 Topps for Christmas. My father had collected cards in the 50’s and like many boys of that era used them in there bicycle spokes and kept them in rubber bands. So I acquired a few vintage cards that survived in the garage from his old collection. Little did I know at 36, I would still be collector. My Mother would drive me to a local card store and give me $5.00 and patiently wait for an hour while I looked for the perfect buy. I really loved the 1983 Topps, reminiscent of the 1963’s that my dad collected. I remember putting the set together by hand, which created a tradition for many years. I believe what truly screams 1980’s is the 1985 Topps, with the Rookie cards of the genuine 1980’s stars with Gooden, Eric Davis, Clemens, McGwire, Saberhagen, Puckett, and Hershiser. These players defined the 1980’s. What I miss most about the 1980’s is the ability to collect every card of a particular player. it is virtually impossible to do that today with serial numbering and sheer volume of insert cards available. Of all 1980’s glory, there isn’t too much I would want to revive. However, I did like the Topps Glossy Send-ins with the true photo like quality and feel. I think the most important lesson learned from the 1980’s is to keep in mind what you are purchasing and keep it in perspective. If you are buying a base Topps pack of cards, it will probably not hold its value monetarily, and to not get frustrated. We all believed that the 1988 Donruss Gregg Jefferies would retain it’s $5.00 value at the time. So if you want to collect for fun, for prospect hunting, or high dollar hits, understand the supply/demand principle in relation to what you are buying. I believe one way to bring the 1980’s into the current era would be to produce a set exclusively made up of 1980’s all-stars and fan favorites with autographs and memorabilia cards. Although this has been done with Hall of Fame type players, there are many collectors and fans from that era that would really enjoy a Gary Gaetti, Mark Langston, Chili Davis, or Juan Samuel jersey card to name a few. Regardless of current dollar value of 1980’s cards, it was still an enjoyable era of trading cards and collecting for fun.

1. When did you start collecting — and was there one set or card that you keyed upon early on during the 80s?
i started collecting early ( my father got me started in random packs of football cards when we went to the store around 1982 … i started on my own ( with my parents funding ) around 1987 … and yea that 1987 Topps and Donruss baseball set was my first attempt at set building…

2. What card — any sport — do you think says “1980s” the most?
i would have to say … 1986 Donruss Jose Canseco Rated Rookie

3. Is there anything you miss about the 1980s card landscape as a collector?
the prices… the fact that collecting a player was easy… and there was not 29 different brands of cards from the same company…

4. Is there anything that you miss about the 1980s products that you’d like to see revived?
ROOKIE CARDS… also on a non related issue… there were more small card shows… i miss those days…

5. It’s clear that the hobby as we see it today was born and exploded in the 1980s. What, in your mind, were some of the lessons that we learned from then to now? (Overproduction, fewer products … things to be aware of. On the other hand, things that worked … )
what worked was quality… when Upper Deck hit the market it was obvious that they had just set a new standard in quality … and i think we are better for that still today… lessons learned… see any 1988 donruss , i still dont think half of that product has been opened…the other main issue i would say today is REDEMPTIONS… there shoud not be a single redemption… period… companies know that they are going to make a new product months in advance if not years… get the autos or mem taken care of before hand…

6. Some people see 1980s wax/sets as a wasteland of overproduced stuff, but part of me wants to say that perhaps those grounds are possibly a key part of reviving the hobby beyond just new products. The stuff is largely readily available, often very affordable and is probably what a lot of 30-somethings remember as kids. Thoughts?
i ALWAYS peruse the 80s wax at every show i go to… it fun to relive or to open something you could never afford way back then…

I started collecting sports cards in the early 1950’s. I continued until I went to High School, and thereafter discontinued to collect cards as a Hobby until the 1980’s. (It wasn’t COOL to collect baseball cards back then, when one was in High School). The 80’s explosion of cards and additional Product Companies, reveived my interest in the hobby once again and became my sole enjoyment for my expandable resources I had. The Startup of Upper Deck in 1989 with the Griffey card nbr #1 was to me the largest single card which I believe peeked my interest as a collector. I was fortunate enough to collect Basketball Cards as well and did get a M. Jordan Rookie 1986 card for $.50 cents a pack. What a deal that was.
The increase numbers of collector’s during the 80’s was just unbelievable. My collection of cards from the 50’s (baseball, football, hockey and non-sports cards value was just out-of-sight). This peaking of the value of my card collection re-initiated my lost interest in the hobby. Unfortunately, the over-production of cards in the late 80’s and early 90’s made my interest in the Hobby waiver once again. But once I decided on SELECT PRODUCTS, which I still do today, I was able to channel my interests towards a rewarding and fun Hobby once again.
In today’s Hobby World I collect Bowman(all types of baseball and football) and Topps Heritage Baseball. However, the 2010 Topps Products (excuse my analogy- sucked big time). There lack of product controll and Customer satisfaction has lessened my interest for their products.
The 80’s were a terrific time for investment(although now proven to be fool-hearty due to the over-produsction of all the products). The 80’s scenario was necessary to rekindle card collecting to a vast amount of folks. Unfortunately, the overproduction killed interests for many individuals. The new trend to have a smaller production of cards appears to be more in line with the actual Hobby flavor prevelant with the consumers. My personal dislike is the number of cards each Company now can produce. Having over 40 – 50 different types of cards is simply not a collector’s idea of satisfaction. I am a collector who enjoys being able to COMPLETE the entire set. The Allen and Ginter sets is a key example of what I am referring to. The Base set, 350 cards- the Mini sets 3 different cards of each =1050 cards, the various subsets another 290 cards, the various autographs etc etc, which comes close to 2000 cards for one set. I love the Mini cards. But I only collect either the Regular, A & G Backs or the Black Border. I just cannot afford all of them. And that is what concerns me as a true SET COLLECTOR. It is virtually impossible to truley have a MASTER SET of any new product. That is why I loved the product of the 80’s and before, becuase one could truely collect a MASTER SET, back then.

Sincerely
Vern Heinrich

(1) Joe Montana RC, Elway & Marino RC’s
(2)Michael Jordan RC- nuff Said
(3)No
(4)No
(5) Overproduced during 80’s, Reason cards haven’t held their value near as well as the 70’s and before.

1. When did you start collecting — and was there one set or card that you keyed upon early on during the 80s?

I started collecting as a 7-year-old kid in 1975, so by the time the ’80s hit I already had a good-sized collection. During the entire decade, I bought or collected all the major baseball sets from Topps, Fleer, Donruss, Score/Sportflics and Upper Deck and also dabbled in other sports.

As for a set I keyed upon, I’d have to say 1988 Score baseball. People today give Upper Deck nearly all the credit for upping the ante on card quality with its 1989 debut issue, but the previous year Score gave us a great set of cards with sharp, clear photography on clean white stock, with a magazine-style full write-up of the player on the back – all for the same price as the Topps, Fleer and Donruss packs of the same year. I loved that 1988 Score set and couldn’t buy packs fast enough when it first came out.

2. What card — any sport — do you think says “1980s” the most?

I know most people are going to say stuff like the 1981 Joe Montana, or 1986-87 Fleer Michael Jordan (which I got out of a pack bought at 7-Eleven), or 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr., but I’m going to go in a whole different direction and pick: 1981 Drake’s “Big Hitters” #21 Joe Charboneau.

To me, this card says everything about the ’80s: First of all, cards were everywhere. In boxes of cereal, department stores, drug stores, with pizza, on milk cartons – just everywhere. The Drake’s cards (made by Topps for the company) came in boxes of snack cakes. Second, the card companies were starting to put the focus on what collectors were seeking – like “Big Hitters” and hot rookies (Charboneau was the A.L. Rookie of the Year in 1980). And finally, many of those hot rookies (like Charboneau in 1981, Ron Kittle in 1983 and Gregg Jeffries in 1988) simply never panned out.

3. Is there anything you miss about the 1980s card landscape as a collector?

I miss being able to buy a full box of 500+ cards for less than $20, then being able to spend an afternoon sorting through them all. I miss having card collecting simply being a fun hobby, rather than an investment or a kind of lottery. I miss having the card companies focus on making the greatest base card set they could, with the inserts being an added bonus, rather than the other way around.

4. Is there anything that you miss about the 1980s products that you’d like to see revived?

This may sound insane to anyone who collected in the ’80s, but I miss the boxed sets – all those 33- or 44-card sets made by Topps or Fleer for exclusive distribution through various retail outlets. At the time, I thought there were way too many of them and they were mostly kind of stupid. But now I miss the thrill of walking through various department stores looking to see if they had some kind of exclusive set available, and what its theme might be. Plus, getting a complete set with 33 or 44 of the top stars in the game for just $2-$3 is not a bad thing.

5. It’s clear that the hobby as we see it today was born and exploded in the 1980s. What, in your mind, were some of the lessons that we learned from then to now? (Overproduction, fewer products … things to be aware of. On the other hand, things that worked … )

Frankly, I’m not sure we, as a collecting hobby, learned anything. I think there has simply been a shift in what collectors expect and the card companies have struggled to find the right formula to keep selling product. Just like we look back now and shake our heads at the thought of people buying 100-count lots of Ron Kittle rookies, I think in another 25-30 years we’ll be looking back at what people are spending today on cards and wonder what we were all thinking. Cards like the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle shot up in price due to nostalgia. Will there be the same kind of nostalgia for LeBron James’ cards in 25 years or more?

6. Some people see 1980s wax/sets as a wasteland of overproduced stuff, but part of me wants to say that perhaps those grounds are possibly a key part of reviving the hobby beyond just new products. The stuff is largely readily available, often very affordable and is probably what a lot of 30-somethings remember as kids. Thoughts?

I think a lot of newer collectors could have fun buying old wax on the cheap and assembling vintage sets, and some of those cheap wax boxes even have the potential to include some valuable inserts; but I don’t think old boxes will revive the hobby. I think what needs to happen is finding a way to get kids interested in collecting again. I know that’s probably beating a dead horse, but collecting cards needs to be viewed as a fun activity, and not one that’s focused on the money aspect. I think cards have to be marketed more at the retail level, with packs that kids can afford and enjoy.

1) I started collecting in 1986 when my dad opened a baseball card & comic store in Kirkland, WA. The first packs I ever opened were 1986-87 Fleer Basketball. We bought all 5 boxes at our local drug store for $10 a piece and we opened 3 full boxes to make sets and then sold the other 2 boxes at the store. My brother put the Michael Jordan sticker on his school notebook!!!

2) Definitely baseball defines the 80’s but it is by far my favorite sport. I also watched my first ever World Series game in 1986 and remember vividly Bill Buckner’s error!

3) I have always been a single player collector as opposed to complete sets so it was always fun to get food cards of my favorite players. I really miss Sunflower Seeds, Post, King-B, Mother’s Cookies, & even the old Topps Glossy Send Away sets. Basically all the oddball cards from the 80’s are my favorite brand. I also liked the box sets from Toys R Us, Rite Aid, K-Mart, Woolworth’s etc.

4) I guess I already sort of answered this question with #3, but in addition to the oddball sets, I would most like to see Kenner Starting Lineups come back, or at least the Macfarlane figures could come with trading cards!

5) I think the problem with the hobby today is there is only one producer, Topps. Now we probably don’t need all the old companies to come back but I really liked Fleer & Score/Pinnacle products. Hopefully, MLB will approve a few more licenses and get some more competition in the hobby. Also, I think we’re done with jersey/bat cards. I can’t even sell most of them on Ebay for a starting bid of 99 cents!

6) Products from the 80’s & 90’s are very affordable compared to when they were first released and this is pretty much the only full boxes/sets I purchase anymore. I’ve been buying alot of boxes of 1991 & 1992 Upper Deck trying to chase the Nolan Ryan & Ted Williams auto but have been unsuccesful. Also, enjoy opening 1991 & 1992 Donruss looking for Elite inserts & autographs. These inserts are truly rare to pull sinch there was so much produced. Opening old packs from the 80’s can provide quality cards for Beckett Grading Services and there are still some great RC’s from the 1980’s such as Cal Ripken Jr, Tony Gwynn, Wade Boggs, Ryne Sandberg, Rickey Henderson, Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire, Ken Griffey Jr. & Barry Bonds.

1. When did you start collecting — and was there one set or card that you keyed upon early on during the 80s?

I was born in 1981. Started collecting cards around 9-10 years old. I didn’t have much money growing up and primarily stuck to NBA Hoops as those were cheapest. At that young of an age all I wanted were Jordan cards. I didn’t care what type as long as he was on it.

2. What card — any sport — do you think says “1980s” the most?

I was so young it’s really hard for me to say. Extremely biased opinion and obvious choice: 1986-97 Fleer Michael Jordan

3. Is there anything you miss about the 1980s card landscape as a collector?

I really don’t. As far as basketball goes I wish there was a bit more difference between prices on boxes. They are all basically the same price point. I like the newer designs and how you can now get autos, serial numbered cards, and game worn jerseys. Somethings I never could get when I was a kid.

4. Is there anything that you miss about the 1980s products that you’d like to see revived?

Not to me. I think today’s cards are much better and more valuable.

5. It’s clear that the hobby as we see it today was born and exploded in the 1980s. What, in your mind, were some of the lessons that we learned from then to now? (Overproduction, fewer products … things to be aware of. On the other hand, things that worked … )

In the 80’s there were much fewer inserts and mostly base cards. As I mentioned above I like how there are now multiple variations of the same card and how the cards are serial #d. I just hope the cards don’t expand into too many sets. 5-6 different sets each year is plenty to me. After that I find it somewhat cumbersome to try and collect them all.

6. Some people see 1980s wax/sets as a wasteland of overproduced stuff, but part of me wants to say that perhaps those grounds are possibly a key part of reviving the hobby beyond just new products. The stuff is largely readily available, often very affordable and is probably what a lot of 30-somethings remember as kids. Thoughts?

I am 29 years old and resurrected collecting about a year ago. I specifically don’t buy the older stuff, even though it’s less expensive, because I know all I’m going to get are a few base cards and crappy inserts that are a dime a dozen. It might help the fan base of card collecting grow given a lower price point but I think for a majority who have been doing it for awhile the newer cards, although more expensive are worth the investment.

Thanks for the opportunity to share my thoughts!

1. I started collecting in 1980, so i was able to take full advantage of the decade. I enjoyed the 1984 topps set and the RC’s of Marino, Elway, Dickerson.
2. I would like to say my favorite card of all time – the 1989 Score Barry Sanders, but since that was at the end of the 80’s i would go with the 1981 Topps Joe Montana RC says 80’s the most. Especially since i am a football guy.
3. I guess i miss the ability to buy packs of cards and put together a hand collated set is what i miss the most, and the cost of the packs.
4. Nothing specific from the 80’s i want to see revived, but i would like current products to continue to use reprints of those sets to help “bring us all back” to that time
5. I think the limited number of sets worked well in the 80’s. You could focus more on the set, and allowed all collectors to be involved
6. I think the graded industry of the 80’s cards is going to see a huge increase soon. There are a lot of great players rc’s and cards from this era, that collectors have forgotten about. As they start to unearth some of these collections and send them in for grading there will be an increased interest in these sets.

1. I still remember the first pack of cards I ever opened (Although I had cards in my possession from the prior 6 years). It was 1984 and my best friend and I went to our LCS. I remember sitting with him in the back of her hatchback as I pulled out that Daryl Strawberry. I was hooked right then and there. I still love that 1984 set.

2. THis may sound nuts, but I’d say Sportsflics. Remember those? I think those lenticular motion cards really summed up what was about to make the hobby explode: How can we make cards that seem interesting to kids and adults?

3. I miss cheap wax boxes. A lot. An entire box of cards for under $15? That was when I could afford to keep buying packs to build my set rather than save a few months to buy one box, then track down singles on the internet. Back then, I could just trade my doubles for what I needed.

4. And this is what I’d in turn like to see revived. Why is Heritage $80 a box? Why not make a retro cardboard set, no inserts, just cool players and maybe a few league leaders (what we used to call “Specials” back then) and pack them out at 50 cents max. Then, people could trade their doubles. That’s what this hobby needs, more personal intereaction; and what better way to do that than by trading? Really, that used to be half the fun of collecting.

5. I think the lesson that we have overlooked is that card collecting used to be fun. Now all we see is disappointment if the “hits” are bad. “Man, all I got was a Trevor Cahill jersey. Can;t even see that for 2 bucks on eBay.” This is what’s wrong with the hobby. Collecting needs to be fun.

6. I agree wholeheartedly. Let’s go back to cheap wax that’s FUN to collect, not to invest.

1. Started in 1988. ’88 Donruss was the first set I keyed on.

2. 1984 Topps Don Mattingly.

3. Simplicity and the fact that it was affordable. It wasn’t about what the card was worth, it was that you pulled a card of your favorite player or team.

4. The products themselves are better now than they were back then. Larger sets were nice – you got more than 2 players from your team in the set if you lived in Milwaukee or Baltimore.

5. Overproduction is only a concern if you are trying to use collecting as an investment strategy. Cards were simple and pure back then…now I don’t know what I’m pulling out of a pack – is it a red, green, blue, gold, or black parallel? Which back is on the card? How do I know? Make it easy, like it was back then.

6. It may be a wasteland if you’re under 25-30 years old. It is memories for us older guys. Younger collectors don’t know what it was like before chase cards and inserts. It’s all focused on what my card is worth now. Beckett has a lot to offer the hobby with it’s knowledge and data, but it also turned collecting from a hobby to a business for most people. Beckett can be seen as the best thing to happen to baseball card collecting, and the worst thing at the same time.

1. I started collecting in 1981. Every week when I went to the grocery store with my mother I would get a few rack packs of either Topps baseball or football depending on the season.

2. I have 2 that I think say 80’s the most. 1981 Topps Football Joe Montana and 1984 Donruss Don Mattingly

3. The thing I miss the most is NO AUTOGRAPHS, GAME USED OR INSERTS. In my eyes these have all ruined the hobby and priced kids out of becoming collectors.

4. I would like to see more set builder friendly products. The large number of short printed inserts (especially football rookie cards) make most sets not worth the cost of building them. By the time you buy all the individual short prints to build the set you have put 10 times as much money into the set as it will ever be worth.

5. Things not to do – overproduction (I can still buy boxes for many of the 1980’s sets for under $5). Things that should be done the way they were back then and not the way they are now – too many different products and entirely too many different subsets/inserts in each product. Do we really need up to 10 different A-Rod cards in every Topps set? I also like the TOpps heritage product but again too many short prints.

6. I agree. I recently bought several boxes of products from the 1980’s that, being a kid, I couldn’t afford back then, for example 2 boxes of every year of Sportflics from 1986-1990, and I only paid a total of $35 for all 10 boxes. Also, I never collected Score back then either so I’ve been buying wax and rack boxes of the first several years. I don’t collect for the value. I collect for the enjoyment and buying some of these older products brings back alot of memories.

I love this idea. I still remember the day that I pulled my 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. RC card from the pack. I was 10 years old at the time and that card has been one of my most prized possessions ever since!

1 I started collecting in earnest in 1980. We had just moved to Minnesota and my step-dad bought me and my brother each a pack of baseball at the local store. The first card I remember seeing was Don Money. Which I thought was kinda funny because his last name was money. (sorry I was 7 at the time)

2. If I had to pick one card that says 80’s it would be Joe Montana’s 1981 RC. For my birthday that year a friend got me a box of football and at the party we busted the packs, got no Joe but about 5 Walter Payton’s

3. Yes, being able to go the the nearest K-Mart of ShopKo, (because we had no Wal-Mart) and get a box for under 20 bucks

4. Yes, Topps should bring back the glossy send in sets. Those were awesome and would be great for autographs

5. I always thought that when Upper deck came in 89 that there were already too many companies. Granted that first set is very nice, but with it came the over a dollar pack, and it took some of the fun away. The things that worked were you knew there only so many companies (3) and that the high end stuff would be available (Tiffany) through dealers only. You didn’t have to worry if that 85 Kirby Puckett you just pulled out of the pack was his rookie or not, you knew it was.

6. I agree. I just recently decided to consentrate on building Topps sets from 1980 (which I have) to 2010. Base only no high end crap, because to me that is what collecting is about. I mean think about it, I believe it was 82 or 83 when I first got a price guide. Back then the 52 Mantle was only a few hundred bucks… so this stuff that is getting to be thirty years old, may start to rise in value shortly, not that it will ever reach the Mantle level but still.

I technically started collecting in 1981, by purchasing a few packs/boxes of both football and baseball. I had opened most of the packs & then rubberbanded them in groups-mostly bulk but lika a lot of kids by teams as well….for reasons unclear to me now I left some packs unopened. Flash forward to early 1992 and thats when I really started my collection by finding those cards (within a paper grocery sack in my parents attic in their garage). I had a few football packs and a few baseball packs as well…plus I had 4 Montana RC’s……I then proceeded to trade my packs and all but one of the Montanas at several of the card shops we then had in my town (we have ZERO now) for items such as: 1990 score BB set, 1991 topps football set, etc. To most people this was a ridiculous thing to do…becasuse of the trade aspect and how I was receiving pretty much junk…..but, I was then and am now- A COLLECTOR and not AN INVESTOR. I still collect these days and have that 1981 football set I pieced together & although my Montana only came back a PSA 8…..I will always enjoy that part of my collection forever. Although the 80’s has the reputation of over-production (and there was) and mundane looking cardboard…..it was still then, a hobby to be enjoyed for mostly collecting and had not yet hit the ceiling for a greedy environment….but that all changed in 1989.

1) I started collecting in 1986 when I was seven. The first packs I can remember buying were Sportflics (still a horribly, horribly underappreciated brand; pulled a Bo Jackson rookie in my first pack, which was a mighty memorable way to kick off a collection, especially for this avid Bo fan), but the first set I remember buying a ton of was ’87 Topps baseball. For me, that was the best-looking of all of Topps’ baseball sets from the latter half of the ’80s – and still to this day one of its all-time most classic designs – and I just couldn’t get enough of it! The crop of rookies was fantastic, and I especially loved the Future Star subset – the Bo Jackson and Palmeiro rookies in that subset are two of the coolest-looking rookie cards of that time period. (I snatch up every copy of the former I come across in budget “monster boxes” at shows; I just LOOOVE that card! I must be up to 150 copies by now …) (I’ve managed to score a Tiffany version of the latter since those days, which is even cooler to look at, though a Tiffany copy of the former continues to elude me. One day …)
2) The card that most says “1980s” to me is Jose Canseco’s ’86 Donruss Rated Rookie card. It may not be the most sought-after or famous card of that decade nowadays, but THAT was the card that all my collector friends and I most salivated over at the time and dreamt of owning eventually. I didn’t finally get one until the end of the ’90s (and unknowingly, since I actually discovered it in a box of mixed cards I got at a flea market), but even then – long after the card had reached its peak value and level of popularity – I can still remember thinking, “I can’t believe I actually own one of these after all these years!” My jaw just dropped when I pulled that thing out of the box. It still had that aura about it for me, even at just a tiny fraction of its former value.
3) There are two things I miss – and miss HORRIBLY – about the collecting landscape in the ’80s:
– For starters, when was the last time you saw collectors get excited over base cards (and short-print variations like those in 2010 Topps don’t count, folks) – just a simple same-print-run-as-every-other-card-in-that-set base card? When was the last time you saw someone got excited over a SUBSET card? (Heck, how often anymore do you even hear the WORD “subset”?) Most collectors these days can’t seem to get excited over a card unless it’s got an autograph or swatch of memorabilia on it. I have quite seriously seen people buy packs and throw all the base cards they’ve pulled from it into the garbage. How did the hobby ever come to that??? Autographed inserts weren’t so awful when there were just one or two signed cards to be found per product and you had to literally rip open several thousands of packs to find one – i.e. the Sandberg “Signature Series” card pull in ’91 Donruss – but the hobby eventually took them to the point where pulling one no longer was quite as meaningful or shocking and a box without a game-used or signed card was suddenly considered a lemon, whereas, in the ’80s and early ’90s, you had people getting excited over simple and plentiful subsets like Diamond Kings and Rated Rookies and Dream Team. The hobby was healthier for that. It just all became about hitting the big-money cards and base cards suddenly became almost an annoyance to box-breakers – how did we allow ourselves to ever get to that? We didn’t need those cards back THEN – why do we demand them NOW?
The more we’ve lost our ability to appreciate little things like that, the worse the state of the hobby seems to get.
– Secondly, I miss being able to buy a pack of cards for fifty cents at most and being able to come home with a whole bagful of ten to fifteen packs for $5. THAT is the definition of collector-friendly. Yeah, the production quality of cards may be better these days, but … when you’re just a little kid, that kind of thing doesn’t matter; even when Upper Deck came into the hobby, I was impressed, yeah, but I still faithfully stuck with my cheaper Topps and Donruss and Score packs, just so I could have more packs to open when I got home! We’re never gonna bring enough kids back into the hobby to ensure its continued existence unless we can do something more about pack prices. Just make a back-to-basics, simple cardboard set again if you have to – no signed or game-used cards, certainly; just a few inserts, if any at all; and make the base cards no more lavish than, say, any Score set from the ’80s [Score cards from the ’80s and early ’90s were FANTASTIC for a kid collector – full-color, easy-to-read backs; heavily info-laden; the best and coolest-looking subsets of any brand out there; and all for the same price tag that every other brand carried] and top them at 50 cents a pack. That was the absolute perfect price for a pack of cards; once you could no longer get a pack for the same price as a candy bar or bag of M&M’s, the hobby just lost something for me. We badly need a product like that right now – something you could actually buy a full, 36-pack wax box of for under $20. (Oh, how I miss that!) $10-and-up blaster boxes of five or six packs are NOT going to bring all the young collectors back. You can buy a full box of any ’89 product for less than that these days and have at least four times more the amount of packs to open. But today’s 10-year-old collector doesn’t want to open an ’80s product, of course – they want/need a set that consumer-friendly but with today’s players; who’s offering that to them???
4) Other than pack prices? I miss 36-packs-per-wax-box, 15-cards-per-pack being the standard rather than the rarity it now is; you got a heck of a lot more cards for your money back then, and they also provided a longer source of entertainment. You can bust most boxes today in a matter of minutes – not a whole heck of a lot of fun. And you bust open most boxes today and look at the height (or lack of) of the stack of cards you’ve just pulled and you can’t help but think, “Wow, that ain’t a whole lot of cards for me to put away …”
I also miss insert sets being almost exclusively a rack-pack phenomenon (i.e. Fleer’s Hall of Famers, Headliners, For the Record, etc., one-per-rack-pack inserts of the late ’80s); it kept the number of insert sets to a minimum – which, in turn, meant a greater number of (and more lovingly-crafted) subsets; when inserts started to explode in the ’90s, subsets became all but a total afterthought to the manufacturers – and presented an additional small (but not buyer-unfriendly) challenge for the more ambitious collector. (Rack packs were awesome. They still technically exist, yeah, but they’re fairly obscure these days and I can’t remember the last time I saw one for anything less than four or five dollars, which is a complete turnoff. When I first started collecting, I could get three or four rack packs for that kind of money.)
5) I think the most important lesson to be learned from comparing the ’80 card market to today: kids are as important to the market as adult collectors. The manufacturers lost complete sight of that. The industry dug itself into a huge hole by pricing kids out of the hobby and have never really recovered from that.
The next lesson: the simpler, the better. The more different products you issue – and the more complicated those products (i.e. multiple and hard-to-distinguish parallel sets, too many short-print cards, etc.) – the less attractive it is to a potential collector, irregardless of their age but ESPECIALLY for a kid debating whether to pick up the hobby. Rave if you must about 1/1’s, but card collecting was arguably much more fun – and unquestionably more kid-friendly, anyway – when it was still feasible to obtain a copy of every existing card to that point of your favorite player. A kid in 2011 can no longer do that the way we could back in the ’80s, and the hobby is worse off for that. I mean, why even BOTHER keeping a checklist these days of your favorite player’s cards? – it’s a totally lost cause trying to obtain a copy of each (particularly if you are a kid and hence have a very limited amount of money at your disposal), a totally lost cause. That never used to be the case.
One thing I can say I definitely do NOT miss about collecting in the ’80s: the gum. It was terrible, and it nearly always left a stain on the back of the bottom card in the pack. I know some people get nostalgic for when packs still had gum in them, but … I myself do not miss that. I also don’t miss oversized sets like ’89 Bowman and all the Topps Big sets; those things were a royal pain to store. I was really glad to see that fad go away.
6) You hear hobbyists and dealers these days complain all the time – and I mean all the time – about late ’80s/early ’90s overproduction, but here’s the thing everyone completely fails to remember and appreciate: that era MADE this hobby. The cards may have been overly plentiful in those years, but so were the card shops and the number of customers IN those shops. (Conversely, when the production numbers started shooting significantly down, so did the number of shops and the number of collectors.)
I can’t remember ever being in a shop on a Saturday afternoon back then where it wasn’t jam-packed – and I mean jam-packed – with other kids. Kids buying fistfuls of packs and tearing them open and trading cards, and of what? – over-produced product. Donruss, Pro Set, NBA Hoops. It didn’t matter to us that it was over-produced. WE didn’t see it as overproduction. “Overproduction” is just something people who were only in the hobby for the money/investment thought about. We knew the cards were ubiquitous – we didn’t care! (Actually, the overproduction made it more FUN for us, ’cause there were a lot more stores and places for us to ACQUIRE more because of it!) All we cared was that this was a really cheap and fun hobby. Most young collectors back then were in it for the fun of it (and make new friends in the process), not as any kind of serious investment. We weren’t expecting to strike it rich from buying this stuff. We didn’t really pay any concern to production numbers. I don’t know why the manufacturers ever thought us young collectors cared about that. [When they clamped down substantially on production numbers and the prices shot up as a result, my brother and I saw that as an effort to play to the in-it-for-the-investment faction of the collecting world and move away from the in-it-for-the-entertainment crowd that most of us youth belonged to, and we bailed from the hobby as a result. I eventually came back, obviously (but now buy cards almost exclusively via shows and seldom buy any packs of new product; I bust older wax when I’m in a pack-busting mood) but my brother never did; the whole thing just soured his perception of the manufacturers and their appreciation (or lack of, rather) of us younger collectors.]
And it was a rare thing back then to find a drugstore or gas station or kwik-e-mart without a box of that year’s Topps product on its counters next to the register or mixed with the impulse-purchase candy. That was actually a really beautiful thing for the hobby. It created more collectors. There were a lot of impulse pack purchases back then, by kids and adults alike. You don’t see that anymore. [When was the last time you were in a gas station and saw someone throw a pack of cards on the counter to go with their bottle of soda? It doesn’t happen.] People without card shops nearby still had no shortage of places to obtain packs. These days, you have to hunt high and low in a convenience store or drugstore to find where the boxes of cards are, if they carry any at all. Most toy stores these days don’t even carry sportscards, and I can’t remember a toy store from my youth – chain or independent – that DIDN’T have a wonderful and affordable sportscard section.
Curse the overproduction of the era if you must, but the hobby was BOOMING then, was it not? Do you have nearly as many customers – and particularly kid/beginning collectors – now as you did then?

Arik Florimonte
Sunnyvale, CA

1. When did you start collecting — and was there one set or card that you keyed upon early on during the 80s?

A. I guess I started around 1978, when I was 7, because that’s the first year that I had a high volume of cards. I spent hours playing baseball games using the game on the backs of those cards, and to this day I can still remember which cards had “Home Run” on the back.

The first set I finished was 1980 Topps. I had everything but the Gene Richards card, and i traded an older kid ALL of my doubles for it. Later on, and for a long time I lamented all the valuable cards I gave away, until I realized that nearly all my cards from back then were so trashed that they weren’t worth any money anyway.

2. What card — any sport — do you think says “1980s” the most?

A. I’m going to pick three. First, the 1987 Topps Bonds card, since I am a Pirates fan and I bought about 30 of them hoping they’d skyrocket in value. Second, the 1982 Ripken rookie sticks out, that was the first time I realized that those “future stars” cards counted as “Rookie cards”! My favorite card from the 80s was the 1980 Nolan Ryan — I loved the color and composition of that photo, even when I was 9.

3. Is there anything you miss about the 1980s card landscape as a collector?

A. I miss having only a few sets to collect. It is still way too confusing, and it’s impossible to collect all the cards of your favorite player. I actually tried to come back to the hobby in the early 90s, and again around 2000, but got turned off by the sheer variety and the confusion it created. I also miss being able to buy cards at the liquor store or drug store.

4. Is there anything that you miss about the 1980s products that you’d like to see revived?

A. Again, I liked the simplicity of having only one base set. I realize that’s not feasible any more, so here’s something easy: I still love the “All-Star” cards that were the same as the base cards, but just added a special All Star banner or logo on them. I think those only ran through 1981, so maybe that’s more of a 70s thing. In general I think one card of each player in each set is enough. I don’t know why we need 4 different Jeters or half a dozen Strasburgs in a set. And I’d really like Topps to “revive” the absence of Mickey Mantle cards in every set! Enough already! (That said, I admit I was a fan of the Topps short prints in 2009 and 2010)

5. It’s clear that the hobby as we see it today was born and exploded in the 1980s. What, in your mind, were some of the lessons that we learned from then to now? (Overproduction, fewer products … things to be aware of. On the other hand, things that worked … )

A. To me, the hobby was born around 1980, when people realized old cards were worth money! What came after that were repeated attempts to capitalize on the newly discovered “value” of cards, much of it misguided because it ignored the health of the hobby. Overproduction and too many products were big turn-offs. I think the main lesson still hasn’t been learned: people don’t like to have to choose! If there’s only one or two different sets, you can go after everything, and that’s a lot more satisfying than having to, say, pick one set and a few players to collect and ignore 90% of what’s out there.

6. Some people see 1980s wax/sets as a wasteland of overproduced stuff, but part of me wants to say that perhaps those grounds are possibly a key part of reviving the hobby beyond just new products. The stuff is largely readily available, often very affordable and is probably what a lot of 30-somethings remember as kids. Thoughts?

A. There are some advantages to the overproduction. For example, it’s easy to find cards of your favorite players cheaply, and some of them are even nice cards. And I might even be able to afford to put together a high-end graded set if I wanted. As an investment, they ain’t much, but if you’re in it because you love baseball and you love collecting, there’s something to like.

Forgot
Bill Palian
Charlotte, NC

I have a 1986 Fleer Rookie Michael Jordan card that I paid $350.00 when it came out in 1986. Would it be worth more signed by Michael or not signed?