WEBVTT - The Baseball Card Bubble Can Tell You A Surprising Amount About How Markets Work 0:00:09.600 --> 0:00:13.600 Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. 0:00:13.640 --> 0:00:17.720 I'm Joe Wisn't Thal and I'm Tracy Alloway. So Tracy, 0:00:17.920 --> 0:00:22.919 we continue with our bubble series this week. Bubbles. Bubbles 0:00:22.960 --> 0:00:25.280 are just the best, aren't they? Yeah? They are? And 0:00:25.400 --> 0:00:28.400 what's amazing is there are so many of them. Should 0:00:28.480 --> 0:00:32.279 we just stop doing other non bubble episodes and just 0:00:32.680 --> 0:00:34.960 do bubbles from here on out? Because we probably could, 0:00:35.000 --> 0:00:37.280 couldn't we? I would be into that. Plus, you know 0:00:37.479 --> 0:00:40.519 new bubbles are being made every day. Yeah, exactly. I 0:00:40.840 --> 0:00:44.080 think we should seriously consider just doing until we've really 0:00:44.159 --> 0:00:46.920 run out of bubbles, and that will be never um. 0:00:46.960 --> 0:00:50.479 But today I'm I'm particularly excited because we're going to 0:00:50.520 --> 0:00:53.960 be talking about a bubble in which I was an 0:00:54.000 --> 0:00:59.240 active and enthusiastic participant. Okay, wait, I know you dabbled 0:00:59.400 --> 0:01:02.760 in trade tech stocks in the late ninety nineties, and that, 0:01:02.840 --> 0:01:06.840 of course was a huge bubble. Is it? It's not 0:01:06.920 --> 0:01:09.080 tech stocks? So I guess, now that I think about it, 0:01:09.160 --> 0:01:12.120 I guess I have a personality that's sort of drawn 0:01:12.520 --> 0:01:15.480 to riding bubbles up and then all the way down. 0:01:15.520 --> 0:01:17.080 But no, it's not tech stocks. Do you want to 0:01:17.080 --> 0:01:20.360 take it. It's not beanie bubbles. Is it's beanie bubbles 0:01:20.400 --> 0:01:23.600 Beanie babies? That one I was not into. I'll give 0:01:23.640 --> 0:01:27.319 you a hint. I was a twelve year old boy 0:01:27.520 --> 0:01:34.120 when I was into it in the early nineties. Um, 0:01:34.160 --> 0:01:36.200 I'm really I'm trying to figure out whether or not 0:01:36.319 --> 0:01:39.560 you would have been like trading I don't know, emerging 0:01:39.600 --> 0:01:42.680 market debt during the Asian financial crisis or something, but 0:01:43.160 --> 0:01:46.120 at least how trading Mexican bonds before they play out 0:01:46.240 --> 0:01:48.440 or anything like that. Today, we're gonna be talking about 0:01:48.480 --> 0:01:52.120 the baseball card bubble in the early nineties. Like many 0:01:52.320 --> 0:01:56.680 other twelve thirteen year old boys, I got super into 0:01:56.960 --> 0:01:59.960 baseball cards, both both the ones that were coming out 0:02:00.000 --> 0:02:04.800 out and historical ones. And maybe if you weren't involved 0:02:04.800 --> 0:02:06.760 in it, you didn't remember this, but there was a 0:02:06.800 --> 0:02:10.000 massive surgeon interest for a few years. I think it 0:02:10.120 --> 0:02:13.639 sort of ended in like the mid to late nineties. 0:02:14.200 --> 0:02:16.400 People are paying all kinds of money for them, and 0:02:16.440 --> 0:02:20.440 then it's sort of just disappeared and people stopped doing it. Joe, 0:02:20.480 --> 0:02:23.240 I have to say I was never into baseball cards, 0:02:23.600 --> 0:02:26.040 but I'm going to admit something to you really embarrassing 0:02:26.120 --> 0:02:28.639 right now, which is I used to be into magic 0:02:28.720 --> 0:02:31.400 the Gathering, and there was a lot of card collecting 0:02:31.720 --> 0:02:35.600 in that. I suspect that there's some similarities. And I 0:02:35.639 --> 0:02:38.760 think you'll find in our episode that there's a lot 0:02:38.800 --> 0:02:43.160 of really interesting finance lessons that this bubble has to 0:02:43.280 --> 0:02:46.720 teach about other bubbles. Well, it sounds very cool. Who 0:02:46.720 --> 0:02:49.240 are we talking to today? We're going to be talking 0:02:49.240 --> 0:02:53.040 to Dave Jamison. He is the author of Mint Condition, 0:02:53.200 --> 0:02:57.079 How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession, and he is 0:02:57.160 --> 0:03:11.720 a labor reporter at the Huffington Post. Let's bring him in. Dave, 0:03:11.800 --> 0:03:13.840 thank you very much for joining us. Welcome to the 0:03:13.840 --> 0:03:17.040 Odd Lots Podcast. Hey guys, thanks a lot for having me. 0:03:17.320 --> 0:03:19.360 First of all, why did you write a book about 0:03:19.800 --> 0:03:22.520 the baseball card bubble? We'll get into what it was, 0:03:22.960 --> 0:03:25.919 but I'm curious what drew you to this story. Were 0:03:25.960 --> 0:03:29.640 you a baseball card collector at the time? Well, Joe, 0:03:29.680 --> 0:03:32.000 like you, I am a man of a certain age. 0:03:32.160 --> 0:03:36.240 We can say, um, I like yourself, I don't know 0:03:36.240 --> 0:03:37.480 what you were. You were born and I was born 0:03:37.480 --> 0:03:40.400 in nineteen seventy eight, and so I was twelve years 0:03:40.400 --> 0:03:44.280 old in nineteen ninety and I was there for the 0:03:44.400 --> 0:03:48.360 same baseball card frenzy that you were, And this was 0:03:48.440 --> 0:03:50.960 a personal obsession of mine, I would say, from age 0:03:51.160 --> 0:03:56.000 seven to about thirteen, and all my friends were crazy 0:03:56.040 --> 0:03:59.080 for it too, and then for whatever reason, around age 0:03:59.120 --> 0:04:03.200 thirteen or fourteen, it it disappeared from my life. And 0:04:03.520 --> 0:04:07.880 my interest was rekindled when I was around getting close 0:04:07.920 --> 0:04:09.960 to thirty years old and my parents were selling the 0:04:09.960 --> 0:04:12.640 house I grew up in and my mom said, You've 0:04:12.640 --> 0:04:14.400 got to come get these baseball cards out of the 0:04:14.480 --> 0:04:18.320 closet because it's full of them, and so that sort 0:04:18.360 --> 0:04:21.840 of sent me down this rabbit hole of oh yeah, 0:04:21.880 --> 0:04:25.320 whatever happened to baseball cards? So your story is very 0:04:25.360 --> 0:04:27.200 similar to mine. I mean I didn't, you know, write 0:04:27.240 --> 0:04:29.880 a book about it or have to get rekindled. But 0:04:29.880 --> 0:04:32.440 I was born in Ni so just two years after you. 0:04:32.600 --> 0:04:35.600 So all the years line up, if they We're gonna 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:39.120 have to be very careful with this episode, not just 0:04:39.600 --> 0:04:43.360 trading personal stories about collecting cards, because we could probably 0:04:43.360 --> 0:04:45.320 do that for like an hour or two and it 0:04:45.320 --> 0:04:48.680 probably wouldn't be very interesting. Wait, okay, so I'm going 0:04:48.720 --> 0:04:51.359 to come in here now. We're not going to do that, 0:04:51.440 --> 0:04:53.880 Tracy here's my excuse to come in as someone who 0:04:53.880 --> 0:04:56.960 knows very little about baseball cards or baseball for that matter. 0:04:57.279 --> 0:05:00.800 What is the point of the cards? Are they? How 0:05:00.800 --> 0:05:02.920 did they come into existence? How did you end up 0:05:02.920 --> 0:05:06.000 with a shoe box full of them? Well, the the 0:05:06.160 --> 0:05:10.200 long story, which I will keep short, it goes way 0:05:10.240 --> 0:05:12.760 back to the eighteen eighties when when baseball cards were 0:05:13.360 --> 0:05:17.960 created basically to market cigarettes um, and they were a 0:05:18.000 --> 0:05:20.800 collectible like any others. And the whole idea was to 0:05:21.920 --> 0:05:25.440 uh collect a certain team, a certain set. You know, 0:05:25.480 --> 0:05:28.000 if you've got numbers one, three, four, and five, you 0:05:28.000 --> 0:05:30.359 want to find number two in that set. And the 0:05:30.400 --> 0:05:33.120 original idea was you you collect these cards. They look nice. 0:05:33.240 --> 0:05:35.360 You maybe display them at your house, or you pull 0:05:35.400 --> 0:05:37.919 them out when there's company, when company is over. But 0:05:37.960 --> 0:05:41.679 they were always collectibles for years and years, and boys, 0:05:41.839 --> 0:05:45.520 young boys in particular, I love these. There was a 0:05:45.520 --> 0:05:47.640 lot of a lot of baseball card heydays. They were 0:05:47.720 --> 0:05:50.039 huge in the nineteen thirties, they were huge again in 0:05:50.040 --> 0:05:54.960 the nineteen fifties. Eventually, however, around the time Joe and 0:05:55.000 --> 0:06:00.080 I came along, this idea of of baseball cards being 0:06:00.160 --> 0:06:03.760 investments had come along and there's a lot of backstory there. 0:06:03.800 --> 0:06:07.400 But I think, as Joe had had had said earlier, 0:06:07.920 --> 0:06:10.360 there is a lot to this story that that that 0:06:10.400 --> 0:06:12.400 says a lot about bubbles in general and the way 0:06:12.400 --> 0:06:14.880 they work. Tracy, I'm really glad you asked that question, 0:06:14.960 --> 0:06:17.320 like what our baseball cards, because that's probably I would 0:06:17.360 --> 0:06:20.039 have just like skipped over that question. But it is 0:06:20.080 --> 0:06:23.800 actually interesting this idea that they originally you know, they've 0:06:23.839 --> 0:06:26.839 been around for you know, like a hundred and fifty years. 0:06:26.880 --> 0:06:31.599 They're originally marketed, uh, you know, relating to tobacco. When 0:06:31.600 --> 0:06:36.000 I was a kid, the most famous card was I 0:06:36.160 --> 0:06:39.080 and I still remember the Honus Wagner T two O 0:06:39.240 --> 0:06:42.960 six card, uh that I think was specifically like you 0:06:43.000 --> 0:06:45.240 bought it and you got it in a pack of tobacco. 0:06:45.360 --> 0:06:47.279 And I remember the early six in the world, and 0:06:47.320 --> 0:06:50.760 I think Wayne Gretzky owned one. Uh. Tell us about 0:06:50.960 --> 0:06:53.320 this card, Dave, because I assume you know all the 0:06:53.360 --> 0:06:55.920 same lare about it. Yeah, the the the T TOO 0:06:56.040 --> 0:06:59.760 six Honess Wagner is is like generally the most valuable 0:06:59.800 --> 0:07:03.599 car it ever and that's because in part because Wagner 0:07:03.640 --> 0:07:06.080 was was a great player for Pittsburgh and a Hall 0:07:06.120 --> 0:07:08.719 of Famer, but also because the card itself had this 0:07:08.920 --> 0:07:11.920 really unique back story, there was only a limited number 0:07:11.960 --> 0:07:15.240 of them of them printed. Um, there's different theories as 0:07:15.240 --> 0:07:17.560 to why there was. You know, people think there was 0:07:17.600 --> 0:07:20.200 this dispute, you know that that Wagner didn't want to 0:07:20.200 --> 0:07:22.600 be on a tobacco card to market tobacco, so he 0:07:22.680 --> 0:07:26.880 pulled the rights anyway, for whatever reason, there's this mystery 0:07:26.920 --> 0:07:29.240 as to why there are not so many of them 0:07:29.280 --> 0:07:33.120 and if became this really hallowed card, and those old 0:07:33.120 --> 0:07:36.440 cards are really important to understanding the bubble that would 0:07:36.480 --> 0:07:39.840 come in the nine eighties and nineties. We fast forward 0:07:39.840 --> 0:07:42.880 to the nineteen seventies. Baseball cards have been around a 0:07:42.960 --> 0:07:45.960 really long time, but it's not really un till then 0:07:46.120 --> 0:07:49.240 that anybody starts thinking of them as something that could 0:07:49.280 --> 0:07:52.160 be worth money. They've always been collectibles up until now. 0:07:52.600 --> 0:07:56.200 But there's a group of kind of forward looking guys 0:07:56.400 --> 0:07:59.679 at that time who start realizing that there's a market 0:07:59.720 --> 0:08:02.560 develop uping around these old neat cards like the Honus 0:08:02.600 --> 0:08:06.280 Wagner card. And these guys, uh, they start traveling the 0:08:06.360 --> 0:08:09.960 country trying to buy up collections of baseball cards from people, 0:08:10.440 --> 0:08:12.640 and they will hit the road, and they'll put an 0:08:12.680 --> 0:08:16.400 ad in the local paper and say, Hey, my name's Joe. 0:08:16.480 --> 0:08:19.200 I'm gonna be in in Pittsburgh next Tuesday at the 0:08:19.240 --> 0:08:22.160 Holiday Inn. If you've got baseball cards, come out, I'll 0:08:22.200 --> 0:08:24.560 give you some money for him. And people came out. 0:08:24.680 --> 0:08:26.559 They they pulled out whatever it was in their attic 0:08:26.600 --> 0:08:28.600 and they sold it to these guys for for pretty 0:08:28.680 --> 0:08:32.200 much a song. But that's when a certain group of 0:08:32.200 --> 0:08:35.839 collectors starts thinking about these things as money and a 0:08:35.920 --> 0:08:38.719 market starts forming. And it's not long after that that 0:08:39.400 --> 0:08:42.079 we start we see a price guide, Uh, come out. 0:08:42.200 --> 0:08:45.839 This is a guy named James Beckett, a statistician who 0:08:45.920 --> 0:08:48.680 was also a big collector, decided that there should be 0:08:48.760 --> 0:08:53.240 some sword of price guide to help people guide sales 0:08:53.320 --> 0:08:56.400 and trades, and so all of a sudden we have 0:08:56.600 --> 0:08:59.360 this this price guard guy that serves almost like a 0:08:59.440 --> 0:09:02.560 stock tick or telling people what what their cards are worth. 0:09:02.960 --> 0:09:04.920 And this is these are the sort of things we see, 0:09:05.040 --> 0:09:07.280 kind of priming the pump for the boom that's going 0:09:07.320 --> 0:09:10.400 to come in the nineties. Okay, I have questions about 0:09:10.400 --> 0:09:12.959 the price guide, but before we go there, I mean, 0:09:13.000 --> 0:09:15.400 I know you both have an affinity for these cards. 0:09:15.400 --> 0:09:19.920 But as an objective observer, I'm really curious how a 0:09:20.080 --> 0:09:25.840 single collectible piece of cardboard can be assigned of value because, 0:09:25.880 --> 0:09:30.440 like something like a card, surely you can counterfeit it, right, Like, 0:09:30.520 --> 0:09:33.240 surely you can make infinite numbers of copies of it. 0:09:33.640 --> 0:09:37.160 How did it become a collectible? Well, you know, counterfeiting 0:09:37.200 --> 0:09:40.760 isn't all that easy. And when it comes to these old, uh, 0:09:40.800 --> 0:09:44.480 these old vintage cards, you could assign a market value 0:09:44.520 --> 0:09:48.000 to it because there weren't a whole lot of them. Actually, 0:09:48.120 --> 0:09:50.560 you know, the whole idea of baseball cards was they 0:09:50.559 --> 0:09:52.800 were supposed to be ephemera. They were not supposed to 0:09:52.800 --> 0:09:56.680 be here forever. So people back in the thirties and forties, 0:09:56.679 --> 0:09:58.679 of fifties and sixties, you threw them out, and if 0:09:58.679 --> 0:10:01.160 you didn't, your mom eventually through amount when you outgrew 0:10:01.240 --> 0:10:03.680 these things. And so cards were not really meant to 0:10:03.720 --> 0:10:06.199 stick around for decades and decades, and so people got 0:10:06.280 --> 0:10:08.559 rid of them. And so those old cards, like the 0:10:09.120 --> 0:10:13.680 Honus Wagner card, they were genuinely scarce, and um, you know, 0:10:13.720 --> 0:10:15.840 it was always hard to say how many there were 0:10:15.880 --> 0:10:17.839 out there, of course, and some would always kind of 0:10:17.880 --> 0:10:20.560 appear out of addicts. But you knew that those old 0:10:20.600 --> 0:10:23.080 cards were rare cards and because of their scarcity, they 0:10:23.120 --> 0:10:27.400 could actually be valuable. Now that is very different from 0:10:27.520 --> 0:10:31.200 the cards that we're being produced in modern times. Okay, 0:10:31.440 --> 0:10:33.800 And this was was a big problem and a big 0:10:33.840 --> 0:10:36.119 feeder of the bubble was was sort of the mentality 0:10:36.160 --> 0:10:40.880 that people had going into this hobby. People were we're 0:10:41.040 --> 0:10:44.000 buying and collecting cards in the nineteen eighties that were 0:10:44.000 --> 0:10:47.199 being produced at that time, but they were applying kind 0:10:47.240 --> 0:10:50.720 of this vintage mindset to it. People were collecting, you know, 0:10:50.720 --> 0:10:53.880 a Don Manning Lee Rookie card in four and thinking 0:10:53.880 --> 0:10:56.800 of it kind of in the Honus Wagner terms. And 0:10:56.880 --> 0:11:00.720 so you had these baseball card manufacturers that were essentially 0:11:00.760 --> 0:11:03.880 printing money, you know, they were they were rolling these 0:11:03.920 --> 0:11:06.960 cards out, and nobody really thought about how there was 0:11:07.000 --> 0:11:09.880 no way to know how much was being produced and 0:11:09.920 --> 0:11:12.200 whether this stuff would ever be scarce, And in fact, 0:11:12.720 --> 0:11:15.240 it was like printing money, and the card makers were 0:11:15.240 --> 0:11:20.480 printing obscene numbers of them. So before we started the recording, 0:11:20.520 --> 0:11:22.320 I was tarring to Tracy and I said, the two 0:11:22.400 --> 0:11:25.199 things that I think are going to be very relevant 0:11:25.640 --> 0:11:29.920 from this episode to understanding bubbles are a the role 0:11:30.040 --> 0:11:33.280 that price guides had in priming the pump, and be 0:11:33.960 --> 0:11:38.560 the explosion of supply that happened in the eighties and nineties. 0:11:38.600 --> 0:11:40.840 To magic demand, which is of course something that we 0:11:40.880 --> 0:11:44.240 see in other bubbles. Uh, supply always ends up swamping 0:11:44.280 --> 0:11:46.679 the bubble. So you've already hit on both of them. 0:11:46.720 --> 0:11:50.400 So let's really dive into those. Let's start with the 0:11:50.520 --> 0:11:53.360 role of the Beckett You might even say the Beckett 0:11:53.400 --> 0:11:58.120 magazine was the Bloomberg terminal of prices? What did it 0:11:58.200 --> 0:12:00.520 do it? How did it? So? I remember, I would 0:12:00.559 --> 0:12:02.240 look and I would, you know, say, oh, I have 0:12:02.320 --> 0:12:05.920 this card from like a Ken Griffey Junior rookie card 0:12:06.000 --> 0:12:07.920 or something, or maybe there's eighty nine, I don't remember. 0:12:08.200 --> 0:12:10.640 And then every month I would look and see how 0:12:10.720 --> 0:12:13.800 much the price had moved up and up a nickel 0:12:14.000 --> 0:12:16.720 of a quarter of fifty cents, down a bit. How 0:12:16.760 --> 0:12:21.360 were those prices collected by the magazine on a monthly basis, 0:12:21.520 --> 0:12:25.680 How reliable were they? And then be what did how 0:12:25.720 --> 0:12:28.280 did the existence of that price guide, the fact that 0:12:28.320 --> 0:12:32.079 I could look it up end up changing collector behavior? 0:12:32.520 --> 0:12:36.040 So the methodology, Uh, you may not be surprised to 0:12:36.120 --> 0:12:39.120 learn was actually pretty murky. I'm not hard to know 0:12:39.240 --> 0:12:41.840 exactly how they came up with the figures. Originally it 0:12:41.920 --> 0:12:45.760 was based on surveys with deals and collectors who are 0:12:45.840 --> 0:12:48.920 kind of in the know. And you know, in Backett's defense, 0:12:49.000 --> 0:12:50.600 you know, early on, I think a lot of people 0:12:50.640 --> 0:12:53.560 thought of this as a public service. Right right now, 0:12:53.679 --> 0:12:55.600 and you know, in this day and age, it's very 0:12:55.640 --> 0:12:58.640 easy for me to know what my Donmattingly rookie card 0:12:58.760 --> 0:13:01.240 is actually worse. I can put it on eBay and 0:13:01.280 --> 0:13:03.240 in seven days i'm gonna have a pretty good handle 0:13:03.600 --> 0:13:07.080 on what the actual market value is. Back then, you know, 0:13:07.120 --> 0:13:09.520 it wasn't so easy to know. You know, I think 0:13:09.559 --> 0:13:12.480 a lot of collectors felt isolated, and so the price 0:13:12.520 --> 0:13:16.200 guide kind of like gave you a benchmark to go by. Um. 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:19.400 But where the price Guide was really dangerous was, in 0:13:19.440 --> 0:13:24.760 my opinion, just generally popularizing this idea of baseball cards 0:13:24.840 --> 0:13:28.200 as investments. Right I can say, you know, as a 0:13:28.280 --> 0:13:30.760 nine year old, you know, we we were carrying the 0:13:30.760 --> 0:13:33.600 Beckett price Guide around in school in our back past, 0:13:34.400 --> 0:13:37.280 and you know, that was how we made our trades. 0:13:37.320 --> 0:13:39.880 And it's kind of crazy to think of children as 0:13:39.920 --> 0:13:42.160 doing that. But you know, we we were that the 0:13:42.200 --> 0:13:44.920 price Guy had helped make even children think of these 0:13:44.960 --> 0:13:48.600 cards as commodities um, which of course is always kind 0:13:48.640 --> 0:13:51.400 of you know, in retrospect, was a pretty clear sign 0:13:51.440 --> 0:14:04.480 of dangerous ahead. Okay, so you have the Price Guide, 0:14:04.800 --> 0:14:08.160 you have this narrative that's starting to filter out that 0:14:08.240 --> 0:14:11.560 baseball cards make sense as an investment. Talk to us 0:14:11.600 --> 0:14:15.480 about the I guess the sort of cottage industry that 0:14:15.840 --> 0:14:19.040 sprang up around it, because I'm assuming, as with most bubbles, 0:14:19.080 --> 0:14:21.720 you did get a whole ecosystem kind of building and 0:14:21.760 --> 0:14:26.000 feeding up on this baseball card phenomenon. Yeah. Absolutely so. 0:14:26.240 --> 0:14:29.920 For for many many years, for decades, uh, there was 0:14:29.960 --> 0:14:32.840 only one company making, really making baseball cards, and that 0:14:32.920 --> 0:14:36.880 was Tops, the most famous brand. They essentially had had 0:14:36.920 --> 0:14:40.400 a monopoly on this for decades. They had an agreement 0:14:40.440 --> 0:14:43.240 with the Baseball Players Union in Major League Baseball, and 0:14:43.280 --> 0:14:45.800 they were structured in a way that basically shut out 0:14:45.840 --> 0:14:50.160 any any competitors. It wasn't until around that that they 0:14:50.200 --> 0:14:53.640 finally lost their antitrust case on that, which opened the 0:14:53.680 --> 0:14:58.360 door for other cardmakers to come in, and they certainly 0:14:58.360 --> 0:15:01.280 flooded in at that point. It. It wasn't long before 0:15:01.480 --> 0:15:04.840 a whole bunch of these card man new card manufacturers 0:15:05.360 --> 0:15:09.880 jumped into the fray, and a lot of different groups 0:15:09.920 --> 0:15:14.320 had kind of um their own interests in seeing more 0:15:14.400 --> 0:15:16.920 product kind of flood into the market. You know, one 0:15:17.160 --> 0:15:21.160 was the Baseball Players Union and also Major League Baseball. 0:15:21.200 --> 0:15:24.080 You know, they had these licensing deals with the card companies. 0:15:24.400 --> 0:15:26.960 If you inc more deals, you're gonna get more money. 0:15:27.000 --> 0:15:28.560 The league is gonna get more money, and the player 0:15:28.640 --> 0:15:31.720 is going to get more money. So they had their 0:15:31.720 --> 0:15:34.760 own reason to want to see more cards printed. And 0:15:35.040 --> 0:15:36.920 you know dealers had their own part in it too. 0:15:37.000 --> 0:15:39.400 The more the more stuff they could sell to people, 0:15:39.800 --> 0:15:43.120 the better. And of course, you know, the demand for 0:15:43.120 --> 0:15:45.640 this stuff was surging. So you would think that with 0:15:45.680 --> 0:15:49.720 all these companies piling in and all of many many 0:15:49.760 --> 0:15:52.680 more cards being printed, that you know, people would would 0:15:52.720 --> 0:15:56.200 start to to see that that something was off here. 0:15:56.240 --> 0:15:58.560 But the demand just searched so much you had new 0:15:58.600 --> 0:16:01.440 collectors pouring in, you know, in the nineties, it was 0:16:01.640 --> 0:16:04.440 I would say, highly unusual if if a nine year 0:16:04.440 --> 0:16:08.239 old boy wasn't collecting baseball cards. So, you know, obviously 0:16:08.480 --> 0:16:10.840 we want to talk about how the uh, you know 0:16:10.880 --> 0:16:13.960 the bubble crash, because that's important. But before we get 0:16:13.960 --> 0:16:17.280 to the crash, what, let's just talk about the crazy 0:16:17.360 --> 0:16:20.720 stuff that happened. What to you when you go back 0:16:20.840 --> 0:16:23.520 and look at that period when it was unusual for 0:16:23.520 --> 0:16:25.880 a nine year old boy not to be collecting cards 0:16:26.360 --> 0:16:29.160 and all these new entrants came into the market and 0:16:29.200 --> 0:16:32.200 people started treating cards his money. What are some really 0:16:32.320 --> 0:16:36.120 fun stories of just like pure over the top extravagance 0:16:36.400 --> 0:16:39.200 that in retrospect we can look back on to say, like, jeez, 0:16:39.560 --> 0:16:42.960 this was obviously a bubble waiting to crash. I would 0:16:43.120 --> 0:16:45.600 point to a few things, you know, one would be 0:16:45.800 --> 0:16:50.560 the the infamous Billy Ripken. Yes, uh, error card, Joe, 0:16:50.720 --> 0:16:53.360 are you familiar with that? I? I am indeed familiar 0:16:53.400 --> 0:16:56.720 with that card? Can you can you explain it? Please? 0:16:57.320 --> 0:17:00.760 How much of a family podcast is this? Well it 0:17:00.880 --> 0:17:05.879 is a family podcast. But but basically there was so 0:17:06.000 --> 0:17:08.840 Cal Ripkins younger brother, who never really amounted too much 0:17:09.520 --> 0:17:11.560 there was that they called him error cards. Do you 0:17:11.560 --> 0:17:14.240 want to explain what an error card is? Dave? Yeah, 0:17:14.320 --> 0:17:16.560 So an Eric card is basically when a card was 0:17:16.600 --> 0:17:20.239 printed and there's a mistake on it somewhere and the 0:17:20.280 --> 0:17:23.399 manufacturer didn't catch it in time, so the card gets out. 0:17:23.680 --> 0:17:25.600 You know, usually this is like, you know, the stats 0:17:25.600 --> 0:17:27.840 are wrong, or the guys wearing you know, an old 0:17:27.920 --> 0:17:31.360 uniform or something like that. But in Billy Ripkin's case, 0:17:31.400 --> 0:17:33.639 it was a lot worse. Yeah, they had a he 0:17:33.680 --> 0:17:36.520 had like a lot of typical pose was a picture 0:17:36.520 --> 0:17:39.760 of a baseball player holding a bat on their shoulder, 0:17:39.840 --> 0:17:42.440 like just sort of holding it up, and he had 0:17:42.440 --> 0:17:47.280 a foul phrase that's not safe for saying on the air. Uh, 0:17:47.520 --> 0:17:49.600 certainly not safe for nine year old boys to read, 0:17:50.000 --> 0:17:53.800 written on the bottom of his bat. And you know, 0:17:53.880 --> 0:17:56.640 so as soon as they caught that mistake, they obviously 0:17:56.720 --> 0:17:59.399 pulled that. But of course everybody wanted the uh the 0:17:59.480 --> 0:18:01.680 few that route there. Yeah, so this was a huge 0:18:01.680 --> 0:18:05.400 embarrassment for the company that printed it. Flear and they 0:18:05.440 --> 0:18:08.359 really bungled kind of the response. They didn't know what 0:18:08.400 --> 0:18:12.879 to do. They they tried blotting out the expletive and 0:18:12.920 --> 0:18:15.840 reprinting it, and then they scribbled it out and others 0:18:16.400 --> 0:18:18.399 um and it turned out there ended up being like 0:18:18.440 --> 0:18:21.000 six different versions of this of this error card, and 0:18:21.040 --> 0:18:24.040 it kind of only only served to feed the frenzy more. 0:18:24.680 --> 0:18:27.560 And I mean I remember this was like the buzz 0:18:27.600 --> 0:18:31.760 on the playground back then was was was the Billy 0:18:31.880 --> 0:18:34.399 Ripken card and and it was just you know, you 0:18:34.440 --> 0:18:36.800 really enjoyed it as this illicit thing as a kid. 0:18:37.200 --> 0:18:39.920 But what's crazy is how valuable those gotten a very 0:18:39.920 --> 0:18:42.520 short time they were They were selling for well over 0:18:42.560 --> 0:18:45.879 a hundred hours in many cases. Um, just because this 0:18:46.400 --> 0:18:48.639 was a card that had a bat that had an 0:18:48.680 --> 0:18:51.320 exploitive on it, you know that that was a sign 0:18:51.359 --> 0:18:54.119 of of kind of the weirdness going on that something 0:18:54.160 --> 0:18:56.760 like that could be could be fetching so much money. 0:18:57.320 --> 0:18:59.040 And you know, for me it was it was just 0:18:59.160 --> 0:19:01.760 kind of little thing things that that that you know, 0:19:01.840 --> 0:19:03.959 you should have seen that that could have told you 0:19:04.000 --> 0:19:06.360 what was going on. You know, one being how how 0:19:06.440 --> 0:19:10.040 people were stockpiling cards and not opening them right This 0:19:10.119 --> 0:19:14.240 la kind of goes goes against the very idea of collecting. 0:19:14.240 --> 0:19:16.280 You're supposed to open the packs and like see if 0:19:16.320 --> 0:19:19.320 you got your favorite player and try to assemble your team. 0:19:19.560 --> 0:19:22.919 People mself included, were just buying this stuff and like 0:19:23.000 --> 0:19:25.320 putting it in the closet as if it was like 0:19:25.760 --> 0:19:29.960 you know, going to accrew value forever and ever as 0:19:30.000 --> 0:19:33.720 this like unopened artifact, and you know, dealers were dealers 0:19:33.760 --> 0:19:36.080 told me like we were storing this stuff in our 0:19:36.119 --> 0:19:39.240 our basement like it was cardboard gold. Dave, I wanted 0:19:39.280 --> 0:19:41.960 to ask you about this because of course, Okay, so 0:19:42.040 --> 0:19:44.280 people are collecting cards because they think they're going to 0:19:44.480 --> 0:19:47.720 grow in value, but you also have this tinge of 0:19:47.920 --> 0:19:50.520 gambling there, right, because you buy a pack of cards 0:19:50.560 --> 0:19:52.720 and you never know what's going to be inside of it, 0:19:53.160 --> 0:19:55.080 and one of the you know, you could in theory, 0:19:55.200 --> 0:19:58.159 hit the jackpot. It's a bit like buying a lottery ticket. 0:19:58.280 --> 0:20:01.360 So how much did that feed in to the craze? Wait, 0:20:01.400 --> 0:20:03.760 I gotta tell a story here. Sorry, it's a real 0:20:03.840 --> 0:20:06.600 quick story, but it's exactly what this is about. It's 0:20:06.680 --> 0:20:09.959 perfect story. So my friends and I actually did this. 0:20:10.080 --> 0:20:15.440 We bought a box of unopened nineteen eighty nine Don 0:20:15.520 --> 0:20:18.840 Ross cards that's another one of these new um, these 0:20:18.880 --> 0:20:21.159 new ones that came into the market, and we're like, 0:20:21.200 --> 0:20:23.000 we're not going to open them. I don't know what 0:20:23.040 --> 0:20:25.320 we were thinking, but we that were like, well, let's 0:20:25.359 --> 0:20:28.440 just open one pack just to see if we got 0:20:28.480 --> 0:20:31.520 the Ken Griffy Junior Rookie card. Because it's just we're 0:20:31.560 --> 0:20:33.439 just gonna open one pack and then we're gonna leave 0:20:33.480 --> 0:20:36.439 the other one sealed for like future or whatever. And 0:20:36.560 --> 0:20:39.720 so we did that, and not only did we get 0:20:39.760 --> 0:20:42.920 the Ken Griffy Junior Rookie card, we also got the 0:20:42.960 --> 0:20:46.360 Bobby Benia Rookie card in the same one. So it's 0:20:46.480 --> 0:20:49.200 totally exactly what you say, Tracy. It was totally that 0:20:49.240 --> 0:20:51.760 gambling thing, like, let's just do it one. It's like 0:20:51.800 --> 0:20:55.080 opening scratching off a lottery ticket and incidentally we won. 0:20:55.320 --> 0:20:57.280 Incidently lost because we lost. I don't know where that 0:20:57.320 --> 0:21:00.959 card is now, but it's you nailed. The mentality of 0:21:01.000 --> 0:21:04.240 the gambling thing is totally what I was thinking. Isn't 0:21:04.280 --> 0:21:06.640 it great that you have these cards that started as 0:21:06.760 --> 0:21:10.040 tobacco advertisements and then slowly taught children how to gamble 0:21:10.080 --> 0:21:15.240 and make speculative investments. Absolutely, the stories from the eighties 0:21:15.400 --> 0:21:18.399 in the press are kind of amazing about you know, 0:21:18.440 --> 0:21:22.159 little kids hanging out outside smoke shops basically badgering people 0:21:22.680 --> 0:21:25.040 for the cards and their cigarette packs. And I mean 0:21:25.040 --> 0:21:28.639 truly not joking it. It really served to introduce kids 0:21:28.640 --> 0:21:33.720 to tobacco. So, you know, there is this idea that 0:21:33.720 --> 0:21:35.960 that cards were always this kind of wholesome thing. I'm 0:21:36.040 --> 0:21:38.680 like always trying to poke holes in that that kind 0:21:38.680 --> 0:21:41.440 of nostalgia for these these things, because they've they've really 0:21:41.800 --> 0:21:44.000 you know, they've always been about money, whether it was 0:21:44.119 --> 0:21:46.560 the money for the collectors or money for for the 0:21:46.600 --> 0:21:49.760