Mint Condition: How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession

by Dave Jamieson

Overview

When award-winning journalist Dave Jamieson rediscovered his childhood baseball card collection he figured that now was the time to cash in on his “investments.” But when he tried the card shops, they were nearly all gone, closed forever. eBay was no help, either. Baseball cards were selling for next to nothing. What had happened? In Mint Condition, the first comprehensive history of this American icon, Jamieson finds the answers and much more. In the years after the Civil War, tobacco companies started slipping baseball cards into cigarette packs as collector’s items, launching a massive advertising war. Before long, the cards were wagging the cigarettes. In the 1930s, baseball cards helped gum and candy makers survive the Great Depression, and kept children in touch with the game. After World War II, Topps Chewing Gum Inc. built itself into an American icon, hooking a generation of baby boomers on bubble gum and baseball cards. In the 1960s, royalties from cards helped to transform the players’ union into one of the country’s most powerful, dramatically altering the business of the game. And in the '80s and '90s, cards went through a spectacular bubble, becoming a billion-dollar-a-year industry before all but disappearing. Brimming with colorful characters, this is a rollicking, century-spanning, and extremely entertaining history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802145321
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	04/12/2011
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	112,186
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Dave Jamieson has written for Slate, The New Republic, and Washington City Paper, among others, and in 2008 he won the prestigious Livingston Award for Young Journalists. He lives in Washington, D.C., with a closetful of worthless baseball cards, all of them in excellent condition.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Please, Mister, Give Me the Picture! 11

2 Anyone Can Get the Cards 31

3 People Chew Harder When They Are Sad 49

4 Cartophilia 69

5 The Great Changemaker 89

6 Down in the Sub-subbasements 115

7 Nostalgia Futures 139

8 Cardboard Gold 159

9 Gem Mint Ten! 177

10 The Ringmaster 193

11 A Visit to the Doctor 217

12 It's Just a Piece of Cardboard 237

Notes 249

Acknowledgments 271

Editorial Reviews

Dave Jamieson's Mint Condition is a comprehensive romp through a quirky subject's history…the real fun comes in the mini-profiles that propel the narrative…
—The New York Times

Marc Tracy

…an entertaining history of baseball cards, which started as freebies in cigarette packs in the 1880s…this is an engaging book on a narrow but fascinating topic.
—The Washington Post

Sean Callahan

It's a form of megalomania, of course,” one famous card collector once said of his hobby—and, as Jamieson explains, there are plenty of people willing to cash in on collectors' obsessions; the secondary market for baseball cards may be as much as a half-billion dollars annually. It used to be even stronger: Jamieson got interested in the history of baseball cards when he rediscovered his own adolescent stash only to find that its value had plummeted in the mid-1990s. His loss is our gain as he tracks the evolution of the card from its first appearance in cigarette packs in the late 19th century through the introduction of bubble gum and up to the present. The historical narrative is livened by several interviews, including conversations with the two men who launched Topps (for decades the first name in cards) and a collector who's dealt in million-dollar cards. Jamieson also digresses neatly into curiosities like the “Horrors of War” card set, the legendary “Mars Attacks,” and a profanity-laced card featuring Cal Ripken's little brother. It's a fun read, but it also shows just how much serious work went into sustaining this one corner of pop culture ephemera. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

“A phenomenal primer in the pitfalls of personal investing and the dangers of believing something is valuable just because everyone says it is (see: Tickle Me Elmo, Retired Beanie Babies).” —Boston Herald

"An entertaining history of baseball cards . . . an engaging book on a narrow but fascinating topic." —Washington Post

“Nostalgic and quirky.” —New York Post

"Jamieson chronicles the story of baseball cards with skill and bounce ... It's a blast for collectors of all stripes." —Austin American Statesman

“Jamieson explores the history of card collecting through an entertaining cast of characters—the visionaries and villains who turned a gimmick designed to boost tobacco sales into a billion-dollar industry. . . The pictures in Jamieson's book are captivating, a veritable art gallery of the industry from its infancy in the 1800s to the slickly produced versions of today.... For anyone who can recall being excited to rip open their newest pack of cards, Mint Condition is a treat.” —Forbes.com

“By the early 1990s, baseball card manufacturers were printing 81 billion of the things a year, or 325 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. . . . Of course it ended badly. How and why is the subject of Dave Jamieson’s absorbing Mint Condition.” —Bloomberg

“In this compelling book, journalist Jamieson tracks the history of baseball cards from their late 19th-century beginnings to the present, covering the controversies (e.g, card forgeries), the rivalries (e.g., between companies issuing cards, and between rival collectors), and baseball cards as investments. . . . This very satisfying account of the development of baseball cards and our attitudes toward them is highly recommended even for those casually interested in sports or collectibles.” —Library Journal

“Engaging, informative, and full of unexpected pleasures, Mint Condition deserves a spot on any baseball fan’s bookshelf. Dave Jamieson has hit it out of the park.” —Cait Murphy, author of Crazy ’08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History

“Mint Condition kept me spellbound and couch-bound for two days. Its pages are redolent of basements, bubble gum and bachelorhood. They teem with artists, innocents and charlatans. Dave Jamieson fit a century-and-a-half of Americana on the back of a baseball card, a remarkable achievement.” —Steve Rushin

“An engaging, playful and well-reported history of baseball cards, and how they went from being a premium in packs of gum to collectibles selling at six-figure prices at the world's auction houses.” —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“A thoroughly compelling, entertaining and sometimes tragic read, [Mint Condition] will provide even veteran collectors with new insight to the hobby they love.” —Voice of the Collector

"A definitive history of both a pastime and an industry. For those of us who grew up collectors—and still feel a sentimental attachment to those seventeen utterly worthless Dan Plesac rookie cards gathering mold in our basement—this is the book that explains everything." —Michael Weinreb, author of The Kings of New York and Bigger than the Game

“An interesting examination of a hobby that turned into big business and then fell back to earth.” —Charlotte Observer

“A fascinating history of a once-vital tradition.” —Robert Birnbaum, The Morning News

“The only history of baseball cards that matters.” — Kriston Capps, DCist.com

“Jamieson elucidates with smooth prose and fascinating tidbits of historical trivia just how the production of baseball cards became a major industry … Jamieson peppers his narrative with stories of the eccentric characters and colorful personalities … The book is an essential read for the baseball fan or anyone who remembers ripping into a wax pack, hoping that their childhood heros would be found inside.” —Brett Savage, New Jersey Monthly

From the Publisher