Mint Condition: How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession

by Dave Jamieson

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.

Genres: Baseball, Sports, Nonfiction, History, Business

288 pages, Paperback

First published April 6, 2010

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable yet sad tracing of the history of cardboard nostalgia collecting. My only peeve is that the description of the very early days of collecting - 1870s-1930s - is much stronger than the latter day explanations. Having lived through the booms and busts of the hobby, one I still love, this book provides a better context as to the current state of the hobby and how it has fallen on such hard times. It illuminates all of the key contradictions: The Beckett Guide which is supposed to track prices of cards, but instead sets the price; The subjectiveness of card grading; the investors who hate what their money has done to the hobby, etc. With the speculators and kids either squeezed out or disinterested is it a hobby without a future, like stamp collecting? Sadly that may be the case. Glad I enjoy the history and the act of set building more than the investment potential.

[Armand Rosamilia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love the history of baseball cards, especially the no hold barred cutthroat way companies tried to entice children and adults to buy more and more cards. Unfortunately, it's still going on. This book gives you all the highs and lows, and I'm still a collector (Red Sox cards and 1969 Topps) to this day and enjoyed this immensely.

[bamlinden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Being a sportscard fan for most of my life, I'm surprised I haven't read more about the hobby I enjoy. When a friend suggested this book and dropped off a copy for me to borrow, I thought I'd give it a shot.

It only took two years before I finally put it at the top of my queue.

I'm kicking myself for not reading it earlier. It's a great book. The overall arc of baseball card history is nicely divided up into stories that define the eras. Be it the initial diehard collectors like Michael Gidwitz and Jefferson Burdick to the birth of Topps and their dynamic push into the current age of trading cards to the inner workings of contracts with ball players leading to exclusives and monopolies to the current day world of cards too expensive for kids and the growing habit of high-end grading, I felt as though the author did a great job in sharing the stories he's built over the years.

Much of the sleuthing was done by Dave Jamieson himself but he also utilized other sources extremely well. I thought that his topics were really bang on and I learned a lot about the hobby (some things I knew going in...but the way it was presented felt fresh to me). His writing style is both entertaining and easy flowing. Conversational at times.

If I had one beef it would be that there was a little too much commentary as opposed to letting the subjects of his book do the talking. I want to hear the stories straight from the horse's mouth....not from a disgruntled hobbyist that yearns for an era gone by.

Overall, this is a great book that every sportscard collector would surely enjoy.

[Mike Gutierrez · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice read about the history of baseball cards although it does tend to be a slow read at times.

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

 Mint Condition:  How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession by Dave Jamieson (Atlantic Monthly Press 2010) (796.357075).  This is the exhaustively researched story of the collectible trading card in America.  The main thing I learned is that the bottom has fallen out of the market for baseball cards a la Tulipmania in Holland and that cards from the 1980's forward are essentially without value.  Who knew?  The author cites two principal reasons for the demise of the hobby: (1) the business of collecting took the joy out of the hobby of collecting (although some old cards remain extremely valuable, like Honus Wagner, for example), and (2) the baseball strikes opened the door for other trading card series (Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Ho) to edge out baseball cards as the preferred collectibles. Although the author doesn't touch on another factor at length, the cost of the cards must have priced lots of kids out of the market.  As a child, I opened countless packs of baseball cards that I purchase for a nickel and sometimes a dime per ten card pack.  My kids like baseball cards too, but at $1.95 per seven or ten card pack, they run through their money pretty quickly.  Well told.  My rating: 7/10, finished 12/1/2010.

[John Gorman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a must read for anybody who had once been or who still is a baseball card nut. Jamieson covers a large swath of collectible history, when boys haggled their fathers into using certain kinds of tobacco so they could reap the cardboard rewards. The book chronicles the history of collecting, albeit through collectors, but also the card-producing companies involved. It's fascinating to see how hungry Topps had become in cornering the market and how they went out of their way to gobble up every photo possible of the players. They paid them peanuts and usually offered them appliances in addition to their paltry stipend.

Jamieson had tracked down a letter Willie Mays had written to Topps, asking the company if they could give him a new toaster because the one they sent him was really crummy. Details like this are delicious and are peppered throughout the book. We learn that the Metropolitan Museum of Art decided to elevate the status of cardboard, by stocking a permanent collection, and this would go on to have a tremendous impact on bolstering future card and collectible prices.

Mint Condition also follows some key players in the industry: collectors, dealers, and artists so the book has a roundness to it. It is well-written, highly informative, and quite frankly, of a lot of fun reading.

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not giving this book 4 stars because I, like so many people who have read this book, happen to have thousands of cards (which we now know to be worth less than we thought they were!) stashed in a basement. The book deserves a good review not only for purposes of nostalgia, but because it is a solid history of a subculture that has attracted a few books, but none yet that take a macro view of the hobby, from its 19th century beginnings to now. The book aims to be the definitive take on baseball cards, and it does a reasonable job. Lots of revelations, lots of interesting personalities we would not know otherwise. I had no idea that Pulitzer Prize winner Art Spiegelman had a connection to the trade.

Really this book would get 3.5 stars but this system does not allow it. It would lose a full star for its conclusion: which suggests, unrealistically, that sports card companies 'get back to their roots' and pretend that the technological and leisure changes of the last 20 years did not happen. After such sober analysis throughout, this is a naive and unrealistic conclusion. Still anyone who wonders what happened to the baseball card industry will have an interest in this book.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the book that I've been wanting to write - so much for the various articles I've stored in my "baseball card" file. Jamieson catalogs the history of the trading card industry, covering everything from tobacco cards to the formation of Topps to the strange world of collectors - including card art and Wacky Packs. Truly a well-researched and informed look at the history of the industry.

Jamieson also captures the heart and soul of the collector: the pursuit of the missing card, the mystique of opening the first pack you purchased at the drug store, the passion for simply collecting - regardless of the price listed in Beckett.

He even chronicles the dubious new industry of card and pack grading - and the potential for scan artists throughout the industry. In the end Jamieson calls the reader back to the glory days. Back to the times when a finding a common card to complete your set was as much a thrill as pulling a fresh Willie Mays from a pack. Back to the days when the industry wasn't so overloaded with product that collecting all the cards of your favorite players was actually possible. Back, indeed, to a time when collecting for collecting's sake was a hobby, and not an industry infiltrated with swindlers and investors trying to make a quick buck.

[Pete Lares · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun read that brought me back to the late 70s and early 80s when I collected baseball cards. I knew very little about the early history of baseball cards until I read this book. I have a bunch of cards in 3 ring binders with poly sheets, some boxes and some hard cases for what were my very favorite cards. I never collected for the value of the cards; it was all about my favorite players and teams.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well-researched and well-written history of baseball card collecting. The book traces the origins of the hobby in 1880s tobacco cards through the surge of popularity in the fifties and sixties, a resurgence in the eighties and its ultimate crash. The bubble burst when card companies saturated the market in the late eighties and early nineties with the 1994 MLB Players' strike serving as a kind of immediate cause of a death that had been a long time coming.

[Garrett Rowlan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Years ago I published an essay called "Topps, 1959" a nostalgic look back at that the set of baseball cards for that year and the memories associated with them. Mint Condition, for me, represented a follow up to that essay, detailing the rise and fall of the baseball card collecting phenomenon. I was never a collector, and after a couple of years and my family's move across town my cards were lost, tossed, disappeared. But I remain interested in the psychology of collecting, which this book explores or at least delineates in the stories of how a hobby lost its innocence and became an investment, one that for many has soured in recent years as other forms of play (PlayStation, etc.) have eroded the dominance of the baseball card and the corporations that produced them. And I didn't know that the spread of baseball was due to it being played in prison camps during the Civic War.

[Autumn Kearney · Rating 1 out of 5]

Mint Condition was off to a bad start. Why would the author find it relevant to mention that 5,000 Union soldiers starved to death in a Confederate prison camp? That's a gruesome way to start a book about baseball cards.

Strike one.

This book is severely lacking in photographs.

Strike two.

Even though the subject is interesting, the text nearly put me to sleep.

Strike three. I’m outta here.

[Scott Tappa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book. Felt like the author was writing about a very specific 2-3 year stretch of my childhood and adolescence. Even more relevant now that my own 13-year-old son is showing an interest in the hobby. Thanks Dave!

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulous book on the crazier than I realized history of baseball cards.

[Joe Healy · Rating 4 out of 5]

First, I feel that it's important that I disclose that I'm singularly the target audience for this book.

I was born to parents who hoarded late-80s and early-90s baseball cards in hopes of one day using them to pay for my college education. I was an avid reader of Beckett and collector of my own cards in the mid-to-late 90s as a pre-teen. Then, in the mid-to-late 00s, I went through another collecting phase right at the height of the card companies' push to include bigger, rarer, and more outlandish cards into their sets. More recently, though, I've given up collecting and started to sell off my old collection after realizing that it's just too expensive to enjoy the hobby as much as I used to, and that, as was repeated in the book "it's just cardboard."

I was riveted from start to finish with this book, as it often felt like the narrative of baseball cards mirrored my own history with the hobby. I really enjoyed the history lesson on the early days of card production, and the stories of the slow, painful death of the entire industry was incredibly interesting, yet sad.

My only gripe, and perhaps this is nitpicking, was that the book didn't spend as much time as I would have liked on the stories surrounding the demise of the card companies. Those anecdotes were what I was most looking forward to, and while what was written was interesting, it was too abbreviated for my taste.

All in all, I would highly recommend this to anyone who collected cards as a kid. Altogether fun and sobering at the same time, it's a great account of the entire history of card collecting.

[Pierre · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned a lot about the origins of baseball cards and what fueled their growth and led to their downfall over the past 130 years or so. Author Dave Jamieson clearly went to great lengths to research and interview the key events and people that made up this unique American phenomenon (it captured me in the late '80's to mid-90's) known as baseball card collecting. The only piece that I felt was missing was how much other sports have recently grown in popularity (partially to the detriment of baseball popularity) and how much card collecting in those domains might have changed as a result. Anecdotally, before I exited card collecting in the late '90's, I noticed that football cards were fast on the rise, particularly as baseball became stagnant in its overall popularity among American sports.
In the end, however, I agreed with Jamieson's conclusion that baseball card mfg's and memorabilia 'pushers' have lost their way by largely catering to high-stakes dealer and collector markets; all the while abandoning the simple appeal that kids grew up loving about baseball cards - the gum, the comic strips, the stats, the trading and sports camaraderie that came with it, and ultimately the feeling that comes with completing one's first set.

[Read1000books · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you have ever bought or possessed baseball cards, this is the book for you. A complete history including how the first cards came about, the beginnings of the famous card companies (to sell gum, not the reverse!), the famous collectors [note: do yourself a favor and skip the profane and obnoxious collector in chapter 2], the rise and fall of "baseball card securities" and much more. My one complaint is the excessive amount of profanity in the book [if such bothers you also, skip pages 169-173 where the author gleefully repeats the same obscenity accidentally printed on a baseball card over and over again; see soapbox below] which could easily have been left out of an otherwise goodread for young teens interested in the hobby .

[Now for a personal aside about profanity. Writers and editors, would it really do that much harm to leave out "bad words" or replace them with ****** or even #$%@!&? Yes we already know all the words but that's not the point. We are SUPPOSED to be civilized and mature adults. Nor is this a "censorship issue". It's called being civil. Think about it.]

[Phillip Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

I went into this book expecting (and hoping for) a history of baseball cards, the companies, the market, the trends, the rise and fall. I got that, mostly, though it comprised only about one third of the book. The first third is a lengthy history of industries tangential (important to, I admit, but still tangential) to baseball: tobacco and bubble gum. The author provides extensive history on tobacco and gum wars, mentioning only a few cards as examples and instead weaving biographies of industry titans outside of baseball. Topps finally gets its due more than halfway in, though the author quickly turns his attention to another lengthy biography, this on an auctioneer who dealt in baseball cards. Upper Deck got a chapter, but Donruss and Score are only mentioned in passing. I truly enjoyed the parts about Topps’ battle with the MLBPA and that era; I just wish there had been more of that.

[Phil Simon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jamieson is an excellent writer, certainly better than I was at his age. Yet, as the other reviewer pointed out, his first book is missing something. It appears as if Jamieson focused the story around those who would give him the most interview time, like the guys at the end who graded cards. While interesting, the same space should have been used to describe the halcyon age of baseball cards: the mid-1980s. Insufficient detail is provided to the explosion of the market with nary a mention of SportFlicks, "update" sets (before the next year), and other staples from "back in the day." Also, and this isn't the author's fault, no index? This book would have benefited from another 50 pages. It's too short to be the definitive history of baseball cards.

Keep writing, Mr. Jamieson. You've got a gift. I want to read more from you.

[Rhodes Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just finished Mint Condition by Dave Jamieson last night. I collected baseball cards in the 80's looking for my favorite Dodger players (particularly the elusive Steve Garvey card) and Star Wars cards later. I worked at a jewelry store/pawn shop that had a large card dealing section during the 90's market frenzy (Frank Thomas rookie card, anyone?) but left before the subsequent crash. Jamieson weaves an interesting story of the contrast of collectors with a love of the cardboard with the greed, market manipulation, fraud of many who produce, grade, and auction the cards (and some unlikely heroes within the card business). He doesn't leave the reader jaded at the end, reminding them that the love of collecting will last after the speculators have gone.

[Aaron Bernstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book brought me back decades to the excitement that I would feel as a 10 year old opening up a pack of baseball cards. Remembering that rush of finding a Tony Gwynn or one of my other favorite players and I’m immediately back in my childhood mind.

As someone who grew up obsessively collecting baseball cards, this was a great read that filled in so many gaps in my understanding of this industry. While sad to see how the hobby has evolved over the years, I’m so glad I came across this book as it helped me recall the emotions of one of my most formative activities.

[Davy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyable as a history of the baseball card: artifact, tradition, industry, phenomenon. The text is well-written and the interviews were well-chosen. It might've been nice to see a bit more focus on the minutiae of the cards themselves -- more discussion of the creative side, the design features, what factors went into making those decisions. Maybe that's for another book. This book -- while never dismissive of (and often enthusiastic about) of the card-as-artifact -- is really more focused on the lifespan of the industry, and as such, it's a great piece.

[Will · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Amazing History of Baseball Cards Filled with Stories -- All in One Card Binder
I read the nonfiction book, Mint Condition (2011), by Dave Jamieson. The book focuses on the history of baseball cards in the US over the past century. Even though I am not an avid reader, I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and as a baseball card collector, I felt a personal connection to it. The author effectively explains the baseball cards through the ages by telling stories that bring the history to life. The stories are so captivating that they would make the book appeal to a reader who has even a limited interest in baseball cards.
The book Mint Condition is split into chapters that each tell a different story about baseball cards. This helps the book flow well, and it makes the topic more exciting to the audience. In the introduction, the author talks about how he found many baseball cards in his parents’ closet after they passed away. This experience influenced him to write this book. The book begins with a chapter focused on 1880’s baseball cards and closes with the author’s experiences with present day baseball cards. After discussing the 1880’s baseball cards, the author includes a chapter on the early 1900’s baseball cards, also describing Michael Gidwitz who had one of the world’s greatest baseball card collections. Next, Jamieson talks about the Goudey Company and how it transformed the cards of the 1930’s. Subsequently, he discussed Jefferson Burdick who launched the Card Collectors Bulletin, as well as another avid collector of cards and how he defined the cards in different sets. He also discusses the growth of the Topps and Wayne Gelman card collections. Another chapter goes into depth about Gelman and the 1960’s baseball cards. Jamieson also describes the history of baseball cards in the 1970’s and 1980’s, with Topps and Fleer dominating the market and Jim Beckett creating a baseball card price guide that had a major influence on the future. The next chapter examines the growth of modern cards and Upper Deck, a baseball card company that started in the 1990s. Jamieson describes important topics, such as how the Gem Mint 10 had importance for baseball cards, and how baseball card companies used different strategies to draw in people. Finally, he talks about the modern auction houses where baseball cards are bought and sold. He explains how cards can be easily doctored to get higher grades by the grading companies. Lastly, the book ends with his current experiences with baseball cards and the conventions and people he meets.
The illustrative stories are enlightening, particularly for a baseball card collector. For example, in Chapter 2, the author explains how “Gitwitz possessed the finest Wagner card of them all, the one that had been rated 8 on a scale of 10 by PSA and was famously co-owned by hockey great Wayne Gretzky” (Jamieson 34). And then the author talks to Wayne Gelman, a designer for Topps cards saying, “Topps charged Gelman and Soloman with developing a new strip, and in 1953 the pair gave them a classic advertising character: Bazooka Joe” (Jamieson 116). Both of these examples draw on the stories of two men to account for the history of baseball cards in the early 1900’s and in the 1950’s. The author uses his words carefully to make it very descriptive. This style positively affected my reading of the book.
The author’s purpose of the book is to provide a historical perspective on baseball card collecting. It is one of the only books that does this. Jamieson focused on getting the best baseball card collectors and the most influential people in the baseball card world to part of this book. Before this, no one knew the real history of baseball cards, and this book sums it up in 250 pages. As an avid vintage baseball card collector myself, it was fascinating to learn new things. For example, I found out that the one man he interviewed, Jefferson Burdick, was the person who named and classified cards based on there era like T for the tobacco sets, and R for the recent candy sets. I have both of these kinds of cards in my collection, so this information was particularly relevant. This is Dave Jamieson’s first and only book, and I believe that this will be my favorite baseball card book given the detailed history.
In sum, Mint Condition is a great read. I was fairly knowledgeable about baseball cards already so it was easy to connect with the book, but now after reading it I view myself as more of an expert. Even if a reader did not know much about baseball cards, they would still enjoy the book due to the engaging writing style. This book is especially is especially great for middle-aged men and boomers who collected baseball cards as kids and want to learn about baseball cards in the present day. The book could also be interesting to some present day teens and young adults who may be interested in collecting cards. That said, I would be more likely to recommend the book to a friend’s dad, rather than a friend, as I don’t have any friends my age who collect cards. This could be seen as an overly positive review since I loved how the book really got into detail about baseball cards. I learned so much about how I need to be careful buying vintage cards on Ebay, and how the grading companies can easily grade cards that can be seen as forgeries. In sum, this book was of great interest to me, and I think it would be for other baseball card enthusiasts.

[Shaun · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating look at the history of baseball cards. I collected cards at their height of popularity right before the massive crash in the 90s. A lot of things in this book I knew...but there was also a lot that I didn't know. A lot of info about the late 1880s which I found really interesting...on the rise of baseball cards/collectible cardboard.

Recommend to anyone that has or does collect baseball cards.

[Dave Cottenie · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting history on the history of baseball cards, all the way back to the pre-tobacco era. Easy to follow, and keeping of the reader’s attention. The most fascinating parts included the section on how cards are doctored and the inside look at the companies that grade cards. Finally, Jamison finishes with a wonderful pontification on the bleak future of the card industry and how the card industry lost its way, forgetting that it’s just a piece of cardboard.

[Glenn Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

a fun book on the history of baseball card collecting, from its beginnings to its heyday and its demise. From stories of all the cards thrown out by clean freak moms to the lucky collectors who were able to hide their cards from their moms, including a few collections sold for millions.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good but sad. Sad that we all were duped into thinking baseball cards would be worth something. An interesting read for those who collect, but be read to be sad.

[Tom Thims · Rating 5 out of 5]

must read for any baseball fan or card collector

[Dave Mattatall · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nostalgic trip through a topic that consumed a lot of my time and energy as a kid. Having lived through the boom and bust, I found the history of card collecting fascinating.

[The Ghost's Library · Rating 5 out of 5]

Somehow made me disgusted by the bloated, short-sighted industry while I’m also now desperate to run down the street and find somewhere to buy a few packs.