Mint Condition: How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession

by Dave Jamieson

When award-winning journalist Dave Jamieson’s parents sold his childhood home a few years ago, he rediscovered a prized boyhood possession: his baseball card collection. Now was the time to cash in on the “investments” of his youth. But all the card shops had closed, and cards were selling for next to nothing online. What had happened? In Mint Condition, his fascinating, eye-opening, endlessly entertaining book, Jamieson finds the answer by tracing the complete story of this beloved piece of American childhood. Picture cards had long been used for advertising, but after the Civil War, tobacco companies started slipping them into cigarette packs as collector’s items. Before long, the cards were wagging the cigarettes. In the 1930s, cards helped gum and candy makers survive the Great Depression. In the 1960s, royalties from cards helped transform the baseball players association into one of the country’s most powerful unions, dramatically altering the game. In the ’80s and ’90s, cards went through a spectacular bubble, becoming a billion-dollar-a-year industry before all but disappearing, surviving today as the rarified preserve of adult collectors. Mint Condition is charming, original history brimming with colorful characters, sure to delight baseball fans and collectors.

Genres: Baseball, Sports, Nonfiction, History, Business, Audiobook, Cultural

272 pages, Hardcover

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.

[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.

[Ed Womack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Provides a great history of cards, and also what can happen when big money invades a hobby...

Buying collectibles from one's youth will not reverse the natural aging process in any way whatsoever. Given some of the astronomical, and often outright outrageous, prices demanded for some old mass produced products, buyers almost have a right to expect them to perform such miracles. In a cruel twist, items that once provided entertainment for kids, such as trading cards, video games, action figures, etc., later became costly "investments" entirely out of reach of any kids, past or present. Not to mention that these once enjoyable and usable things often get encased, presumably "forever," in numbered and graded plastic cases and then become "useful" only for their perceived "value." In many other respects, this process renders the sealed items useless. People will pay the heftiest premiums for untouched things that no one ever used for their original purpose. These arguably neglected things, things that didn't entertain anyone in their own day, become as precious as medieval reliquaries. Though this relatively recent phenomenon of worshiping unused things, and now intentionally inaccessible and unusable things, defies logic in many ways, unsullied items from the past also provide the highest nostalgic payback. They allegedly look just as they would have to people of their times, or, most importantly, as they would have to their buyers as children. The price of nostalgia remains incalculable and appears without limit. Illusions of recapturing youthful vigor or forever lost times, or simpler hopes of vast riches, seem to underlie the sometimes reckless speculation in items once meant for temporary mass consumption. The market has since built "collectibility" into itself, as just about everything produced comes with the word "collectible" somewhere in its description. As older and once uncollected products took on the aura and value of collectibles, companies began to exploit the supposed future collectibility of current items. Now economies everywhere seem oversaturated with "collectible" things.

Those who collected sports cards in the 1970s and 1980s, likely as children, may identify with the strangeness of "locking up" items for eternal preservation. Many at that time who bought wax packs off drug store shelves, complete with that inedible, and by then unnecessary, "gum," likely never thought of the cards having "value" beyond the mere completing of their sets or obtaining their favorite players. As to their condition, only egregious creases or tears caused outright rejection. Trades typically happened card for card and the idea that these pieces of fragile cardboard might have actual monetary value in the world at large seemed ridiculous. But then the great speculation of the late 1980s and early 1990s happened and sports cards, particularly baseball cards, took on the aura of blue chip stocks. People started "investing" in cardboard in hope of paying for their children's college education or their own retirements. Given soaring card prices, along with the market's generally short financial memory for speculative bubbles, it made sense at the time. Then a number of things happened to send these once treasured relics literally, some would argue inevitably, into the wood chippers of radio stations. For some, they even became objects of scorn. Anyone before that time who put their collections aside and lived healthy lives outside of the card market likely missed the catastrophe. The author of the fascinating historical survey "Mint Condition" fell into this category and a startling realization apparently inspired his deep investigation into the root causes of the late twentieth century "card mania." Though it does cover many non-sports cards, it focuses almost exclusively on baseball and says next to nothing about football, hockey or basketball cards.

The book reads like an exploratory history wrapped around a tiny memoir. The introduction tells the author's own tragic tale, one that many can probably relate to, of how his childhood "cardboard treasures" turned out to have little to no value in the early twenty-first century. Reunited with the thousands of cards he collected in the 1980s, he had hoped to finally reap the long-awaited profits that he remembered the once regal market proffering. He encountered something quite different and the profits, or lack of them, proved severely disappointing. The market seemed to have completely collapsed. Numerous dealers had vanished, online auctions featured desperate pleas to sell lumbering piles of cards for measly sums, the dealers he managed to find told him that his stash had no value, and one even refused to look at them. Another dealer told him the hobby had become "complicated" by big money, an overwhelming amount of sets and auction scandals. While the author's "valuable" childhood cards had aged in a distant closet, kids had moved on to other things, such as playing video games or collecting Pokémon or Yu-Gi-Oh cards. In other words, the industry had somehow completely alienated its traditional core demographic. It instead attracted affluent adults who wanted to relive the days when cards spoke directly to them. To find out what happened, the book looks back to the origins of baseball and the cards that helped popularize it. That requires traveling back to the 19th century.

"Peck and Snyder," a very early sporting goods store, manufactured America's first known baseball cards in 1869. Used for promotion - or, in today's vernacular, "swag" - they featured pictures of entire teams. Soon, cards as inserts played a role in boosting cigarette sales. An ambitious James Duke put photos of famous alluring actresses on ads for his cigarettes. Satisfied with the results, he then inserted pictures on cardboard into individual packages and ingeniously numbered them so people would want to "complete the set." This simple gimmick boosted sales beyond expectations. Actresses, mostly scantily clad, and athletes, subjects then considered "uncouth," produced the most sales. Other companies soon copied Duke's scheme, including Allen & Ginter, who featured baseball players in 1888 and an interesting and scandalous "Women Baseball Players" series that showed women dressed far too tightly for late nineteenth century sensibilities. "Old Judge" then raised the bar by releasing a card for every major league player. Cigarette sales, even to children as young as 10, skyrocketed. But printing cards also ate into precious profits and, as retaliation against "this picture-giving business," multiple companies formed the American Tobacco company, or trust, in 1889 and put an end to cigarette cards for a few decades.

As antitrust legislation began to threaten the Tobacco industry, cards reappeared in 1909 with 15 brand names. Known as the T206 series, it ran from 1909 to 1911 and produced the hobby's most worshiped card, the T206 Honus Wagner. For reasons unknown, and still disputed, the card only saw 100 or less printings. The legend that Wagner had it intentionally withdrawn to discourage kids from smoking, though a fantastic story, remains controversial. The invention of "bubble gum" in 1928 led to a vicious market for children's "pennies" and "novelties" differentiated the voluminous brands. Fleer began with a comic strip wrapper and Goudey countered with the popular "Indian Chewing Gum" cards that depicted Native Americans, but not always favorably. In 1933, Goudey's "Big League Chewing Gum" cards dominated the gum market, but no one could find card number 106. Though the company never admitted it, many accused Goudey of excluding that card to drive kids into a wild completion frenzy. If so, it worked. Parents who complained received a now very valuable "Nap" Lajoie card that resembled the 1934 series. Bowman had entered the gum market in 1929 with "Blony" and cards inevitably followed, most notably the violent and popular 1937 "Horrors of War" series that claimed to promote peace. Baseball nearly vanished during World War II, but Bowman continued to profit from gum and cards, despite scarce resources.

The post-war years began with "the card wars" between the fiercely competitive Bowman and Topps. After a few flops, Topps took an immense risk and signed deals with baseball players who already had exclusive deals with Bowman. When the famous 1952 Topps set appeared in stores, Bowman sued, but the case found that players should decide their own publicity. Bowman gave up the fight in 1956 and sold their rights to Topps, making them into a virtual monopoly that would last for decades. They kept an ominously tight grip on the market. Only Ted Williams relented and signed with Fleer for a single year in 1958. The resulting set, 80 cards of Ted Williams, stands as one the industry's most awkward creations. Topps released two famous non-sports sets in 1962, the gruesome "Civil War News" and the even more gruesome and racy "Mars Attacks." Around this time, baseball players received no revenue from card sales, prompting Marvin Miller in 1968 to convince players to not renew their fixed payment contracts with Topps. They agreed, unionized, renegotiated, and "group licensing was born." Fleer saw its chance and won in court, which forced the union to allow other companies to print baseball cards by 1981. In that same year, despite fears of overload, kids bought up all of the Topps, Fleer and Donruss cards produced. Topps's fierce monopoly had officially ended, but the healthy competition seemed to actually increase interest and sales.

Around the same time, adults began treating cards as commodities not only to collect, but to "invest" in. Price guides with grading standards appeared in the late 1970s and values rose steadily. Investment firms bought Topps and Donruss, rookie cards became a hype and counterfeits began to appear, most notably the 1987 Don Mattingly rookies created by a 14 year old. It fooled most experts, but not Paul Sumner, whose ability to identify fake Mattingly cards led to the founding of Upper Deck in 1988. Raising not only printing and quality standards, they also added holograms to every card to foil counterfeiters. Their risky move of featuring then unproven Ken Griffey, Jr. as card #1 of the premiere set paid off in droves. No one knew how many cards each company actually printed, but estimates ran into the millions. Given those numbers, cards couldn't really qualify as "scarce," but people bought them like precious rarities nonetheless. Then in 1989, a missed obscenity on a Billy Ripkin card provided the best bad press possible for the hobby, but it ultimately led to the sale of Fleer. Investors now controlled most of the hobby and it grew to unsustainable levels throughout the early 1990s. The rarest cards and sets sold for hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars through auction houses such as Sotheby's. "Cardboard gold" became the ubiquitous tagline. Inevitably, fraud and counterfeiting became increasingly rampant, leading to the rise of third party grading, but some have claimed that altered cards can go undetected even by grading services. The debate continues to rage.

The rally crashed with the highly derided baseball strike in 1994. To many, greed seemed to infect both the sport and the card hobby and people dumped their cards en masse. One radio station announcer promised to burn any cards sent to him and he received so many that fire marshalls prohibited him, so he switched to a less dangerous, but still effective, wood chipper. The industry had released some 350 sets in 1994 alone, supersaturating the market and adding to the resentment. To keep remaining buyers interested, valuable "inserts" provided an "illusion of scarcity" and transformed the hobby arguably more into gambling than collecting. People starting buying cards for the inserts and the cards fell to the side. This practice reached its pinnacle in 2003 when Donruss carved up a 1925 Babe Ruth game jersey, arguably an act of historical vandalism, and sold its 2100 tiny bits in packs. Donruss, then in the hands of investors, defended it as "the reality of the free market and the reality of capitalism."

By the end of the book, things don't look too good for the hobby. The speculators have taken over and exploited the nostalgia of moneyed adults, the FBI performed some investigations, and children have found other, and more affordable, things to do. The author implores Topps to "restore cards" rather than reinvent them, and to make the hobby accessible to children again by bringing back its lost social dimensions. Whether kids still want baseball cards at all remains a larger question, as they apparently want other cards. Along with that, a culture shift seems to have taken place, in that everything seems to have become "collectible" in today's America. Collecting something for its own sake, without any regard to "value," seems extremely challenging after a hobby experiences a rampant speculative episode. Can cards even go back to those quaint days when kids flipped, wrote on and handled them with what now seems like reckless abandon? Could anyone see them as valueless playthings ever again? In short, has the hobby crossed a line that it can never "uncross?"

As potential support for that claim, Covid-19 conditions seem to have reignited some of the investment zeal that the hobby lost, though nothing compared to the 1980s and 1990s. But one could say the same for almost all collectibles during the pandemic. Only time will tell whether it all ends up as a temporary spike or as an outright revival, but sports cards seem to look more and more like artifacts of generational interest, though the efforts of Jefferson Burdick did bring some attention to major museums. The "famous" cards, such as the T206 Wagner, remain outliers and appear outside the hobby mostly due to their insane auction prices. Another major event looms as Major League Baseball announced that it will end their decades long relationship with Topps and begin anew with Fanatics beginning in 2022. Few saw that coming, especially Topps. Though the book obviously couldn't cover such recent developments, people infected with "the collecting disease" should read "Mint Condition" for its interesting historical information, many unforgettable stories and also some perspective on what can happen when big money invades a hobby.

[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.

[Mike · 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.