Topps Wax Prices - Inflation or MLB Conspiracy?

I see two new followers have joined the fray (Welcome Matt and KW), so yet again, time for me to post something worthwhile. When doing some scant research for my first blog post, “The Essay”, I found lots of pictures of old wax packs and boxes. During my surfing, I began to notice the prices on the wax packs and the boxes. This got me thinking. I wondered how much baseball cards have increased in retail price since the 1951 Topps debut.

Nowadays, hitting the card aisle at the local Mall Wart shows that current retail prices are approximately $1.99 per pack for either 10 or 12 cards.

Back in my heyday of childhood collecting (i.e., the Bad Wax Era), prices were relatively steady, ranging from 40 to 50 cents per pack. As a kid, I was able to ride my bike to the local pharmacy and pick up 10 to 12 packs for five bucks (since in CA, they didn’t tax cards because they had a “food” product in the pack). All was well in my world until 1992, when packs jumped to 69 cents, and then the untold horror of a 79 cent pack in 1994 that only gave you 12 cards. Before that time, packs ranged from 15 to 17 cards, save for the pre 80s packs that were 5 to 10 cards per pack.

Anyways, I wasted a good lunch hour finding the price per pack from 1951 to 1994. Post Strike wax or “power packs” or “blaster packs” do not have suggested retail pricing on the pack or on the box, so they had to be left out of the study. Originally, I wanted to do price per pack and unit price per card, but it became impossible to determine unit price because not all wax packs had the number of cards in them, so we are left only with the price per pack from 51 to 94.

Here is what I found…

Click for a close up view

Pack prices amazingly held steady at 5 cents per from 1952 to 1969, where they were increased to 10 cents from 70 to 76. Pack prices held their value then for about 3 or so years, and then they went up 5 cents during those intervals. As the hobby boomed and the Bad Wax Era began, prices began to rise more rapidly, and then they skyrocketed (most likely due to “improved” card stock and photography to compete with UD).

Another interesting observation for those math nerds out there is that the curve follows an exponential growth pattern. Using a trend line, I found an approximate equation that puts the 2009 pack price at $1.88. Pretty close to retail. So, if all holds true, a pack in 10 years will cost you close to 4 bucks. Let’s hope not! In actuality though, I think the curve is a little shallow, as prices from 98 to 08 were already close to and sometimes exceeding $2.

So, why did card prices soar? Was it only because of the increased “quality”, or was there some more sinister force in motion? Next I pulled the average MLB player salaries. I could only find data from 1967 to 2009, so I had to extrapolate the average salaries backwards to 1951.

Here we go…

Click for a close up view

Pretty similar graph, isn’t it? This revealed another exponential chart with salaries skyrocketing around the same time as the pack prices. So, are card prices somehow tied to player salaries? How much does Topps have to pay for an MLB license, and is that correlated to the player’s income?

Lastly, I quickly looked up the average household income from 1951 to 2009, and in no way, shape or form does it come close to an exponential growth curve. It is more linear. So, obviously, the increase in card prices has no correlation to personal income. Here’s a link to show this data.

What do YOU think?

As an aside, I found some awesome pictures of old wax on eBay, etc. Including my favorite one of the Holy Grail...

1952 Wax Box - What about Mrs. Retailer?

An Apropos Quote

I was reading an article last night about a man who is living in the Moab Desert in Utah with an income of zero, nil, nada, zip (i.e., 0) dollars per year. It was an interesting article about how money causes us to want more, when in reality, we don't need much to survive. Now, having two small children, money is definitely a necessity, but this article included a quote that is even appropriate for the baseball card collecting world...

"Gold is pretty but virtually useless. Somebody decided it has worth, and everybody accepted this decision. The natives in the Americas thought Europeans were insane because of their lust for such a useless yellow substance."

I'm sure one could exchange baseball cards for gold into that quote quite easily.

Shameless Plug #1

Things are finally starting to pick up on the inventory reduction process. Old books and video games are starting to sell on Amazon, and I finally got off my rump to start the process of selling off my massive vintage toy collection.

For those possibly interested, check out this weeks eBay auctions.

In response to an earlier comment from Plungerhoo aka BrerSkwerl, who for lack of a better term called me out as a hypocrite for selling my old toys, I shall disagree. For one, my baseball card collection has a monumental personal worth to me, and I am not in the process of monetizing my collection. I'm more interested in thinning it out by trading cards to fellow collectors. If I can obtain what I need/want for what I already have, then so be it. As my wife told me the other night, go for quality, not quantity.

Anyways, I know for a fact Hoo is just pulling my leg and giving me grief, as we are friends, but it got me thinking about the toys. He said I should keep them for my kids, but to me, they don't have much sentamental value to me, plus they take up uber space. If I can sell them on eBay, which is my preferred free market venue, then I should sell them. If it helps another collector get what they are after, then I am happy to provide that service. True, it never hurts to get extra bank roll for something you no longer need/want, but I hardly feel it makes me a hypocrite. Alas, I am keeping the toys that were important to me, like my old PlayMobil sets, and my Brigade of Army Men...

Does anyone disagree?

PS - I recently won a contest on Bad Wax, so at least I will have that pack break to show on the next post.

Allen & Ginter Ditty

You know the tune - A one, a two...

Take me out to the card show

Click on to the eBay
Buy me some Ginter's or old bad wax
I don't care if Fleer ever comes back
Then I'll hope, hope, hope for a relic
If I don't hit it's a shame
Open one, two, three packs, you're broke
From the new card craze

HEY!

History Lesson #2 - The Memory Business

Yet again, I see more followers have entered the field, and yet again, my collection is hibernating in the family room closet. With two kids under the age of two, and a wife who has mandated that all of the toys in the attic be sold prior to my cards awakening from their 7 year slumber, I guess I will have to be patient. On that note, if anyone collects GI Joe, Transformers, Mask, Star Wars or Legos from the early to mid 80s, drop me a line (uncle_docs_closet@yahoo.com) or post a comment. If you could save me the hassle of eBay, I’d be eternally grateful.

So, with no immediate prospect of me actually writing about my cards (which will be mostly available for trade, etc.), I guess I will continue the debate over the fall of baseball card collecting. In the last entry, we read about how Mr. Mint and his ilk used the Walmart approach to monetizing the collecting industry. When I say Walmart, I mean an individual with large capital that can buy wholesale, then break collections to others for a profit.

While skimming the SI vault, I found a quasi-rebuttal to the Mr. Mint article. The author, Jack McCallum, writes of the merits of personal worth versus monetary worth. If you read my first post, it appears Jack and I are kindred spirits. That is, cards should be valued based on what they are worth to you, not what a “price guide” says they should be worth.

And for what it’s worth, like the kid in the article, I had my cards listed on an old Linux word processing program, and I bet I still have the dot matrix print outs to prove it…

Anyways, here is the link to the article if you want to read it from the SI archive: http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1067582/2/index.htm

August 01, 1988
The Memory Business
Big bucks take the joy out of collecting baseball cards
Jack McCallum

My 11-year-old son is recording his baseball card collection on his computer.

Here's how he does it: He lists the brand and year of each card (Topps '87, Fleer '85), the set number of the card (which appears on the back) and the value of the card (according to a journal bearing the no-nonsense handle, Current Card Prices), but not the name of the player.

"There's only room for so much information on one line," he explains.

"So why not leave something else off and put in the guy's name?" I ask.

"I need the other stuff to look up the card and find out how much it's worth," he explains.

"Why do you care how much it's worth?" I ask.

The question hangs in the air as he gives me a strange look. It is, of course, an absurd question at a time when America has gone bullish on baseball cards. The worth of a baseball card has become its monetary worth. A 1984 Donruss Don Mattingly rookie card isn't valuable because its owner happens to be a fan of the Yankee first baseman. It's valuable because, according to the June 1988 issue of Current Card Prices, it's worth $67.50.

Card shows, once the province of a few wide-eyed kids and adult eccentrics, now take place in shopping malls and attract canny horse-trading types with narrow eyes and a nose for the kill. The phenomenon has been well-chronicled. USA Today, The Sporting News, MONEY and this magazine have all run stories recently about the burgeoning baseball-card market. SI's July 4, 1988, story featured 42-year-old Alan Rosen (a.k.a. Mr. Mint), who totes around a suitcase loaded with cash to buy mint-condition baseball cards. According to Mr. Mint, the buying and selling of baseball cards has brought him a $700,000 home, three cars and a yearly income of $400,000.

I'm not, as you might have guessed, a player in the baseball-card market. Nor would I care to be. My story is typical, or at least it was typical: Boy buys baseball cards, boy puts rubber bands around them, boy stores them (by team) in shoe boxes, boy gradually outgrows them, years later boy's mother throws them out. I can still remember my favorite card, a 1959 Richie Ashburn-Willie Mays "Hitting Kings" card. It's long gone, and I do not pine for it. Mays, meanwhile, is a fixture on the card-show circuit, earning several thousand dollars per hour to sit in a chair and sign his name over and over. To that end, he assiduously avoids eye and all other personal contact with those who have paid $8 for the autograph. "This is business," says Mays's accountant, Carl Kiesler, who attends the shows with him.

And so it is business. But something's wrong here. Every time a dollar value is assigned to a baseball card or a man's signature, then that card and that signature (and that man) depreciate in another, more profound way. Money takes the game of baseball out of the realm of the childhood imagination, where it lived when I stashed my very favorite baseball cards under my pillow, and into the adult world, where everything has a price.

You know the first thing my son heard when he went to a card show last year? Some entrepreneur issuing a dire warning against the practice of wrapping cards with rubber bands and storing them in shoe boxes. "It decreases their value," the guy said. There is no use for old shoe boxes, except to fill them with baseball cards, is there? This guy also counseled against the flipping of baseball cards, an activity that, as I recall, was a terrific way to pass the time during sixth-grade geography class. In other words, kids, treat your cards the same way adults treat their CDs and their BMWs. Don't scuff them, shuffle them, hug them, toss them in the air or expose them to the sun. Don't have fun with them. Use forceps, if possible, and then maybe Mr. Mint will come to your house with a suitcase full of money.

The commercialization of baseball cards is a shame. It permits irresponsible adults to horn in on a childhood pastime, and turns a childhood pastime into market analysis. Last week a friend of my son's was rejoicing because his uncle, a rubber-band-and-shoe-box guy from way back, gave him a 1964 Topps Pete Rose card that happened to be in mint condition. "It's worth a hundred and sixty bucks, and he didn't even know it!" the kid said gleefully. That's what this boy got out of the gift—he had put one over on his uncle.

Sadly, baseball-card collecting is no longer a hobby filled with anticipation and wonder—it's an investment scheme. Major leaguers aren't personalities and legends—they're entries in a ledger. Kids don't have collections—they have portfolios. Prevailing wisdom once said that you couldn't put a price on your memories. But Mr. Mint and his like say you can...and a whole generation is buying into that idea.