March 20, 2023

The Return of Baseball Card Collecting

About Brookdale Senior Living

grandfather and grandson looking at album

Did you collect baseball cards as a kid? Don’t be so quick to throw away your collections. Or if it’s a hobby you’ve always wanted to get into, there is still plenty of time. In fact, baseball card collecting is still a popular pastime. And in recent years, the hobby has been on the rise. “There has been a great uptick in collectors in the past couple years, in a large part because of the pandemic that we all went through,” says Billy Hinton, head of retail operations at Baseball Card Exchange. Whether you’re looking to start your own card collection or make some money off of cards you have been storing in your closet, here’s what you should know about embracing the baseball card collecting trend.

The joy of collecting baseball cards

“Where else can you own a stock of Aaron Judge or Julio Rodriguez?” asks Jesse Craig, vice president of sales at worldwide trading card marketplace, PWCC Marketplace. “Cards are a very real way you can be connected to a player’s performance every time they step on the field.” With baseball cards, collectors will often find a personal connection to their cards. Craig describes them as historical artifacts or pieces of art. “They are players and sports you love,” he says. “You’ll smile when you look at them. You’ll share your portfolio with others. That’s something you don’t typically get with other investments.”

And Chris Rogers, owner of All Vintage Cards, points out that there are many different niches in card collecting. “You can collect certain eras, like turn–of-the-century tobacco baseball cards, certain players like Babe Ruth or teams like the Dodgers,” he says. “There have been many varieties of sets of cards, some quite rare, issued now for more than 100 years. It's a true piece of American history!”

How to get into baseball card collecting

To get into card collecting, start off with a game plan on what you want to accomplish in your collecting. “Is it for financial gain? Is it to mostly collect cards of your favorite team(s) you have always cheered for? Or is it perhaps a combination of both?” says Dave Hobson, owner of BaseballCardBuyer.com Inc. He also suggests reading informative baseball card collecting articles or periodicals online like Sports Collectors Daily.

“Cards have also seen a pretty significant rise in price over the last few years, so it is important to do your research first before buying,” says Hinton. There are lots of resources that can help with this, like watching product breaks on YouTube or reading about products and what the boxes contain on websites such as cardboardconnection.com. With the level of popularity of cards now, you can also find a wealth of information all over social media and different groups you can join where people post about products and what they got in the boxes they have opened.

You can buy cards at your local hobby shop. “Hobby shops are where you can get your hands on the cards, pick out your own packs or even a box if you are buying one,” says Hinton. If you don’t have a shop by you, then he would recommend online retailers like Blowout Cards, Dave & Adams Card World or Steel City Collectibles. There is also eBay, and social media always has tons of cards for sale. Look for groups of fellow baseball collectors and join to talk about how you can help each other trade or buy cards off one another to complete your collections (but make sure to be extremely careful before providing any of your personal information or sending money to someone that you do not know off of the internet).

The best way to store your cards

It is important to take care of your cards so that they retain their value. “We always recommend penny sleeves and [card] toploaders (rigid hard plastic protectors) for cards you want to keep safe,” says Hilton. For other cards, he recommends storage boxes that have rows in them so that it prevents the cards from rattling around too much. There are also magnetic cases for the ones you deem most valuable or important in your collection. “Many people also choose to use binders and 9 pocket pages that allows them to look through their cards more often,” he explains.

What to know about selling baseball cards

The best time to sell baseball cards is generally season-based, event-based, or news-driven. “Collectors generally get excited at the start of a season and the climax of a season,” says Jon Butts, founder of Giant Sports Cards. A specific event can also signify a good time to sell, such as a record being broken. “When it comes to individual cards, big news like a trade can raise awareness and excitement around a given player,” he adds. “However, holding has historically also been a winning strategy.”

To gauge how much your cards are worth, “[t]here are many useful tools to find out worth of cards, but the ones I would recommend are eBay sold listings, [and websites] Card Ladder and Vintage Card Prices (VCP),” says Hinton. “These all give a very good up–to-the-minute mark on what you can expect a card to be worth if you were to sell it.” You can also contact a baseball card marketplace, like PWCC, or even hop into a brick-and-mortar store that buys and sells cards to have your cards appraised on site.