The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Sports cards industry red-hot, but bubble watch is on
In the height of the novel coronavirus pandemic — the spring of 2020 — ESPN pushed up the release of its multi-episode documentary of the Bulls and Michael Jordan, “The Last Dance.”
It was originally scheduled for last summer, but with no live sporting events, it was dropped in April and lasted 10 episodes.
It was a smash hit for sports fans grasping at anything while hunkered down in their homes because of COVID-19, but it apparently wasn’t enough.
Around the time of “The Last Dance” and since the start of the pandemic, the sports cards industry has been unstoppable for more than a year.
Jordan rookie cards — the iconic 1986-87 Fleer — sold in high grades (i.e. immaculate centering and corners) for well into six figures.
The Larry Bird-Magic Johnson Topps rookie card in high grades were fetching more than $10,000, sometimes much more. A completed EBay sale for a grade 9 Bird-Magic in April sold for $37,000.
In January, a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle rookie set an auction sale record of $5.2 million.
So what gives, and can the industry sustain a pace that — in many cases — is pricing out the average collector?
The height of the sports cards industry can be traced to the 1980s and into the 1990s. The likes of Topps, Fleer, Donruss and a others led the marketplace, and business was booming.
The likes of Upper Deck, Score and Skybox also got involved. Excitement by collectors was through the roof. Card shops were opening at a rapid-fire rate. A glut of cards were everywhere. Eventually, the market was over-saturated with products and — pop! — the sports cards bubble burst by the mid 1990s.
The industry had settled to a more manageable pace, with Topps being the big player for baseball cards. Upper Deck is still a brand name in the industry, and now Panini is the new name on the hobby scene in North America.
What’s transpired in the last year with sports cards is no doubt traced to the pandemic. In many ways, it’s a head-scratching thought because millions lost their jobs and so many businesses went belly-up. The sports cards business went in the opposite direction. A few reasons:
• Those who didn’t lose their jobs had their disposable income at their fingertips. Stimulus checks were another boost.
• Many were bored and looking for new avenues of entertainment.
• Others chased the feeling of nostalgia from their childhood.
Enter the sports cards industry to feed that appetite for millions of sports
fans. Walk into any sports cards shop and sports collectibles shows, and all will say business is good. Really good.
Those dealers will then say online business is the best. It makes perfect sense. With millions working from home, and many preferring online shopping, EBay, Amazon, Facebook and others stood toe-to-toe with the Targets and Wal-Marts of the world.
Wickliffe resident Steve Zurney knows this well. In January, he and a friend created a Facebook Workplace account and began selling sports cards from the 1960s and 1970s. Business? You guessed it.
“I go to the post office at least once a day, sometimes twice,” said Zurney.
Since January, Zurney estimates they have sold more than 1,000 cards. That averages about 8 to 10 sales per day, some times more.
“Since we went to Facebook, it’s exploded,” said Zurney.
There’s more to the recent boom that goes beyond what Zurney and a typical dealer at a local show encounters — unlimited spending.
In the mid-1970s, James Beckett III — a fan of Topps baseball cards growing up and at the time a statistics professor at Bowling Green State University — created the
idea of a price value for cards by polling dealing and collectors across the country. He used aggregate selling prices, and by 1979, Beckett released the “Sport Americana Baseball Card Price Guide.”
Currently, Beckett publishes popular monthly magazines devoted to baseball, football, basketball and others. Compare prices in the Becketts to what some cards sell online and at shops and shows, and it’s easy to understand where the industry stands.
Big bucks have entered the industry, but the question is if those with the big bucks are here to stay.
Many invested in sports cards in the 1980s and 1990s with thoughts of early retirement. The catch: According to a 2010 Slate.com story about the sports cards bubble that eventually burst, it was estimated more than 80 billion trading cards were produced in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s — or more than 300 cards for every person in America.
That’s when supply and demand goes out the window. In today’s boom, basketball cards are the craze. Players such as LeBron James, Luka Doncic and Zion Williamson are leading the interest, but iconic stars such as Jordan, Wilt Chamberlain, Bird and Magic are also creating excitement and interest.
It wasn’t always that way. A look at the history of basketball cards is eyeopening.
The first official set was by Bowman in 1948 but that didn’t stick. Topps got involved in 1957, with the key card in that set the Bill Russell rookie. It didn’t stick either. Fleer stepped in with a 1961 set that included Chamberlain’s first card.
For nearly a decade after that, basketball cards didn’t exist. Then in 1969, Topps returned to basketball, mostly to cash in on the excitement surrounding UCLA rookie Lew Alcindor (who later changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar).
The “Tall Boys” — as the 1969 oversized cards are often called — definitely stand out. The Alcindor rookie is one of the most coveted cards in high grade. Topps stayed in the game until bowing out in 1981. Basketball cards couldn’t catch a break. Then Fleer stepped for the 1986-87 season.
Despite the growth of the NBA in the 1980s (thanks to Bird, Magic and Jordan), that set was widely panned. Packs and boxes went unsold in corner stores across the country. As Jordan legend grew and the Bulls kept winning NBA titles, the lure of ‘86-87 Fleer rookie increased.
It came to a head on Jan. 31, when a pair Jordan rookies — each graded perfect 10s — sold for a record $738,000. Not as a pair. Each sold for $738K. The sales were more than a $500,000 jump from the last then-record sale of a Jordan rookie in December 2020.
By comparison, a Jordan rookie sold for $32,000 in December 2019. Hmmm.
The sports cards market will eventually burst — it has to at this rate — but one this is for sure: Collectors or investors with a heck of a lot of money are saying with their bank accounts the current market doesn’t matter.
They are establishing a new market.
Eventually, the bubble watch will begin — if it hasn’t already.