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Be Local: Trading cards still a passion for collectors

By John Sacco for The Observer-Reporter newsroom@observer-Reporter.Com 4 min read
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Editor’s note: This is a weekly series focusing on the importance of buying local.

One of the highlights of the summer break for some boys in Washington in the early 1970s was to walk, run or bike to the nearest newsstand or baseball card dealer to spend their nickels, dimes, quarters and dollar bills to get that precious card needed to fill out a set or to use in that day’s dice baseball game.

Back then, collecting baseball cards – even football, basketball and hockey – was about getting those one or two cards that would make you happy that day. The focus was more on the immediate and not many thoughts were given to whole sets that would be sold at a time in the future for a nice profit.

Almost all the time, those nickels, dimes and quarters, and certainly not the dollar bills, were not the possession of the boys, but their parents.

The fact of the matter is those boys ended up happy with their cards most days and not one thought was given that this card collecting might become a big deal – or big business – in the future.

“We would buy packs for certain cards we didn’t have because we wanted to use them, play our dice games with them,” said Frank Rotunda, who resides in the Washington area and has some complete series of baseball and other cards. “We had fun with our cards then. We collected them but not for the reasons cards are collected today.”

Frank Zebrasky, another Washington County resident, was part of many dice baseball, football, basketball and hockey leagues that required trading cards as per rules of the game.

“We used them for the games and that reduced the value,” he said. “But we had fun with the cards. We all still have some cards. Our reasons for buying were different than now.”

While card collecting is what one wants it to be, the business of baseball card collecting changed after the 1994 Major League Baseball strike. Industry experts said people – adults and kids – turned away from baseball card collecting, tired of labor stoppages and baseball’s internal strife.

That pendulum started to swing back to collecting in the decade of the 2010s. Three months into the 2020s, the world stopped by the COVID-19 pandemic, people were at home, looking for things to do, and one was for older guys to start examining boxes or binders of cards – long ago tucked away – for something to do.

A baseball card is typically printed on cardboard, silk, or plastic.

In the 1950s they came with a stick of gum and a limited number of cards. These cards feature one or more baseball players, teams, stadiums, or celebrities.

Baseball cards are most often found in the U.S. mainland but are also common in Puerto Rico or countries such as Canada, Cuba and Japan, where top-level leagues are present with a substantial fan base to support them. Some notable baseball card producing companies include Topps, Upper Deck, and Panini Group. Previous manufacturers that challenged Topps included Fleer (now a brand named owned by Upper Deck), Bowman (now a brand name owned by Topps), Donruss (now a brand name owned by Panini Group).

In a recent article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, it was stated after collectors walked away from baseball cards, manufacturers began “flooding the market with ‘junk wax.’ “

Said the article: “Millions of overproduced cards produced a tidy profit for Topps, Donruss, Fleer and Upper Deck but ultimately became worthless when supply far outweighed demand.”

At that point, trading and collecting turned to the internet, which changed the business or hobby dramatically.

Prior to eBay, the way to find missing cards was to attend weekend card shows.

Since then, with eBay, Amazon, Facebook and other resources, collectors, sellers simply log on to the internet for cards, which are shipped the following day.

Some area stores that carry trading cards are Steel City Galleries in Belle Vernon, Clubhouse Cards in Bethel Park and Top Deck Cards and Games in Pleasant Hills.

Those interested in joining the Be Local Network can contact Chris Slota at 724-225-1326 or by email at chris@belocal.net. Discount cards are available at the Observer-Reporter and Almanac office, 122 S. Main St., Washington.

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