Home Run Hobby: Collecting Baseball Cards for Fun and Profit?

Collecting Baseball Cards Today

Can you imagine investing $20 in a case of baseball cards and then watching a live stream of someone else unwrapping each packet, hoping your number comes up?

‘Breaking,’ the term for collectively witnessing the opening of baseball card packs, is the equivalent of ‘rolling the dice’ in baseball card investing. Or should we say baseball card gambling?  Though baseball cards are flimsy and cheap to produce, collecting them has become a fascinating hobby because of their accessibility and the scarcity of particular cards.

_{The Earliest Known Baseball Card: “Having won several city championships, the Brooklyn Atlantics dominated New York baseball in the early 1860s. The team’s carte de visite (a visiting card), produced in 1865, is considered the earliest extant dated ‘baseball card,’ a souvenir handed out to fans and even to opposing teams. That year, the Atlantics expanded their range and accepted a challenge from the Tri-Mountain Club held on Boston Common. Some three thousand spectators watched the visitors sprint away with a 107–16 victory.” Source: The Library of Congress (LOC)}

The Rise and Fall of the Baseball Card Market

In an overview of the hobby’s rise and fall in the 1980s and 1990s, “The Baseball-Card Bubble,” The Economist describes baseball card collecting as a “classic financial mania”  in which casual enthusiasts transformed into collectors on the hunt for the next great card and payoff:

“Every now and then, a particular craze sweeps across the swingsets. The allowance money chasing the suddenly hot trinkets grows. If the frenzy builds for long enough, it can attract much bigger fish: adults, yes, but also Wall Street itself. There is no better illustration of how the seductive power of the fast buck stretches from the schoolyard to high finance than the madness that swept the world of baseball cards in the 1980s and 1990s.”

Prices for baseball card investments increased dramatically throughout the 1980s and 1990s until, as The Economist goes on to explain, a string of events culminating in the cancellation of the 1994 World Series and an oversaturation of baseball card supply caused the bubble to burst.

The Comeback of Collecting Baseball Cards

The market for both old and new baseball cards appears to have turned around due in large part to the COVID-19 pandemic when people found the time to re-engage in the hobby.  According to eBay’s “2021 State of Trading Cards report,” released the year following the onset of the pandemic, domestic sales increased by 142%, which equated to the sale of  “more than four million more sports, collectible card games and non-sport trading cards in 2020 than in the year before.”

As evidence of the continued resurgence of the hobby, you need look no further than recent auction results.  In August 2022, an Honus Wagner card sold for a record-breaking $7.25 million, only to be eclipsed later that same month by $12.6 million paid for one featuring Mickey Mantle. That figure still stands as the highest price paid for a piece of sports memorabilia to date.

A Tangible Asset with Investment Value

Despite losses following the baseball card bubble, sports memorabilia, including baseball cards, is now recognized as a tangible asset class with the potential for true value appreciation.

Understanding a Card’s Value

Collecting baseball cards is particularly ideal for those investors who have both a passion for the sport and the time and dedication needed to do the proper research and buy wisely.

With the variety of baseball card types and brands out there, a new collector can easily feel overwhelmed. Fortunately, there are many pricing guides out there, including resources like the time-tested Beckett Baseball Card Price Guide and eBay, which many experts rank as one of the top five best sources. Grading services, like PSA,  also aid collectors through their rigorous authentication and condition grading process. PSA grades cards on a 10-point scale, with 10 being reserved for cards that are “virtually perfect.”

A Look at Other Hobby Investments

Collecting baseball cards doesn’t appeal to everyone looking for a tangible, alternative investment. Luckily, several other cultural hobbies and collectibles offer investment opportunities as well, including sports memorabilia, comic books, and fine art, to name a few.

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[Editors’ Note: To learn more about this and related topics, you may want to attend the following on-demand webinars (which you can view at your leisure, and each includes a comprehensive customer PowerPoint about the topic):

1. Real Estate Investing 101 Series 
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3. Tech Talk: What’s Next in Green?

This is an updated version of an article originally published on February 28, 2020 and updated on November 21, 2022.]

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