Speculate On Baseball Cards Online

from the oh,-how-the-times-have-changed dept

When I was about 10 years old, I became a pretty avid baseball card collector, buying packs of cards with whatever money I had saved up. It was a fun hobby, and I still remember the joy of going through each pack looking for players I was missing (and usually throwing out the gum). My parents, hearing stories of people selling Mickey Mantle cards for lots of money made sure I saved those cards, and they're stored away in a closet in their house. One of these days, when I'm there, I'll have to go through the cards and see if there's anything valuable. That fad only lasted two or three years of my life, so I had no idea what was going on in the world of baseball card collecting until I read the following article about Topps' new online baseball card trading marketplace, eTopps. It seems they've decided to finally go dot com. They're releasing special edition cards that you can buy online, and then automatically put up for auction (thanks to an agreement with eBay). You don't even ever have to take possession of the card - as Topps will hang onto them in a climate-controlled warehouse. They're hoping to attract baseball fans who enjoy day trading, but who simply can't stand the stock market any more. To me, though, this seems like it takes most of the fun out of collecting baseball cards. It seems odd to buy and sell a baseball card that will never even leave it's "climate-controlled" drawer. They've even stopped selling gum with the packs of cards, for those who are so last millennium that they still want to buy the cards in packs. Of course, as the article points out, the timing of this system couldn't be worse. If baseball goes on strike (as is increasingly likely), they expect many fans to bail out on any sort of baseball card purchases as well.