All mid-1980s cards should be cheap

 

Yesterday, Robert from $30 a Week Habit showed off the 1986 Topps Jerry Rice card he just landed for 25 bucks.

 

The card had some minor corner scrapes but he said it was preferable to paying the $75 for the card that he had been seeing prior to then.

 

I have very little knowledge of mid-1980s football sets, but $75 for any card from 1986, superstar or not, rookie or not, seems outrageous to me.

 

I'll say that for any mid-1980s sports card that wasn't issued in rare quantities. I don't think anyone should have to spend exorbitant amounts to land an '85 McGwire or Gooden, an '84 Dan Marino or even a 1986-87 Michael Jordan. Were any of those cards issued in limited quantities?

All mid-1980s cards should be cheap. None of this "I wish I had a Jordan rookie," which I see collectors lament all the time. Every man, woman and child should have one by now!

When I was collecting as a kid, teenager and into my 20s, you paid high prices for cards only if the cards was rare or super-old. Sure, stars and rookies cost more, but no card hit the high-rent district unless it was a rarity. To this day, that makes sense to me and that's why I still think it's bizarre people pay so much money for a 2011 Traded Mike Trout, a card issued in the same quantities as a 2011 Traded Tony Campana.

However ...

That's not how the card world works anymore. The grading disease has infected the hobby and collectors alike. A completely available card now sells for much more than it once did because it's encased and graded, it has perfect borders or whatever. Collectors buy up boxes of popular product, like '86-87 Fleer basketball, in search of a gem-mint copy of a single card. It's weird. It's irrational. I think those collectors have lost their damn minds, but that's what the hobby is now, and probably why it's so healthy, actually. It's certainly not making any money off of me, collecting the way we did in the '70s and '80s.

 

But to get a card like the Jerry Rice, something we might pay a buck for, say in 1990, you're either going to have to shell out or search, search, search.

 

That's why it's so great that we have these collectors who blog. Those grading standards are not their standards, nor mine.

 

I happen to be collecting some mid-1980s sets right now, Fleer baseball. I haven't encountered any crazy prices for those cards, nor do I anticipate any being a big problem. But with the way the hobby is the last year-plus, you never know.

That's why I was super-pleased when Peter of Baseball Every Night noticed he had a few 1985 and 1986 Fleer cards off my want list.

Here they are -- in perfectly satisfactory shape, although I'm sure some grader would be horrified.

The one 1986 Fleer card Peter sent contains two prospects who went on to decent careers. I haven't even gotten to the point with the '86 set where I've looked ahead to what I need, so I wasn't aware this card was a thing. But if I did, I would've been dreading it a bit.

 

Expect to pay a little bit more for every 1980s Ripken. But unlike the '82 Traded card, most of the others should be 10 bucks or less. This one cost me nothing -- just a Kruk or Strawberry card in the future -- but there's a worn corner and an edge is slightly ragged. Oh dear. (p.s. I don't care). Heck, even the picture I took is blurry.

 

OK, the above two cards I could've found with probably very little problem, but this one had me a little concerned in that "I-know-there-is-something-I-should-be-worried-about-but-I-don't-know-what-it-is" way.

How much would I have to pay for the '85 Clemens card? $20 bucks? $25? I've never looked until today. Turns out I can get one for $8. But, hell, there sure are a bunch of graded copies going for $50 and north.

This one from Peter, again for nada, suits me perfectly. Everything about this card is the same as all the cards that I pulled out of packs and accumulated in my collection from 1975 through when I stopped collecting in 1994.

Then, while I wasn't collecting, all hell broke loose. When I returned, people were putting cards into slabs! And wow, those prices!

But I'm still collecting like it's pre-1995. Thank goodness there are other collectors out there who are doing that as well.