THE COLLECTING GAME 49

IT'S IN THE CARDS

HOW COLLECTING BASEBALL CARDS BECAME A LOVE AFFAIR ... AND HOWTHINGS

HAVE CHANGED OVER THE LAST 60 YEARS B Y J O H N L I E P A

I 'm often asked after baseball history presentations how my love affair with baseball began. How did more than 60 years of card collecting; years of playing sandlot ball; years of researching, writing and lecturing — how had it come to play such an important part in my life?

As an immigrant from a working class background with athletic brothers, grow­ing up in the 1950s-60s and wanting to be­come thoroughly Americanized — I believe my attraction to baseball was nat­ural and inevitable. As kids, we all had paper routes, delivering both The Des Moines Register and Des Moines Tribune to customers along 30th Street from just north of Drake University to Veterans Hospital on Douglas Avenue. Twice a day we picked up our bundled papers on the corner of 30th and Hickman Road — just across the street from Whisler's Drug­store, later renamed Sampson's. This is where the lovely "addiction" started.

Our parents made sure we saved most of our profits, but they allowed for and

understood why comic books and base­ball cards were important parts of what made us happy. At first, our addiction was broad and all-encompassing — we col­lected comic books: Walt Disney (Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, etc.), Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy and Gene Autry, Clas­sics Illustrated; and yes, even Archie. We collected Topps, Fleer and Bowman cards including some football cards. Also Davy Crocket, Zorro, Wings, Planes, Presidents, World on Wheels, and Rails and Sails. Most important, we collected baseball cards — individual players, duplicates, teams and sets. Yankees and Cardinals were deified and carefully preserved, pro­tected and saved. Dodgers and Braves, not so much. They ended up clothes-pinned to bicycle spokes or traded to our Estonian friend on Leado Avenue.

We collected cards in the 1950s and 1960s for all the right reasons — it truly was for the love of the game, player, or team; no other reasons necessary. In the process, my brothers and I completed most of the sets from 1951 through 1959;

JOHN RAWL1NQS SB.—New York Nationals

D I C K R O Z E K

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Dick Rozek of Cedar Rapids is among the former Iowa major-leaguers in John Liepa's baseball card collection.

organized and carefully stored them; and were lucky to have a mom who didn't throw them out. As we grew older, our in­terest in collecting diminished, only to come back as our own kids took up an in­terest. And having stayed closest to the hobby, I ended up with the cards. Then, when my son got into T-ball and Little League, we got back into the hobby in a serious way — first by reopening that big box of saved gems from the 1950s; then educating ourselves about the hobby (i.e., card conditions and grading services, rar-

CHICA.GO. • 1 SEALS

Cards of John Rawlings (Bloomfield), Danny Moeller (DeWitt), Ducky Holmes (Des Moines) and Arthur Jahn (Struble).

50 THE COLLECTING GAME

ities, 1980s values, etc.); followed by going to shows to trade, buy and sell; and finally deciding to collect favorite individual players and build sets. Over a 25-year pe­riod, we completed most of the major Topps, Bowman and Fleer sets. We con­tinued to trade and buy; and occasionally lucked out by coming across true rarities that we were able to add to our collection. We did this as a family, even giving gifts and putting sets together at Christmas. But then around the mid-1970s and early 1980s three major trends in the hobby changed everything for us as collectors: • Companies overproduced sets and subsets and used mass marketing and overinflated hype, beginning with the 1977 Topps set and continuing to the pres­ent day. • A half-dozen professional grading services arrived — dominated by PSA (Professional Sports Authenticators) — and showed the incredible difference in monetary value of cards in poor condition compared to those few remaining in pris­tine condition. • With the increased use of computers and eBay, many charlatans pretended to be legitimate hobbyists and dealers, re­sulting in rampant forgeries and counter­feits.

The result was overhyped cards and sets that were grossly overpriced, and that

Cards of lowans Bob Oldis (Preston) and Jack Dittmer (Elkader).

made it prohibitively expensive for kids to either get in or stay in the hobby. How­ever, those overpriced, overproduced cards turned out to have little value.

Additionally, it resulted in dealers get­ting into the hobby who knew nothing about baseball or its history, and who were in it only to make a fast buck by turning over huge volumes of product. True collectors had to rethink how and why to collect.

Because I loved and taught U.S. and Iowa History for 38 years, I decided to focus on Iowa's contribution to Major League Baseball. After nearly 60 years of collecting baseball cards, I found that only a few collectors nationally focused their efforts on collecting cards and memora­bilia of players born in their state. The challenge of completing all those 1948-80 sets had been accomplished, so it was time to refocus, sell off and trade most of the sets that were taking over our house, and redirect my passion to collecting cards of the 220 lowans who have made it to the major leagues and the seven lowans en­shrined in the Hall of Fame.

One of the toughest decisions in all my years of collecting was to sell off most of my sets, yet keep a few favorite sets and some with monetary value. Once that was done, I threw myself into building the most extensive collection of players from one state in the nation. I have no way of knowing with certainty, but in my experi­ence — traveling to trade shows, staying attuned to the hobby's major auctioneers, and getting to know many of the coun­try's life-long collectors — I have yet to see, or to be made aware of, any collector having built a similar collection. Over the past six years, I've been honored to be able to share images of many of my Iowa cards in the Iowa Cubs yearbooks.

Now, a few words of advice for collec­tors, long-time and recent: • Be honest with yourself as to why you're in the hobby. If you're in it to make money and your cards are post-1976, go to a hobby shop or eBay and check out what those cards that you were told were a great investment are really worth. If you're collecting cards of your favorite teams, players, etc., for pure enjoyment, regardless of investment value, welcome to a wonderful hobby, • Whether you love or hate the advent of card-grading services, they're here to stay.

So it's worth the few dollars to get your 1950s and 1960s star cards graded by one of the reputable services. I've broken hearts when someone brings in their prized 1956 Topps Mickey Mantle, think­ing it's in near-mint to mint condition; looked at my graded 1956 Mantle; and re­alized theirs is in very good condition, worth around $300, instead of a near-mint card worth about $3,300. • Be wary of purchasing cards on eBay. Just a few years ago, it was estimated that 90 percent of the autographed Mark McGuire signed baseballs purchased on­line were fakes. There's so little quality control and so many scam artists. I follow auctions on-line, but 95 percent of my pur­chases have been with dealers who were in the hobby before eBay existed. They're still in business, both on-line and in tradi­tional sales, because they're honest and they know and love baseball.

Bottom line: It's a great hobby, but just as the game has evolved, so has the hobby. Collecting wi l l never be like it was in the "Golden Age of Baseball" when I had the chance to meet Hank Aaron and Luis Aparicio and Yogi Berra. It was my 1950s bubble-gum cards coming to life!

• • • John Liepa is a long-time member of the So­

ciety for American Baseball Research, has col­lected baseball cards and memorabilia for more than 50 years, and does presentations dressed as 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings player Calvin McVey, Iowa's first major-leaguer.