Baseball Cards Not Kid Stuff Anymore Topps Still Tops

Some 50 years ago, the thrill of opening a pack of baseball cards to see what players were in the pack was the highlight of a kids day.

If you turned in three pop bottles you could buy a pack and get a stick of bubble gum and have a penny left over after paying your nickel.  The Topps company has been producing the cards for 60 years according to Director of Sales, David Reel, who obviously has not been working with Topps since the beginning.

Reel, who lives in Mason, OH, was watching Mike Leake open packs from a sample box of its current edition.

Leake looked like a teen with a skateboard tucked under his arm as he separated out his favorite players, some of the cards included Hall of Famers in gold trim, a feature of the new set.

Baseball cards became big items in the 80's.  Rare cards were selling for thousands of dollars.  Several competitors joined Topps in the marketplace.  Instead of buying packs at a time the now 30 year olds were buying whole sets.

The business was swiftly changing and growing.

In the 50's and early 60's my for example my friends and I would buy pack after pack until we found our favorite players or players from our favorite teams.  The "doubles" duplicate cards of players that were traded or ended up clothes pinned to the fender of your bicycle to make it sound like you had a motor.

I always accused Topps of intentionally making Reds players scarce in Cincinnati so that we would buy more packs.  Then I you'd get two crummy Bob Uecker cards in one pack.

Reel denied the charge.  "They used to print them in sheets and cut them.  They weren't as high tech then.  Sometimes a two of a players card would stick together and they'd end up in the same pack.  They were hand sorted.  They tried to distribute certain players to certain markets but it didn't work.  Now they are random and sorted by computer controlled machine."

There was no Major League Baseball Players Association and card collecting was simply "kids stuff". The players would get a small fee to get their picture taken for the cards

Then the 80's arrived.  The players formed a union and as more card publishers entered the field.  Card makers were making big money.

The players wanted a bigger piece of the pie.

One of Reel's jobs was to get the players to sign a release.  There is a pool of money based on revenue that is distributed equally among the players.  Albert Pujols and Paul Janish get a check for the same amount.

For the last three seasons Topps has owned the exclusive rights to publish the cards.

Now a pack of cards in its "regular" edition sells for $2.50 retail.  There is no longer that sweet smell of bubble gum that lingered on the cards for months.  There are 10 cards to a pack now.  There were five or six in our youth.

A single card cost five times more than an entire pack back then.

The impish Leake may have had a purpose in mind for sorting the cards.  A Hank Aaron mysteriously appeared on Dusty Baker's desk.  Aaron was one of Baker's first teammates.  Baker constantly uses Aaron in stories in which he is making a point.

"Who put this card on my desk?" Baker asked.  "I was about to accuse Leake."