CARD SHARKS : It’s a Love of Baseball for Some Collectors, a Big-Bucks Business for Others

Jerry Williams could only shake his head with wonder. “I can’t believe what’s going on,” he said. “I’ve seen a guy do 20 grand in a two-day show. In a big show, a couple-million dollars can change hands.”

Williams was talking baseball, but not the kind of baseball that kids used to talk about with their buddies in their suburban bedrooms or in small-town cafes on the dusty main streets of America.

No, Williams, 50, was talking about baseball cards, or more precisely, the business of baseball cards. Once the penny-ante domain of youngsters who loved bubble gum and coveted the Mickey Mantles but threw out the Carl Sawatskis, baseball-card collecting is now the increasingly big-bucks province of adults who may or may not love the game but who certainly love the green.

Green, as in cash.

“In the last couple years,” Williams said at a recent all-day card show in Buena Park (one of two shows going on in the county that weekend), at which he was one of about 65 dealers, “so many speculators have come in. Prices went up exorbitantly. It’s a business. It’s not a hobby anymore.”

Experts say the biggest dealers in the country can reap six-figure incomes from the card business. But incomes vary widely, depending on the number and quality of dealers’ cards and the overhead they run up in their business. Most dealers, they say, still are hobbyists who sell cards either to supplement their income or to make enough money to buy other cards.

Make no mistake--it is a cash-only business. “I don’t take anything the IRS can trace,” one dealer said at a recent show.

Orange County, blessed with population, yuppie buying power and proximity to three major league baseball teams, is one of the nation’s acknowledged hotbeds of baseball-card collecting. One Los Angeles County baseball card dealer says he has 6,000 Orange County residents on his mailing list.

When Jay McCracken was 8, he knew every member of the 1948 Philadelphia Phillies. But so did every other member of his fourth-grade class in nearby Atlantic City, N. J. Like a lot of little boys, McCracken fell in love with baseball.

At 48, the love affair continues, but McCracken has parlayed that love and knowledge into some spare-time cash. The western general sales manager for a division of the Nestle Food Corp., McCracken says: “At a weekend show, I’ll probably bring in between $500 to $700 a show.”

McCracken, a resident of Orange, has a large personal card collection with sentimental value, but in the last couple of years he has bolstered his supply of marketable cards. Like the investor who studies market trends before buying stock, McCracken studies baseball.

“If I can find the stars of 1989 or 1990 priced at 5 or 10 cents apiece, I’ll buy a couple hundred of them,” he said. “I was able to buy 300 Eric Davises at a nickel each in 1985. Then he became a superstar. I sold 100 of them for $150 and sold another 100 for $300, and now I’m selling them for $10 apiece . . . so, I guessed right (on Davis). I’m not going to say I guess right every time.”

Like most in the business, McCracken is amazed at the return on cards that originally cost but a pittance. “Rookie cards (have) always carried a bit of a premium,” he said, “but a couple years ago, they just took off. The Pete Rose rookie card, which was about ‘63, that’s a $500 card in mint condition. The ’65 (Steve) Carlton, that’s worth $100 and $150. I’ve got several of the (Mike) Schmidt rookies and that book at $165 now.”

All of which leads McCracken to conclude: “The best thing a father can do for a child is buy a Topps set (one of the companies that prints cards) and put them in the closet and don’t let the child play with it.”

Jack Petruzzelli is a Fullerton police detective with a soft spot for baseball. With three partners, he promotes three card shows a year, including their 20th annual Labor Day extravaganza this year. The first show was held in the home of Gavin Riley, one of Petruzzelli’s partners, and attracted 13 people. Last year’s three-day show at the Disneyland Hotel drew 10,000. Petruzzelli says he promotes the shows--where dealers buy table space from the promoters--primarily to provide money to “support my habit,” which is buying baseball cards.

A die-hard baseball fan, Petruzzelli decries the increased commercialism of card-collecting.

“It hasn’t happened yet, but it’s on the way to ruining the whole hobby,” he said. Asked if he isn’t a guilty party because he promotes shows, he said, “If it wouldn’t be me, it would be somebody else. You’ve got people just in the hobby in the last couple years, and all they’re trying to do is make a quick buck. . . . The true collectors have an appreciation for the game. There are a lot of people like myself--I still like opening up the books and reading the back of the stupid cards. I’m 39, and I still like reading the back of baseball cards.”

What worries Petruzzelli is the effect the business is having on some youngsters. “I’ve heard 8-year-old kids saying, ‘I don’t want that card. It’s got a bent corner. I want mint condition, so it’ll be worth something in 10 years.’ They’re buying the cards for an investment, and that’s 8 years old!”

Baseball cards have been around for a long time, almost as long as the game itself. The first cards appeared in 1887 and were stuck in the back of cigarette packages. Honus Wagner, the renowned “Flying Dutchman” and a charter member of the Hall of Fame, was a nonsmoker and asked that his cards be pulled from circulation so that youngsters wouldn’t be encouraged to use tobacco.

As a result, the Wagner card has taken on legendary proportions, helped by the fact that many baseball experts still consider Wagner, who retired in 1917, the game’s greatest shortstop. Local dealers say a Wagner card sold in December for $110,000--the record for a single-card transaction.

And do you have Mickey Mantle’s 1952 rookie card in good condition? Local dealers quote prices anywhere from $4,500 to more than $10,000.

Realizing that card collectors wanted price information, Canoga Park software publisher Marv Mallon decided to tap into the industry.

Last November, he created a computer program, compatible for IBM and Macintosh, that enables collectors to learn the current market value of specific cards. The package sells for $95 and is “doing quite well,” Mallon said.

“I’m not a fan. I’m a businessman,” Mallon pointed out. “We saw a void and did what no one else has done so far.”

And the results? “It’s taking off better than ones for stamps and coins,” he said. “Measured against stamp and coin collectors, there are fewer baseball card collectors across the country, but they’re generally younger and a more computer-literate group, so I’m not surprised to see more interest.”

Mallon, who was showcasing the computer program at a recent Orange County card show, said he has sold 100 packages since November. Each May, he said, an updated program will be available that reflects current card values.

Tony Galovich, who runs a card and sports memorabilia store in Costa Mesa, advises baseball card investors, much like a stock market analyst. “I’ve got a gentleman who started with us in December who’s already spent $28,000 with us. He’s just a collector; he’s not an investor. Then you’ll have people who send us a check for $5,000 who don’t know anything about cards or baseball. They just want to make money.”

Galovich’s current hot tips: “(Yankee first baseman Don) Mattingly is money in the bank.” And last year’s rookie sensation, Mark McGwire, of the Oakland A’s? “Right now is the time to be selling McGwire.”

A longtime fan whose parents gave away thousands of his baseball cards before their value was known, Galovich said the one-time hobby “has become a dollars-and-cents thing to a lot of dealers. Some of the biggest dealers in the country tell me they hate baseball.”

They also hate to disclose their incomes, observers say.

“Card dealers are very guarded about releasing information about how much they’re making because a lot may be doing it as a hobby and they’re concerned about publicity,” said Tom Owens, co-editor of Sports Collectors Digest, an Iola, Wis., baseball card trade journal.”And a lot of them are still a bit embarrassed that they make money off what once was a child’s hobby.”

But to get an idea of the quick rise in the market value of cards, Owens cited a current ad in his publication. The store value of a 1986 Donruss wax pack box (36 packages, with 15 cards to a pack) was $14.40. “He’s now asking $46 for it,” Owens said.

Investing in rookie cards is one of the hobby’s current crazes, Owens confirmed, adding:

“Instead of reading about certain stocks, people will now read the sports pages and try to guess what ballplayer will be the Mark McGwire of 1988. (Buyers) might invest $10 to $15 in a 100-card assortment of a certain player and see which players achieve stardom and then sell off their investment at inflated prices.”

For example, Owens said: “There’s one dealer offering an Angels team set for $1.60. The two rookie cards they’re stressing are Willie Frazier and DeWayne Buice, at 10 cents each. It’s just like playing the stock market. You might want to spend $10 on a 10-cent Willie Frazier card, hoping he might win the Cy Young award this year and you might get $2 a card for him in December.”

While modern-day card collecting has turned serious, the hobby has had its funny moments, Owens said. “For the Angels, probably one of the more interesting cards of all time would be the ’69 Topps card of Aurelio Rodriguez, where the team batboy was confused with Rodriguez. Topps never did issue a corrected card.”

Rodriguez went on to a mediocre career, but “I’m not sure what ever happened to the batboy,” Owens said.

Fountain Valley lawyer Bill Heitman, now 38, remembers going to the grocery story as a 4-year-old with his mother and looking for baseball cards. His father, then a professor at UC Davis, was an avid baseball fan and card collector.

“I’m in a unique position because I’ve been in this long enough that most of the cards I want I have,” Heitman said. “I have the Wagner, I have the (Eddie) Plank. . . . There are very few valuable cards I don’t have. My want list has 20 cards on it.”

And while buying and selling has become a supplemental income source for him, Heitman said the business side of card collecting hasn’t soured. He says the wave of interest in baseball cards is understandable.

“I think it’s because of the attachment to baseball in general,” he said. “All of us, especially the males, played baseball or followed it to some degree. We formed an emotional attachment to it. I think it’s still accurate to say that the sports section is the most widely read section of the paper. Look at all those box scores that get run. They’re run for a reason. I think it has to do with the emotional attachment to our childhoods and baseball being a part of it. That has galvanized and brought people into the hobby.”

With the post-war Baby Boom generation coming of age and having children, many fathers are reliving baseball experiences again through their sons and daughters, Heitman said. “You’d be surprised how many adults, after 20 years of not collecting, are starting again. It can only be explained by that emotional attachment to their childhood.”

Heitman refused to say what his collection is worth. “The one thing I’ve never wanted to discuss is its value because that’s not what we’re doing this for.”

Owens says that despite the growing commercialism of card collecting, many still enjoy its simpler pleasures.

“It’s still a very personal thing for each collector. For one collector, they might be proud of the condition of their card. For another, they might be proud of how some of the cards are acquired, via trade or by surviving childhood, something like that. To hear collectors debating which photo on which card best represents a certain player--then you’ll realize that card collecting is still a very emotional outlet for them.”

Jay McCracken, who rents a 5-by-10-foot storage garage to house part of his collection, concurs.

“It’s still a huge kick, or I wouldn’t be doing it. I still enjoy opening the wax packs, even though I don’t chew the gum.”

With a card collection that probably exceeds a million, McCracken said the game still provides a pleasant diversion from real life.

“At night, I can be in bed and fall asleep reading a trade journal that pertains to my real business, but if I’m reading one of the baseball trade journals, I’ll stay up until I finish it.”

It is that kind of sentiment for the game that frequently creeps into the conversations with the real baseball fans, even those like Jerry Williams who are trying to make money off the cards.

“I’m a baseball fan,” he said, “and a collector. I’ve got stuff at home I’ve had for 40 years. I’ve got cards at home that there’s no price on. Things that were given to me, or that I found. You look at a card and say, ‘Hey, that brings back good memories.’ Or, ‘I remember that guy. He used to be a pretty good ballplayer. He was fun to watch. Twenty years ago, he was worth two bucks to pay to see.’ ”

THE BUBBLE-GUM BONANZA

The first cards (1877) were stuck in the back of cigarette packages. Honus Wagner, a non-smoker, asked that his cards be pulled from circulation so that youngsters wouldn’t be encouraged to use tobacco. The card of Wagner, one of the game’s greatest shortstops, has taken on legendary proportions. Last Decemeber a Wagner card sold for $110,000--the record for a single-card transaction.

The 1969 Topps set of baseball cards used a particular color for the letters of the player’s last name. Mickey Mantle’s name that year was supposed to be printed in yellow. Those cards are worth $150 in mint condition. But in some of the Mantle cards that year, the yellow print was left off and his name appears in white lettering. Those cards are worth an extra $200, for a total of $350.