Wednesday Wheeler-Dealers : For Card Collectors, Playing Field Is Mall
It was noon on Wednesday at the Old Towne Mall in Torrance, early by the standards of collectors who already had their mementos on display on the 40 tables lined up along the corridor.
Mike Papp and Lou Dicioccio had their collections of baseball cards ready for viewing. Ed and Helen Biegel unpacked glass cases filled with Olympic pins. Ed, who runs the Olympic Pins, Comic Books and Baseball Cards Memorabilia Show for the mall, didn’t hesitate to explain why he was there. Of 152 pins made for the 1984 Olympic Games, he has 149.
“The more you’re into it, the more you love it,” he said.
The show is held on the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month from noon to 11 p.m. Said Papp, who took a day off work to be here: “This is the most fun I’ve had.”
Collectors say small shows, particularly in indoor malls, have gained in appeal. They say larger card shows, which attract hundreds of traders at costs of about $100 per day in arenas around the country, are pricing themselves out of the reach of the small investor.
“This is much more low-key,” said card dealer Don Hepworth of Torrance.
Hepworth was one of several dealers who chose not to pay a $35 fee to sell his wares. He attended as a buyer, intent on adding to his collection.
While dickering at the table of trader George Sands, Hepworth explained why he and other small dealers, who usually work out of their homes, have grown fond of the smaller shows.
“The feeling at the big shows is hostile,” he said. “This is much more laid-back.”
“By 7 p.m., they’ll be standing five deep at my table,” said Ed Biegel, who said he is “bananas” over his hobby.
Collectors and buyers of sports memorabilia come from all walks of life. Dicioccio is a trouble-shooter in the aerospace industry. He says he travels about 300 days a year, yet makes it to Old Towne for almost every show.
Biegel is a retired garment salesman. He got hooked on pin trading when he attended a 1984 Olympics site at UCLA. Now he’s considered one of the experts in the field.
Just last week Helen Biegel received queries from traders in Alaska and Hawaii. They’ll be trading pins in Seoul, South Korea, in September at the summer Games.
Eli Ressler, whose baseball card table wasn’t far from Ed Biegel’s pin display, is a TV cameraman. He formerly worked in the news film division of CBS. He says he uses card trading to supplement his income.
Sands works for a Hawthorne Boulevard restaurant. He takes a day off work to attend the show because “I make more money here than I do at my job.”
Although pins and cards were sold for as little as a dollar, several special items cost hundreds more.
Dicioccio, a New York Yankees fan, was selling a Mickey Mantle baseball card for $650. At home, he said, he has a collection of Mantle cards that he values at $10,000.
“Mantle is the hottest card right now,” he said. A 1953 Mantle card in his collection is worth $3,000.
The hottest recent card on the market is the rookie card of Cincinnati Reds star Eric Davis. The 1985 production goes for $18, the traders said, although Dicioccio put his on sale for $16.
Card prices fluctuate, traders said. A lot depends on the condition of the card. Mint condition cards bring better prices. Dicioccio priced a Mantle card with a slight tear $150 lower than the same card in mint condition.
Card prices also vary when a ballplayer’s situation changes. An example: Four years ago a Dwight Gooden card brought nearly $100.
“But then he was busted for drugs and it went way down,” Dicioccio said of the New York Mets’ star pitcher. He valued the card now at around $40.
A card close to Dicioccio’s heart, a 1984 Don Mattingly, is one of the hottest cards purchased by younger buyers, Papp and Dicioccio said. It costs about $33.
“Some people think he is the next Mantle,” Papp said.
Ressler said that the second best-selling card costs only $10 because it is of a “terrible player” better known for beer commercials. The player: Bob Uecker.
“I can’t get enough of them,” Ressler said.
Helen Biegel returned to her post after buying a few pins from another collector. Ed Biegel, seated at table No. 4 (he refers to it as “my office”), rose and showed several cases of pins valued from $12 to $25.
Ed Biegel has paid as much as $500 for a single pin. Two 1984 Olympic pins--one from Ethiopia and another from Sierra Leone--were offered for $125 each.
“I may not take in $35 today,” Ressler said. “All I have to do, though, is sell one Reggie Jackson rookie card (valued at $125) and I’ve made my day. I paid $80 for it four months ago.
“This business is an investment. What I don’t sell now will be worth more later on. It’s not like I’m selling meat.”
Ressler and others tailor their displays for the audiences they expect to see.
“The people who buy here are not the kind who will pay $200, $300 for a card,” he said. That’s why he left a Mantle card valued at $2,000 at home.
For Papp and Dicioccio, business seemed slow. They said that if they made $300 here, they would consider it a good day.
Dicioccio thought back to his days growing up near the Bronx in New York. When he was a child, he said, he idolized every player on the Yankees. He glanced down at about a dozen Mickey Mantle cards in one of his cases. Today, he said, most kids don’t know who Mickey Mantle is.
“Being a Yankee fan, I’m glad they’re going for Mattingly,” he said of his younger customers. “You can’t expect them to like someone (Mantle) who played 20 years ago. But it is different to hear them say, ‘Who’s he?’ ”
