Diamond Traders

Baseball season has begun--and so has baseball card season. This weekend at the Buenaventura Mall in Ventura, a “Mall Sportscard and Memorabilia Show” will present young sports card traders a wide choice of goodies.

At this event, about 25 vendors are expected to spread their wares on tables set up in the mall’s common area.

It’s held each spring when baseball season opens, enabling young collectors to buy cards with the likenesses of players who the collectors are hoping will emerge as the best of the season.

There’s a reprise of this event at the mall in September when the results are in--at which time certain bits of cardboard have taken on higher value than at the season’s onset.

A seasoned observer of this Little League version of the New York Stock Exchange is Mike Romano, owner of Stadium Club, a sports card and memorabilia store permanently located in the Buenaventura Mall.

“It’s still a kid’s hobby,” he said, “even though prices on new issues since the ‘80s have gone up from 25 cents to $2.50 per card. But kids are very well informed about the changing values.”

Cards bearing the likeness of players who do well during the season may eventually fetch bigger bucks, maybe even thousands of dollars, according to the trade magazine, Beckett Baseball Card Monthly, the card collector’s version of the the Wall Street Journal.

Paul Borthwick, a spokesman for Borthwick Show Productions, which sponsors the mall event, offered some details on the baseball card business, as conducted by kids. “There are really no hot new players this year, so kids will buy a set of the whole 1997 team,” he said.

“Every player will eventually have one good season (that card will appreciate over the long term)--and every team will have one good player this season (that card will rise in value by mid-season).”

A further inducement to buying a whole team’s pack of cards is that some sets are pre-autographed. Becket Baseball Card Monthly spokesman Theo Chen explains: “The current trend is pre-signed packs for $10, which have one autographed card in the pack--like the prize in Jack In The Box popcorn--you don’t know what (or which player’s autograph) it is.”

Another trend is to buy reissued cards--not for a whole team but rather from a past year. “Reissue sets from 1954 have 350 cards and go for $50,” said a spokesman for Borthwick. “Kids aren’t deceived by reissues. They know they aren’t originals, but with 50th anniversaries going on such as Jackie Robinson’s, they are into buying and holding cards.”

If parents are worried that the kids’ time and smarts are being frittered away on the complex machinations of baseball card collecting while homework fails to get much attention, then they may be glad to hear about the policy at Romano’s card shop.

His customers, ages 8 to 14, “know the price guide and the players’ names and records,” he said. “If they only knew their school work so well. So I tried to think of ways to reward a kid (for school work).”

He decided to institute an unusual discount policy at his store: “If a kid brings me his report card from school with one A on it, I give him a 5% discount. For two, I give 10% off, and it’s 15% off for 3.”

BE THERE

“Mall Sportscard and Memorabilia Show” at Buenaventura Mall. Take the Main Street exit off the Ventura Freeway. Sat., 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; Sun., 11 a.m.-6 p.m.; admission free. (818) 810-6126.