Mint Condition: How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession
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Product Description
When award-winning journalist Dave Jamieson’s parents sold his childhood home a few years ago, he rediscovered a prized boyhood possession: his baseball card collection. Now was the time to cash in on the “funds” of his youth. But all the card shops had clogged, and cards were selling for next to nothing online. What had happened? In Mint Condition, his fascinating, eye-opening, endlessly entertaining book, Jamieson finds the answer by tracing the perfect tale of this beloved piece of American childhood. Picture cards had long been used for publicity, but after the Civil War, tobacco companies ongoing slipping them into cigarette packs as collector’s items. Before long, the cards were wagging the cigarettes. In the 1930s, cards helped gum and candy makers survive the Fantastic Depression. In the 1960s, royalties from cards helped transform the baseball players association into one of the country’s most powerful unions, dramatically altering the game. In the ’80s and ’90s, cards went through a spectacular bubble, apt a billion-dollar-a-year industry before all but disappearing, extant today as the rarified preserve of adult collectors. Mint Condition is charming, original history brimming with colorful characters, sure to delight baseball fans and collectors.
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A comprehensive look into the history of baseball cards, cigarettes, bubble gum, and every nerdy kid (or adult) to ever collect sports memorabilia. I could easily pass this book onto my son (if I had one), father and grandfather to read. Plenty to chew on for everyone! (get it? waggity waggity). Can’t praise this enough and I’m guessing this will be the first of many 5-star reviews to come. Brilliant work Mr. Jamieson.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
As a kid growing up in the ’50s & ’60s, collecting baseball cards was a natural part of our being. Abusing our prized possessions was also a part of the process; a ‘56 Yogi Berra made my Schwinn sound like a Harley (not really). At the time, I didn’t realize that was a very costly sound effect; who knew that shoebox full of Musials, Williams, and Mantles could someday pay for junior’s college education, if the owner of persons gems had sense enough to keep them in “mint condition”? Needless to say, I didn’t catch on until twenty some odd years later; and like everything that has a “market value”, baseball card portfolios have been whacked in recent years; just like everything else.
Dave Jamieson has compiled a wonderfully researched history of the baseball card phenomenon, which brought back many memories for me; not only of my innocent youth, but of my not so innocent adulthood, when I tried to grab the hottest cards at the best possible prices. I used to buy ‘em by the set, and horde them like a miser, hoping they’d increase in value. Naturally, I now keep my collection in mint condition, and I’ll spend hours staring at baseball’s not so distant past, and marvel why Roger Maris isn’t in the Hall of Fame.
If you’re a baseball fan, regardless of your obsession with collecting cards, you’ll certainly delight in this book. It’s a home run.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
Gran Torino left me thirsty for Pabst; this book left me jonesing for gum, smokes and a ‘52 Topps Mickey Mantle. Mint Condition wonderfully clarifies the incredible journey of the baseball card from its early tobacco days to the wax packs of today. It provides a unique education in American history by showing how tobacco, MLB & chewing gum owe a huge debt to baseball cards and the kids who bought (or forced their parents to buy) them. But my favorite thing about reading Mint Condition is that it caused me to pull out my own stash of prized cards from 20yrs ago which evoked so many fantastic memories.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5