Grocery Stores Don't Sell Baseball Cards Anymore

The Hobby Has Changed

Grocery Stores Don't Sell Baseball Cards Anymore

If you’re old like me, you probably remember a time when baseball cards were readily available in grocery stores.

I’m not talking about a few loose packs or boxes available at Target or Walmart (something that I haven’t noticed for a few years, now that I think about it). No — I’m talking about baseball card packs for sale at normal grocery stores, right next to the candy and other impulse purchase items.

I came across this display photo from a Reddit post:

This isn’t what the grocery store I visited back in 1990 looked like, but it’s actually pretty close. This kind of display was probably available at a bigger box store — a Kmart, Shopko, or one of those other national chains that is long gone.

I’m not sure if it counts as a “fond” memory, but I do remember buying countless numbers of 1990 Topps packs for 25 cents each at a grocery store bin. It probably looked something like this:

And, of course, if I were still nostalgic for that ugly set, I could always buy a complete wax box on eBay:

I’m not going to do that, of course, and neither should you. Despite the continual chase for Frank Thomas error rookie cards, the truth is that 1990 Topps was a horrible product — marred by unreadable backs, an ugly design, and the basic fact that there’s just so much of it out there.

But the big question is when the grocery store distribution ended.

I get the feeling that Upper Deck may have had something to do with it, though I don’t have much evidence. Card Sharks discusses this to some extent. When Upper Deck was looking to enter the market in late 1988, it ran into a lot of skepticism from the distributors that handled grocery store sales. In fact, the original strategy was to sell exclusively to individual card shops (commonly referred to as “hobby dealers” in those days), get them excited about the better quality cards, and then let the grocery stores get on board.

Whatever the reason, by the time the baseball strike rolled around it felt like the grocery store displays were a thing of the past.

Interestingly enough, it seems that the card companies never really gave up on printing tons and tons of product. They just changed their focus. Instead of making, say, a billion copies of every base set card, they decided to make an endless array of inserts, eventually moving to cutting up game used memorabilia to create some sort of mutant lottery ticket.

What might surprise you is how old these trends really are. In fact, it was old news as early as 1996:

From The Times-Press (Streator, Illinois), August 13, 1996, page 10

Now — the truth is that the companies never learned that “there is just too much on the market.” Indeed, to this day we still have Topps (actually Fanatics, the company that owns the monopoly on cards) making a vast array of ridiculous 1/1 lottery ticket cards that look ugly as sin:

It’s Willie Wonka’s world — one in which those caught by the spell spend inordinate amounts of money just to get an overhyped 1/1 card. The problem, of course, is that you can’t predict the market value of a 1/1 card — and anybody not actively collecting can see that it’s a fool’s game.

Personally, I long for the days of packs in the grocery stores and collecting to complete sets. Sadly, though, I don’t think the companies will ever bring us back to the good old days.

But, then again, at least I never have to set eyes on another ugly 1990 Topps card.