The Beginning of Junk Wax

When the baseball card industry really took off

The Beginning of Junk Wax

I’ve wondered for years when the baseball card collecting hobby changed from a small, esoteric pastime into big businesses.

As I’ve mentioned before, most histories of The Hobby focus on the history of those who create the cards, and not so much on those who actually collect the cards. I’m slowly trying to piece together sources to figure out how we managed to get to where we are now.

While I doubt we’ll find a single point where things suddenly changed, we can certainly see how the hobby grew over time. Looking at advertisements in The Sporting News alone gives you an example of what happened. For instance, here is a listing of card distributors in late 1969:

From The Sporting News, November 1, 1969, page 25

This is what the same section looked like in 1975:

From The Sporting News, October 25, 1975, page 60

It’s interesting to see that amount of growth in such a small time — especially since 1975 is still considered the stone age in terms of baseball card collecting.

By 1986, publications like Street & Smith’s Baseball Yearbook wound up running multiple full pages of baseball card ads, like this:

From Street & Smith’s Baseball Yearbook 1986 page 177

That gives you a pretty good idea of how quickly the hobby grew.

So what happened? How did the hobby gain so much mainstream momentum? Was it because the Topps monopoly ended in 1981? Was it because of the national convention that started up in 1973? Was it because big name collectors started throwing silly money at old cardboard in the late 1970s?

Honestly, it’s hard to say — but the noise of history is where all of this really becomes interesting.

From what I can tell, this Wall Street Journal article from 1979 is the first serious mainstream press look at baseball card collecting as an industry:

From The Wall Street Journal, August 6, 1979, page 28

And, in fact, this Wall Street Journal piece was cited in other contemporary articles about the growing hobby, such as this feature from The Los Angeles Times in mid-1980:

From The Los Angeles Times, July 10, 1980, pages 41 and 46

But what do you think? Why did the hobby grow the way it grew in the late 1970s and through the 1980s? And is it a good thing or a bad thing?