It used to be that a kid could buy a pack of baseball cards for a nickel. And the bonus was getting a piece of stale bubblegum. Nowadays collecting baseball cards is no longer a casual childhood activity, as adult collectors have taken the hobby to a new level. Vintage baseball cards are considered art by some investors. Even current-day limited edition cards are commanding big dollars, certainly not the kind of money kids can afford.

One of the recent situations demonstrating how crazy the baseball card market has evolved involved a Topps card of Paul Skenes, the Pittsburgh Pirates pitching phenom. The card manufacturer recently made only one of his cards (marked as a “1 of 1”) with his autograph and a debut patch. The card was randomly included in a pack of other cards. It has created a buying frenzy, as the card is expected to go for six figures. The Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team offered to acquire this one-of-a-kind card from the person lucky enough to get the card for two season tickets to Pirates games for thirty (30) years, plus other items such as signed items by Skenes.

The Ty Cobb T206 cigarette card has been the Holy Grail of baseball cards for years. Because of its age (1909-1911) and rarity (only 22 known to currently exist), the card has commanded some of the highest dollars in the baseball collecting world. In 2022, one of the Cobb cards sold for $7.2 million.

A 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card in pristine condition was sold later in 2022 for $12.6 million, the highest ever paid for a single baseball card. The person who sold the card purchased the same card in 1990 for $50,000.

Nowadays, the cards don’t have to be really old to be of value. In November of this year, a limited edition Shohei Ohtani rookie card (2018 Bowman Chrome Rookie Autographs Orange Refractor) sold for $533,140.

Only the richest investors, some of whom are not even baseball enthusiasts, can afford these types of cards.

The nature of card collecting has changed dramatically from what many of us remember. For the most part now the trading card business excludes young collectors.

You can hardly find a retail brick-and-mortar store where you can buy the current year’s baseball cards. Many sales are being transacted over the internet now. eBay has become one of the main sources for purchases and sales.

Baseball card hobby shops used to populate nearly every neighborhood, where a kid could buy and sell cards with a familiar shop owner. Now there are only a handful of shops in an entire metropolitan area.

Topps, now owned by global mega-sports platform Fanatics, dominates the trading card manufacturing. The heyday of cards made by Fleer, Donruss, and Upper Deck cards in the ‘80s and ‘90s is barely a memory now.

Many collectors are getting their most valuable cards graded by independent, third-party services, a process in itself that can be expensive. Vintage cards (now considered those produced before around 1970) are typically purchased as graded cards, because of the higher prices they can command once they are later sold.

A large part of the Topps trading card business now involves cards printed “on demand.”  Individual cards are put on sale for a limited time, such as one day or one week, and then Topps prints only the number of these cards purchased on-line during that time period. Therefore, the cards have a limited print run, which can vary per card. The purchase prices usually range from $5 to $12 for each card, depending on the quantity purchased. Topps also incents buyers to purchase large quantities of these cards by randomly including limited edition and autographed cards in purchases. These specialty cards can then be turned around for nice profits soon after purchase.

As NFTs (non-fungible tokens) became popular with the implementation of blockchain technology, Major League Baseball and Topps made baseball cards available as NFTs. The way this works involves buyers purchasing a digital version of a baseball card (not a cardboard one) that is maintained by MLB or Topps. Collectors can view, buy and sell the digital cards through an on-line marketplace. There are limited editions of the digital cards, which ultimately become a factor in the prices for buying and selling them. When MLB initially implemented NFTs several years ago, the limited edition Shohei Ohtani digital images bought for less than $20 then commanded a price of $15,000 for potential buyers.

Cards from the 1950s are on fire right now. A quick search on eBay produced the following items for some of the decade’s best players. The prices for these cards go up exponentially for cards whose condition is graded 8 or higher.

• 1952 Topps Jackie Robinson with a PSA Grade 1 (the lowest grade) is available for $4,995.

• 1955 Topps Sandy Koufax, ungraded in excellent condition, is available for $1,899

• 1957 Topps Mickey Mantle with a SCG Grade 5 is available for $1,200

• 1954 Topps Willie Mays with a PSA Grade 5 is available for $1,000.

Perhaps the best buying option for kids today is to purchase a factory-sealed box of 700 different Topps cards for about $65. One problem is that these boxes only become available near the end of the baseball season. The collector won’t get the “rush” from opening individual pack of cards, hoping to get an Ohtani or a Aaron Judge card. And he won’t get the opportunity to receive limited edition cards. But if he’s in the hobby just to enjoy the different card images, and not to make money from them, it’s not a bad alternative.