Why are baseball cards valuable?

The main reason why baseball cards are valuable is simply unknown, kinda like any collectable, so the only thing we could do is create possibilities and notice which one gains more credibility.

Why baseball cards?

Baseball is commonly known as the “Americans hobby”, a game where every day many people would go to the stadium and spend a few hours to relax with their loved ones.

The popularity of the game was struck by the presence of Babe Ruth, the player who changed the sport forever. After he came several players who we called now legends of the game such as Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Stan Musial, Hank Aaron, Sandy Koufax, Yogi Berra, Roberto Clemente and hundreds of others.

Watching all these great players immediately rise everybody’s attention and in an era where phones, tablets, computers, or any kind of distractions didn’t exist,  baseball cards became extremely popular between kids and teenagers and even adults who did everything they could to collect their favorites players cards.

Manufacturing baseball cards, now and then

Baseball cards from this time are way less worthy than in the times when Ruth wore the Yankees pinstripes and the reason is very simple: The number of cards created those days of a single player was considerably lower than are made these days.

This also has something to do with how many companies created baseball cards over then and how many companies do it now.

Why are baseball cards valuable?

After knowing all this and noticing you were given a box of baseball cards that belonged to your father and everybody keeps telling you how much money you could make by selling them, you probably start to ask yourself why baseball cards are still valuable.  

Maybe because of their era, maybe are vintage cards that were collected by your father’s father every time he would go to the stadium to watch his favorite club.

Also, the condition of the cards is very important to their value because buying a perfectly Sandy Koufax 1957 card isn’t the same of buying a stained, greased, or even broken baseball card of the same player. There are two companies that help you to determine the condition of your baseball card, they are PSA and Becket.

Both companies rank their scale from 1 to 10, being 10 a very, very hard point to reach. But when you have a 9 or 10 baseball card, it is certain you have a gold mine in your hands.

Another reason why baseball cards are valuable is the rookie season legends cards. These cards are the first ever produced of a baseball player when no one knew they were going to be such great players, that great they would enter the Hall of Fame.

In spite that now most baseball cards come with an autographed printed, not always was this way, if you wanted an autographed baseball card you must get it by yourself. That’s why modern era baseball cards aren’t worth that much. But can you imagine possessing a Barry Bonds Rookie season baseball card and autograph? That could cost a lot of money.

There are three other features that could raise your card value to the skies, a relic, a serial number, and an Insert Card.

An insert card can only be found randomly in boxes and packs, and are valuable because are very hard to find. This type of card may be found in one pack of 100 baseball card packs.

In order to increase the value of new baseball cards, companies came up with a brilliant idea, to add a relic to a baseball card. A relic is literally a piece of game-used memorabilia such as a game-used bat, batting gloves, swatch of a game-worn jersey, or other items. Their value rises among collectors due to the excitement of holding a baseball card of your favorite player with a piece of his bat.

The serial number of a baseball card means the print run is limited to the number listed. In other words, a card with a serial number 34/39 means that of only 39 cards produced you’re holding the 34^th. The rarest type of serial numbered cards (and the more expensive ones to sell) is that which has a serial number of 1/1 which means you possess the only card ever to be produced.

Final thoughts

The correct answer why are baseball cards valuable is that depends on the card, the condition, the player and the features that the card has.