The Driver Suit Blog-Some Thoughts On Modern Trading Cards

By David G. Firestone

First off, I’d like to apologize for my lackluster column on The Clash last week, I wasn’t feeling great, and my week at work didn’t help. I was going to do some news this week, but I’ve been working on a project, and it got me to thinking about the 2025 trading card market, as opposed to when I started collecting cards in 1990.

I grew up collecting baseball and racing cards. Every one of my friend was involved in some kind of trading cards, be it comic book, Magic The Gathering, sports, or other kinds. It was a much simpler time. Recently, I fulfilled a childhood dream of collecting the entire sets of 1990 Topps and 1990 Donruss baseball. Those were the two sets I was really into growing up. Sure, there were others, Score, Upper Deck, Pro Set, Sky Box, etc, but those were my favorite of all baseball card sets.

Looking at the trading card market today, and it’s like night and day. Instead of a series of different companies for each league, now it’s one card company per league. Many of the companies I grew up with are gone, or have been absorbed by other companies. But one thing that has both changed and remained the same is special inserts.

Back in 1990, a special insert was a card with a different design to a common, such as a commemorative event, all-star, or even an autographed card, which Upper Deck started in 1990. In this day in age, we have relic cards, autographed cuts, numbered sets, and a whole bunch of other different special inserts.

Sadly, these new inserts are frankly, worthless. First off, with many “limited edition” cards, number X/100, all they really are is a card with a different coloring and an X/100 numbering. For some reason, these seem to prove popular with collectors. Apparently, using red instead of blue with a number makes something more valuable? I guess so.

But when it comes to relic cards, things have gone the exact way I thought it would, which is the exact thing I thought they shouldn’t do. It started with “game-worn” cards, which have a piece of something worn or used by the subject on the card. Well, nowadays there are “player-worn” and “event-worn” cards that fill these new packs.

Here’s the problem: Marketing something as “game-worn” means that the item was worn or used during a game. “Event” and “player” can mean so many different things. Let’s take event-worn for example. What event? Where? Was it at a team event? Was it at a city event? Was it at cousin Jethro’s annual cookout? In a lot of instances, these “events” were either card conventions, or events hosted by the card companies.

Player worn is much more vague, as the item could have been worn at any time by the player in question. City event, or taking the dog for a walk, doesn’t matter, as long as the player wore it at some point. I mean it isn’t illegal, you are getting what you are advertised. But at what point are collectors going to stop? Real collectors have been questioning and calling out companies about this for years.

Above and beyond that, I’ve got another question: Why are these companies so hell bent on these cards? The only thing they seem to do is help the secondary market. Look at the sheer volume of these cards on eBay. Topps spent lots of money on these artifacts, yet they do not get a cut of any eBay sales.

Never mind the fact that, as the leagues found out that game used memorabilia sells, started making uniform and equipment decisions specifically to sell stuff “for charity” or otherwise. The merch stand is dictating on-field uniforms and equipment, and people are buying into this.

This type of attitude is diluting the market. It’s like printing more money in a financial crisis. Adding more game-used stuff doesn’t make it more valuable, it just makes what is on the market less valuable. The market is starting to over-saturate itself, and that’s before the fraud comes into play. We saw this with Steiner Sports and Eli Manning a few years ago. This isn’t sustainable, and the market will crash.

It pains me to say this, but I’m glad I’ve gotten out of sports memorabilia. I loved this hobby, I still do, but sometimes, you just have to cut your losses, and get out when you can. Any market can bottom out, look at Michael Vick. His market bottomed out, and never really recovered. This will happen to the game-used market eventually. Bad decisions can cost a lot, and there are a lot of bad decisions going around these days.

I really hate to see something I once loved tearing itself apart because of corporate greed, but here we are! The ship is clearly about to hit the iceberg, and it will sooner rather than later. I’ll still buy sports memorabilia every once in a while, but I’m pretty much out at this point.

Next week, my thoughts on the Daytona 500.