Moms get a bad rap in the world of baseball card collectors. That's because many of them tossed out their kids' collections once the children grew up or moved out.
Topps, the baseball card company, is holding a "Million Card Giveaway" with the promo, "Get back the cards your mom threw away."
Dennis Ryall of Medford Lakes, owner of New Concept Cards, Hobbies and Mental Skate Shop on Stokes Road in Medford, thinks the "giveaway" has been a great idea: Buy a pack of baseball cards with a special redemption ticket inside. Go online and check the identification number on the ticket. You may have won a really special card from the rookie year of a great player.
Keep in mind, though, that the promotion started at the beginning of the season and many of the coveted cards could have been claimed.
"About a week ago, someone actually pulled a rookie Mickey Mantle card from 1952," said Matt Altman, a spokesman for the Topps Co. in New York. He has seen mint rookie Mantle cards sell for $25,000 to $250,000, depending on their condition.
The promotion, Altman said, is extremely popular with men who were kids in the 1950s and '60s, when baseball cards came with bubble gum. Back then, when there was no Internet and no video games to occupy a boy's summer, collecting cards was a hobby for many youngsters, until their mothers got tired of seeing them thrown around their bedrooms.
"All those cards that mom threw away, they can get back. They're real vintage cards, not reproductions," Altman said.
Topps bought back cards from collectors and dealers for the promotion and is starting a similar one for the football season, called the "Grid Iron Giveaway."
"If my mom hadn't thrown out my cards, I'd be a millionaire," is another T-shirt slogan that Ryall and Al Anderer of Medford say is true. When they left home for military service, their mothers disposed of their cards. They wish they had them back.
The two men chatted the other day at Ryall's hobby shop.
Anderer showed up wearing his National League Champions Phillies T-shirt from last year. With the team in the race again, he wanted to do a little card shopping.
Ryall said that while the Phillies as a team have been great, it's the individual players who count in the world of card collecting. The cards of such stars as Chase Utley and Ryan Howard sell well. The demand isn't as great for cards of lesser-known players.
At Riverside Sports Cards on Scott Street, owner David Denbo said Phillies cards have been hot.
"Phillies individual cards have been selling well for the last several years," Denbo said.
He added that players' rookie cards - the first one printed for them, whether in the minor or major leagues - "are the ones that will appreciate the most."
Denbo and Ryall described sports card collecting as "like playing the stock market."
If a player is "young and not a star, then his cards are not in high demand," but if he becomes a good player a couple of years later, "people start chasing his cards," Denbo said.
For example, he said, Utley's rookie cards sell in the $10 to $20 range and a Roy Halladay card from 1997 would sell in the $15 to $20 range now.
"We've seen cards appreciate tremendously," Ryall said.
The fun of collecting is trying to figure out which rookies will become stars and which will fade, either through injury or because they "didn't live up to expectations." The value of their cards corresponds to their careers. It's a treasure hunt. Collectors keep searching for gems.
Brian Gardner, owner of Brian's Sportscards in Morrisville, Pa., has been in business since 1988. The Phillies have been a best-seller lately.
"I'm selling more team sets, more bobbleheads, pennants - anything Phillies-related is selling better," he said.
Gardner said autographed Utley cards are in the $100 range.
"I just sold a signed Utley bat for $250. They go pretty high," he said. Cards with pieces of the player's jersey attached also sell well.
Ryall has signature baseballs for sale in the $150 range, including a Halladay ball for $180.
Vic Graziano of Great American Trading, a baseball card distributor in Yonkers, N.Y., was visiting the Medford store Monday. He said in Burlington County "it's the Phillies" that are popular, but in "most of New Jersey it's the Yankees."
While many hobby shops have closed during the recession, Ryall said he's been able to stay in business by diversifying. Not only does he sell baseball cards, but also signed balls, games, and even toasters that will burn the logo of a team on a slice of bread - great for a sports fanatic's breakfast or conversation starter at a Super Bowl party.
Phillies "Monopoly" and other labeled games are big sellers at the store, as are attractive wall plaques, designed for a room or office.
The hobby shop is Ryall's "dream come true." He started in 1994 after retiring as director of the computer technology department for an oil corporation in Philadelphia.
"I love coming to work every day," he said. "It's like Christmas every day."
Contact: pquann@phillyBurbs.com or 609-871-8057
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