Surely sitting somewhere at your childhood home are thousands and thousands of baseball cards.  You may have a plethora of ’88 Donruss, ’87 Topps, ’90 Upper Deck, and several other sets that they frighteningly overprinted.  You could also have a separate stash of your “good cards,” the ones that you worked hard to get, were excited that you received in a pack, or traded other good cards to get. 

Back then, you could also pull out the trusty Beckett and see how much these cards were “worth,” as if they would turn out to be an investment.  Unfortunately, I am here to tell you this week that they are worth basically nothing.  Some of these cards will sound familiar.  Sorry—I am just as depressed as you are.

7. 1989 Fleer Bill Ripken
By the way, those few modern cards that you CAN sell?  You have to have them graded by a third party in order to be able to sell them for anything, PLUS they need to be at least rated a “9” or higher (cue Don West GEM MINT 10!) to get anything for them at all.  To get one card graded from PSA (probably the premiere company), it’s $10.  This particular card it the famous one with the F-bomb.  You can get one for a couple of bucks online, but that’s more good for society than anything—everyone should own one of these cards.

6. 1986 Donruss Jose Canseco
It seemed that amongst kid collectors back then, you were either a McGwire guy or a Canseco guy, you were rarely both.  Each of the personality types had their moment when they wished that they had gone the other way—McGwire guys after Canseco’s 40/40 season, and Canseco guys after 1998.  Nowadays, I guess the Canseco people have won out since Canseco’s book completely destroyed any chance of McGwire getting into the Hall of Fame.  Whatever the case, this crown jewel of the Canseco collection can easily be attained for less than five bucks now.

5. 1991 Topps Stadium Club
These things sold for $4 a pack!  You can “buy it now” on E-Bay right now for $15!  Let’s just skip over this one before I become enraged…

4. 1982 Fleer Cal Ripken
This one just shows how worthless our entire collections are—here is a guy who is still loved, never implicated in steroids, and was just elected to the freaking Hall of Fame and you can still get his cards for 1/10 of what we were told that they were “worth” back in the golden years of collecting.  

3. 1990 Score Bo Jackson football/baseball
Not that the Carterville, Illinois-based newscast had much to talk about, but this card was so huge that good old Channel 3 in Southern Illinois had a story about it.  I’m pretty sure that it booked Beckett at a high of $15.  You can get one now for less than a quarter.

 2. 1990 Leaf Frank Thomas
This one is simply amazing.  Leaf, when they began making their own sets that year, didn’t even seem like an attainable goal—they were expensive and hard to find and the best single cards were unthinkably high, led by the Thomas rookie, which was worth upwards of $70 in Beckett at its peak.  There is one on E-Bay right now with a 99-cent opening bid, and no bids.

1. All Mark McGwire cards
If you cashed out your McGwire stuff back in 1998, you may have actually turned a profit on your collection.  Ungraded, the 1985 Topps USA card was selling for hundreds of dollars, with gem Mint 10s in the thousands of dollars range.  Though that card was easily his most valuable, anything with his picture on it could have sold in the late 90s, which makes it even more depressing that it actually went up since his first heyday in the late 80s/early 90s…but now, you can get an ’85 Topps McGwire for $5.

The Top7 is written by Jason Major.  He feels betrayed by 1990 Leaf Frank Thomas.  Email him at jason@joesportsfan.com

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