Why Were Sports Cards Popular?
Basketball cards, football cards, wrestling cards, and all manner of sports cards have been around since the middle of the 20th century. The start of the 90’s was a great period in basketball and other sports, with athletes like Michael Jordan, Scotty Pippen and Shaquille O’Neill doing amazing things on the basketball court. The trend of collecting basketball cards was never greater at this time, with a number of successful companies trying to be the most valuable.
It was always young kids, of course, who would decide these cards were valuable. One of the easiest ways to tell which card was worth the most was by the popularity of the athlete on the card. A Michael Jordan card would be worth far more than a Luc Longley, for instance. But also available were special cards, which included gimmicks like holograms and shiny paper to be worth more, and make the image more alluring.
The companies that created these cards saw a great deal of profit in this time. Fleer cards were usually considered to be of high quality, while Topps cards could at this time never seem to be quite as stylish as the others. The most popular, though, were those from the Upper Deck brand. With each card presented in smooth, crisp detail and a tiny hologram declaring it to be official Upper Deck material on the back, these cards were the one most looked for by kids in the schoolyard.
The question is often asked: Why do kids place so much value on these little things? At first, it seems like a reasonable question. The material used by the manufacturers cannot possibly be worth anywhere near what the producer has paid to create them, or what any of the objects are worth. It’s only the fact that a lot of different people agree on a card being valuable or not valuable that creates any value. As funny as it sounds, the perception of something being the case makes it real. When one person says a piece of cardboard is worth a heap, he’s delusional. But if many people say it, the people who don’t agree are missing out.
Now, this all seems to be a weird thing to think of as true, yet think about this: Why is their value to money? Do the materials of cash have any real value? Of course not, greenbacks are worth something simply because everyone agrees that they are valuable. So as delusional as we think the kids collecting the basketball cards are, we would consider someone who didn’t care about money would be insane, too.
Basketball cards have these days become highly unfashionable among youngsters. While there was a short craze for Pokemon, the fads of today tend to be computerized, with many kids using mobile phones instead of cards, or pogs or yo-yos. It’s easy for us to look at them and think of how dumb they are, but were we really any better? Now here’s a worrying thought: When these kids are our age, what will their kids be collecting?