Advice from Beckett Baseball Card Monthly

Matt has been going through some of the artifacts he stored at his parents' house, trying to lower the ratio of people-to-PEZ-dispensers in their home. While sorting through old stuff, Matt came across a copy of Beckett Baseball Card Monthly magazine. It's difficult, now, to put in perspective how much this magazine meant to Matt as a kid. For a baseball card collector, Beckett was a monthly holy scroll delivered to your house.

Each magazine had a price guide in it and articles about baseball card collecting. Each month, Matt would studiously look up his best cards.

Actually, he only had two valuable cards. 1983 Topps Traded Darryl Strawberry, which at one point was listed at $130; and a Carlton Fisk rookie card, valued at $75 in 1990. Now, the Strawberry is probably worth a dollar and the Fisk is worth maybe $15, at best.

But Beckett said they were worth hundreds so they were! Although Beckett supposedly based their prices on what dealers were selling the cards for, the dealers were setting their prices off Beckett. It was like a mind warp. We were kids. What the heck did we know? According to Beckett, we were hundredaires!

The edition Matt was looking through was the August 1990 edition, pictured above, with Ryne Sandberg on the cover. Looking back, there are many things to enjoy about the magazine:

- The not-good writing. It's terrible. It appears to be mostly articles from newspaper writers and freelancers who did a minimum amount of reporting, besides compiling stats. Of course, at the time, you didn't have baseball-reference.com so stats were harder to come by. Still, these articles tended toward extremely cheesy and dumb. Not to mention that article on Paul Molitor is titled, "Flame on!", which is a bit strange.

- The absurd investing advice. People would write Beckett with questions about obscure cards, possible errors they had detected or baseball card investment strategies. Granted we have 20 years' hindsight, but the advice still had to be hilarious to anyone who understood a little bit of supply and demand. (10-year-old Matt didn't.) Here's a particularly poignant letter, from Don in Kansas: "When I began collecting cards 10 years ago, only Topps produced (cards) in quantity, and dealers were few and far between. .... Today, we have six manufacturers ... Everyone keeps their cards in Mint condition by placing them in plastic sleeves or by not opening them at all...Everyone expects to make a major profit from them someday...(but) collectors are saving their newer cards, waiting for eventual appreciation in value. Supply will exceed the demand and values will never be very high. And, finally, cards are printed in much greater quantities today, making them much more available in the first place." To which Beckett responds: while Don from Kansas has some valid points, if the number of collectors continues to explode, the enormous supply may turn out to be very small, thereby making cards a solid investment. Uh-huh.

- Finally, just for fun, the Hot and Cold Lists. Each edition contained a 30-player/set HOT list and 10-player/set COLD list. Readers would send in their votes, then Beckett would just make up the rankings or something.

Here's the HOT list from 1990:

1 - Ken Griffey Jr., 2 - Bo Jackson, 3 - Nolan Ryan, 4- Jose Canseco, 5 - Will Clark, 6 - Cecil Fielder, 7 - Ryne Sandberg, 8 - Mark Grace, 9 - Rickey Henderson, 10 - Don Mattingly, 11 - Eric Anthony, 12 - John Olerud, 13- Kirby Puckett, 14 - 1990 Score, 15 - Lenny Dykstra, 16 - Mark McGwire, 17 - Delino DeShields, 18 - Ben McDonald, 19 - Todd Ziele, 20 - Andre Dawson, 21 - Ruben Sierra, 22 - Barry Larkin, 23 - Roger Clemens, 24 - Glenn Davis, 25 - Greg Vaughn, 26 - Jim Abbott, 27 - Kelly Gruber, 28 - Jerome Walton, 29 - Chris Sabo, 30 - Bobby Bonilla.

Nothing wrong with that list. In fact, a lot right with that list. Probably 9 Hall of Famers and only 7 washouts. Not too shabby.
The NOT list includes: 1 - Pete Rose, 2 - Sportsflics (cards that appeared to move and were awesome); 3 - Chris Sabo (huh?), 4 - Darryl Strawberry, 5 - Matt Nokes, 6 - Gregg Jeffries, 7 - Sam Horn, 8 - Jose Canseco, 9 - Dwight Gooden, 10 - Ben McDonald.

No Hall of Famers and you can see a lot hatred for big-time prospects who burned out early.

So, in conclusion: put all your money in Sportsflics; Chris Sabo is great/terrible; it's always a good investment strategy to believe that unusual trends will continue unabated forever; and Matt still loves baseball cards.