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Ecw Press - Jon Waldman

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169 pages

English

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Publié par	Ecw Press
Date de parution	01 avril 2011
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781554909711
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0400€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Copyright © Stephen Laroche and Jon Waldman, 2011
Published by ECW Press
2120 Queen Street East, Suite 200, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4E 1E2
416-694-3348 / info@ecwpress.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW Press. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors’ rights is appreciated.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Waldman, Jon Got ’em, got ’em, need ’em : a fan’s guide to collecting the top 100 sports cards of all time / Jon Waldman and Stephen Laroche.
ISBN 978-1-55022-980-6 Also Issued As: 978-1-55490-980-3 (pdf); 978-1-55490-971-1 (epub)
1. Sports cards—Collectors and collecting. i. Laroche, Stephen ii. Title. iii. Title: Got them, got them, need them.
gv568.5.w35 2011 796.075 c2010-906838-6
Text and cover design: Cyanotype
Cover image: CSA Images/Printstock Collection/Getty Images
The publication of Got ’Em, Got ’Em, Need ’Em has been generously supported by the Government of Ontario through Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit, by the OMDC Book Fund, an initiative of the Ontario Media Development Corporation, and by the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.

Acknowledgments
Stephen Laroche
Stephen dedicates the book to . . .
My father, Gerald, who has consistently supported my love for this industry and taught me the importance of having dreams and finding a way to make them happen.
Stephen would like to thank . . .
My co-author, Jon, who has made this project a wonderful one to work on . . . My amazing wife, Michelle, and my step-daughter, Guenevere, who are incredibly tolerant of my hobby . . . My parents, Gerald and Dianne, along with the rest of my close family and friends for their continued support . . . My wonderful friends who have been made through this hobby such as Baron Bedesky, John Pichette, Doug McLatchy, Fabio Del Rio, Russ Cohen, Doug Cataldo, Steve Feldman, Ryan Rajmoolie and Tracy Hackler . . . Dr. Brian Price for taking a chance on me in 2004 and allowing me to utilize my creative energy to help design some amazing cards . . . The pioneers of this hobby like Jefferson Burdick and Sy Berger whose hard work and dedication continues to be appreciated to this day.
Jon Waldman
Jon dedicates the book to . . .
My dad, Arthur, for all the Saturday trips to card stores and shows over the years. Those drives are some of the best memories of my life.
Jon wants to thank . . .
My co-author, Stephen, for all the hard work on the book. It’s been a decade in the making! . . . My wife, Elana, for all of her support and for feeding into my growing card collection . . . My parents, Denise and Arthur, and sister Mimi, in-laws Irene, David and Jesse, and the rest of my family and friends for so much support through book #2 . . . My buddies Michael, David and Blair for the fun times at shows and card shops as well as the entire Winnipeg collecting community . . . My co-workers and buddies in the hobby throughout the years, especially Russ, Doug, Paolo, Rob, Feldman, Jeff, Tracy, Dan, Ira, Jeff, Stephen, Jeremy, Chris H., Chris O., Chris C. (and any other Chrises I forgot), Baron, Brian, Richard, Clay, Scott, Fabio, Mark and Jake.

Foreword By Marty Appel
When I worked in the trading card industry in the ’90s, the hot term during those collecting madness days was “chase card.” It was a marketing term to indicate the special cards, like a Michael Jordan gold-plated, glossy chrome, limited edition, signed, with relic, alternate version, that people would chase to the ends of the earth knowing it would make them rich beyond their dreams.
The key word to me was dreams. We had chase cards when I was growing up in the ’50s, too, except we didn’t know the term, and we didn’t think about getting rich. The chase cards of that era were cards of your favorite team or favorite player, or in some cases, the missing numbers you sought to complete a set.
Somehow, I don’t think I was the only kid in New York who felt this.
To me, the ultimate chase card was Mickey Mantle. Except for his “All-Star cards” or cards on which he might be paired with someone else (like Willie Mays), or a team card in which his face was only 1/16", there was only one Mickey card each year, his regular Topps card — no frills, nothing different than anyone else, and no other manufacturer to compare it to. It really didn’t matter if we liked the picture or the design, it was the Mick! I promise you, I can still remember, all these years later, where I stood when I opened a pack that had Mickey Mantle in it. On the sidewalk outside the playground in Queens. That moment of recognition when you smelled the gum, peeled back the wax, moved past Harry Chiti and Russ Kemmerer and Norm Larker, and there he was, like a movie star, the blond hair, the handsome face, the bulging muscles, the uniform worn perfectly, the cap sitting just right, those pinstripes so vivid — wow.
I even remember when one year his height went from 5'10" to six feet, and I kind of knew, even then, that he was probably still 5'10" but either the Yankees or Topps decided he was somehow more perfect as a six-footer.
Stats? I know fans today love their stats to really know how a player does, but to me, the only real stats are the columns Topps gave us, the ones Sy Berger deemed necessary when he created the first set on his kitchen table in 1951.
The relationship between boy and card was just as powerful as between boy and girl a few years later. But the cards came first.
Jon Waldman and Stephen Laroche have done us a service here by honing in on very special cards from over the years. The exact one that clings to your memory (in my case, the ’56 Mantle) may not have made the list, but somehow, we “get it.” We know how it must have felt for a seven-year-old in 1933 to get a Babe Ruth, or for a six-year-old in 1958 to get a Bobby Hull. My son got a Don Mattingly rookie card in 1984 and experienced the same thrill. The joy of fatherhood was never better captured than in seeing history repeat itself.
I once thought there was something very personal, very solitary about a boy and his collection. I didn’t think it was a very social activity. Then I found others who coveted the cards, and we discovered trading and flipping, and suddenly, we were part of a social sub-culture. When we grew up, we bonded anew with the phenomena of card shows. Here we were, all grown, able to confess that yes, when we see a sports obituary, the bubblegum card on which the fellow appeared is what we think of first.
Thank you, Jon and Stephen for recognizing that. And you readers — it’s okay to have fun with this. I know I did.
Marty Appel is the author of 17 books including the New York Times bestseller Munson: The Life and Death of a Yankee Captain . He headed public relations and served as television producer for the New York Yankees and was the PR director for Topps in the 1990s.

The Modern History of Sports Cards
Decades from now, the sport collecting world won’t be what it is today, much like how today’s version of the hobby is miles different from the landscape of the 1980s.
You remember that time, don’t you? It was the other BCE — the Before Cash Era.
Yes, as innocent and naïve as it may sound, there was a period where cards weren’t kept in plastic sleeves or glass cases. Kids actually used to play with cards: flipping them, writing on them or worse — putting tape on them, pinning them to walls or placing them in bicycle spokes.
Then the boom hit and all of a sudden (or not so all of a sudden when you consider how long pricing guides have been around) cards were no longer pretty pictures and statistics — they were as tangible as stocks that could be bought, sold and traded on floors across the country. The New York Stock Exchange was in homes and school gyms across North America and beyond.
Like on the stock exchange, companies started popping up almost overnight. What was once a stronghold dominated almost solely by Topps (and its Canadian cousin O-Pee-Chee) suddenly was a boom market. Donruss, Fleer and Score were already mature when Upper Deck, Pro Set, Classic Games and countless others began to appear on store shelves. Adding to the now loaded market were a bevy of new food premiums like McDonald’s, Denny’s and Kraft, and unlicensed cards like the infamous Broders.
Many of the newcomers to the hobby weren’t collecting for the pure enjoyment of reading a card-back bio or saving their favorite players in a special case — they were investors who believed that a fresh rookie card (RC) of a hot prospect was like an IPO, destined to take off in value and become a college fund feeder for their kids.
But, as we all know, the market was just too big. The collectors began realizing that they could no longer have one of everything and either specialized or moved on as prices for packs and boxes increased, while the investors decided that there was another “next big thing” market or simply lost interest and soon began leaving the hobby, looking elsewhere for their investments.
Soon the boom was over. Over the next few years, many companies either closed down (Pro Set and many fly-by-night companies aimed at the draft market such as Signature Rookies) or were bought out (Leaf/Donruss, which had been a hobby institution for years, was purchased by