When award-winning journalist Dave Jamieson rediscovered his childhood
baseball card collection he figured that now was the time to cash in on
his "investments." But when he tried the card shops, they were nearly
all gone, closed forever. eBay was no help, either. Baseball cards were
selling for next to nothing. What had happened? In Mint Condition, the
first comprehensive history of this American icon, Jamieson finds the
answers and much more. In the years after the Civil War, tobacco
companies started slipping baseball cards into cigarette packs as
collector's items, launching a massive advertising war. Before long, the
cards were wagging the cigarettes. In the 1930s, baseball cards helped
gum and candy makers survive the Great Depression, and kept children in
touch with the game. After World War II, Topps Chewing Gum Inc. built
itself into an American icon, hooking a generation of baby boomers on
bubble gum and baseball cards. In the 1960s, royalties from cards helped
to transform the players' union into one of the country's most powerful,
dramatically altering the business of the game. And in the '80s and
'90s, cards went through a spectacular bubble, becoming a
billion-dollar-a-year industry before all but disappearing. Brimming
with colorful characters, this is a rollicking, century-spanning, and
extremely entertaining history.
