When award-winning journalist Dave Jamieson's parents sold his childhood
home a few years ago, he rediscovered a prized boyhood possession: his
baseball card collection. Now was the time to cash in on the investments
of his youth. But all the card shops had closed, and cards were selling
for next to nothing online. What had happened?
In Mint Condition, his fascinating, eye-opening, endlessly
entertaining book, Jamieson finds the answer by tracing the complete
story of this beloved piece of American childhood. Picture cards had
long been used for advertising, but after the Civil War, tobacco
companies started slipping them into cigarette packs as collector's
items. Before long the cards were wagging the cigarettes. In the 1930s
cards helped gum and candy makers survive the Great Depression. In the
1960s royalties from cards helped transform the baseball players'
association into one of the country's most powerful unions, dramatically
altering the game. In the '80s and '90s, cards went through a
spectacular bubble, becoming a billion-dollar-a-year industry before all
but disappearing, surviving today as the rarified preserve of adult
collectors. Mint Condition is charming original history brimming with
colorful characters, sure to delight baseball fans and collectors.
