I recently purchased 16 Jeremy Roenick Upper Deck rookie cards, which are from the 1990-91 season. Coincidentally, the card holders, now yellowed with age, are from 1990 too. And so are the price tags, which are marked $6.00. I paid 50 cents per card, but once upon a time a UD JR RC was a solid $6 card.
Upon closer inspection of these price tags, you will notice something cool.
There’s a little hockey stick and puck on the price tags. The trading card hobby in the early 1990s was really an era of excess. There were numerous card shows every weekend around the U.S., as everyone tried to cash in. There seemed to be a new sports card price guides popping up all the time, and an endless number of trading cards clogging the checkout aisles of supermarkets.
Then you had frivolous things, like “sport-specific” price tags. Some dealer actually paid money for these “hockey card” price tags to put on these Roenick rookie cards. Really, they could have just used a plain white price sticker like one would use at a garage sale, but I guess these were more…fun?
Hell, the dealer could have just written in marker on the card holder. Then again, he would have to cross out the old price and write in the new price when the card’s value — and asking price — went up. Only that never happened.
So before I discard these crusty old holders and put the Roenick RCs in shiny new, gold-lettered “Rookie Card” top loaders, I thought I would share this price sticker — something that you would only really see in the early 1990s.
Question: What other excesses of the 1990s trading card boom can you think of? Leave a comment below. ■
Hello, the tag is like that so you KNOW its a hockey card! Duh!
I think my fav 90’s sport cart gimic was the over size cards on the bottom of UD hobby boxes. There was one series that feature pictures from classic old stadiums, and Durham Athletic park was one of them; the only minor league park in the series, I think.
Non – licensed cards being passed off as legit. Millions of them. I’d call that excessive. If you had a decent printer and some glossy card stock, you too could have a card company.
Price guides galore!! I remember when there were like 4-5 publications easily plus probably many more I wasn’t aware of!
Suddenly there were card stores everywhere, none of the ‘dealers’ put prices on their cards, and haggling over prices became non existent. If you questioned the price the answer was “that’s what the book says”. The prices shown in the many publications seemed to be carved in stone.
Hah, yes…that’s what the book says. Oh, man…I totally suppressed remembering that!
Arena Tuxedo card set. I got few of those from 100 random card packs at Target and all I could think of is WTF.
Go to baseball that infamous 1989 Fleer Billy Ripken card.