That Insane Autograph Set: Collecting 1997-98 Be A Player Autographed Hockey Cards

Introduction (This is a revision of an earlier posting from 3 years ago.  I would like to thank an anonymous reader named Mike for alerting me to the foil-color-based identification of the manufacturer autographs)

As noted in previous posts, autographs are by far the scarcest commodity in sports card collecting.  Obviously, card companies can make limited runs of game-used jerseys or other types of unique, low-print run inserts, but the willingness of a player to sign his or her name and is by far the most limiting aspect of card production.

Indeed, it is the scarcity of autographs that makes the 1997-98 Be A Player hockey set so amazing to many die-hard collectors.  Because most of the cards in the set had a very large number of autographed parallel cards, it is possible to put together almost the entire set with autographs.  I currently own all of the possible 249 cards with autographs that could be pulled from packs.  In this posting, I will give a history of this set and discuss some of its quirks and great characteristics.

The early history of the “Be A Player” brand

The “Be A Player” brand is a property of the National Hockey League Players’ Association (NHLPA).  Back in 1993-94, the NHLPA contracted with Upper Deck to produce the Be A Player brand without NHL licensed trademark logos as a way to produce another revenue stream for the NHLPA. (footnote 1)  Because the NHLPA and NHL have gone through a series of strikes and lockouts over the past 25 years, the brand was started largely a way to hedge some extra money for the association and players in case of a work stoppage.  In 1994-95 and 1995-96 Upper Deck produced sets with the innovation of having one autograph card per pack.  This was an insanely great bargain for collectors at the time because the packs were actually not that expensive as a mid-priced product.  With the 1994-95 season starting with a long-planned lock out by the NHL owners, NHL players probably had a lot of both time and incentive to sign cards for the first year of Be A Player cards.

The 1994-95 Be A Player set was 180 cards with one autographed parallel card per pack.  From what I know from talking or emailing with people over the years, only 178 cards were available in autographed form with common players signing around 2400 cards each and star players signing less.  Wayne Gretzky was the key autographed card in the set, and Gretzky’s card was super-short printed (SSP).  Upper Deck applied stickers to the back of the autographed cards thus indicating their authenticity.  Upper Deck expanded the set to 225 cards in 1995-96, but I do not know if any players’ autographs were missing from the set (any help I can get here would be appreciated).  Similar to the prior year, there was one autographed card per pack, which was an insane bargain.

In 1996-97, the NHLPA shifted the Be A Player name brand to Pinnacle Brands.  Pinnacle expanded the set to include insert cards that could also be found in autographed format.  These insert series were titled “Biscuit In The Basket”, “Link To History”, and “Stacking The Pads”.  In what would become an ominous sign for the future, Pinnacle did not put stickers or other authenticating marks on the backs of the cards to indicate that the autographs were authentic.  I do not know much about the numbers of cards signed in this year and have not seem many cards from the set.  I assume Pinnacle made it so that one could identify manufacturer autographs with the color of foil on the card.

The 1997-98 Be A Player set

By 1997, Pinnacle Brands was in a lot of financial trouble.  They had entered the sports card industry when it was booming in 1988, but the Junk Card Era of too many card manufacturers was about to take Pinnacle as a victim.  This showed in their execution of the 1997-98 Be A Player set.

While the set was expanded to two series of 125 cards (Series A and Series B = 250 total cards) plus inserts, the execution of the set left a lot to be desired.  Again, autographed cards were inserted one-per-pack but did not have stickers or different back marking authenticity as a manufacturer autograph.  The way that one tells manufacturer-autographed cards from other cards is by the color of foil used in the player's name and the Pinnacle logo.  Gold foil indicates an autographed card that was certified by Pinnacle and pulled from a pack.  Silver foil indicates a base card that should be without an autograph.  If one finds an autograph card with a silver foil name and logo, the card is either a forgery or was signed in person after being pulled from a pack as a base card.  This situation can make identification confusing as one comes across these cards.  Because Pinnacle vanished into bankruptcy, there is no web site or published guidelines to tell collectors 20 years later about the foil color differences.

Caption: Eric Lindros #1 base card is on the left.  Note the silver foil ink used to print his name and the Pinnacle logo.  On the right is an authenticated Brett Hull autographed card.  Note the gold foil ink used to print his name and the Pinnacle logo.

When Pinnacle ran into financial trouble in 1998, much of the production from Series B was left in limbo in boxes in the Pinnacle warehouse (footnote 1).  This problem with Series B has actually been a blessing to collectors interested in completing the set today.  Because these boxes were sold off to distressed merchandise liquidators and other parties, it took them longer to work their way into the system to be available to collectors.  Indeed, unopened boxes of both series still sell for around between $55 and $100 on eBay (checked 12-9-2016) and are a bargain at 16 autographs-per-box, which is insane by today’s standards for a middle-market product.

Attributes of the Set

The hit rate per pack for auto and inserts was:

Autographs 1:1 (These are autographs on any version of the card, regular or die cut)

Die Cut Autographs 1:7

Prismatic Die Cut Autographs - 100 sets made

One Timers 1:7

Stacking the Pads 1:15

Take A Number 1:15

However, this is where things get a little weird and you have to know something about the set.  First, none of the “One Timers”, “Stacking the Pads”, or “Take A Number” insert cards were autographed.  This was a change from previous years.  Second, certain cards were extremely short-printed.  Basically, Eric Lindros only autographed the Prismatic Die Cut cards, so there are only 100 Lindros autographs in existence in this set. (This observation on Lindros comes from an old card dealer with whom I have emailed.  I have never seen it written anywhere.)  Die cut cards have the word PLAYER cut in them along the right border.  Prismatic die cuts are harder to find than foil die cuts with a print run of 100.  When Lindros #1 autographed 1997-98 Be A Player prismatic die cut cards occasionally change hands on eBay, they go for hundreds of dollars despite Lindros never making it to the Hall of Fame due to injuries.  Again, set makers know the Lindros Die Cut Autograph is the scarce card in the 1997-98 Be A Player set.  Indeed, you can buy an Eric Lindros certified autographed card from other sets for under $5.00.

Caption: Eric Lindros #1 Prismatic Die Cut is the hardest autographed card to get in the series.  Only 100 were produced. I had the Lindros autograph authenticated by SGC along with all the Hall of Fame caliber players' cards because they do not have stickers or holograms guaranteeing their authenticity. 

Another anomaly in the set is that no known factory-autographed version of #18 Bryan Berard has ever surfaced in regular or die cut format.  There is no known reason for this omission.  1997-98 was several years before Berrard received a horrible eye injury that cut short his playing career, and he was not between teams that year.  One just has to believe that Berard never signed his cards or that Pinnacle never sent them to him.  They may have thought they would insert them in Series B, but financial trouble kept them from following through.  Who knows?

What makes the 1997-98 Be A Player autograph set fun to try to piece together is (1) it can be done (with the exception of Berard’s and to some extent Lindros’ cards) on a relatively tight budget and (2) that it was such an insane undertaking in 1997-98 by today’s standards.  Getting so many autographs from so many players would likely cost a fortune today and the prices of packs would have to be astronomical.

Overall, one can build a series of most of the common autographed cards in this series on eBay quite quickly, even in 2016.  The series is stacked with lots of minor players who signed a ton of cards.  I have seen 100 autogrpahed card lots go for $30 plus shipping.  The tougher autographs, outside of the Lindros Die Cut, in the series are Martin Brodeur, Brett Hull, Joe Sakic, Al MacInnis, Ray Bourque, and Ed Belfour.  I believe that all of these cards, except maybe for Al MacInnis, were short printed.  There are lots of semi-stars in the set like a young Joe Thornton and Tomas Holmstrom but their cards are pretty plentiful.  Since Pinnacle is not in business, only people that have the original print run specifications for the set, who might have been dealers, would know.

Caption: Ray Bourque #248 and Martin Brodeur #2 are short-printed autographs in the set.  They are still surprisingly affordable on eBay at around $30.

In buying 1997-98 Be A Player autographed cards on eBay, bidders should take care.  Because the cards do not have stickers, holograms or printing on the back saying they are an authentic autograph, there is the chance of forgery.  Make sure that the autographed card has a gold foil ink name and logo and not silver foil ink.  An autographed silver foil card is very likely a forgery.  However, any die cut cards' autographs must be genuine because die cut cards (either foil or prismatic) were not issued without autographs.

The good news for most players' regular-issue cards in the set is there is not much economic incentive to forge signatures because the players were not major players and they signed a ton of cards.  There are plenty of the cards around for little money of these players.  For the bigger names, look for the gold foil or try to pull them directly from packs yourselves.  Since you can still find boxes of 1997-98 Be A Player cards around, this is possible.  Also note that all 1997-98 Be A Player autograph hockey cards were signed with black permanent sharpie-type ink with a relatively thin pen line.  Several cards have slightly wider pen signings, but still in black color.

Also, never purchase an Eric Lindros #1 autographed card that is not a prismatic, die cut card. If anybody owns a gold foil regular issue Lindros card, please send me a scan, and I will update this posting.  While that situation is possible, any buyer should be wary.  All other cards in the set are available in autographed format in their regular version (e.g.,  not a foil die cut or prismatic die cut).

Postscript

After Pinnacle’s Bankruptcy, the Be A Player brand was shifted by the NHLPA to a company started by Dr. Brian Price and was produced in 1998-99 before the NHLPA decided to change the name of their authorized brand to “In the Game”, which eventually became the name of Price’s company.  In 2005, the Be A Player brand was resurrected when the NHLPA broke away from the In The Game company and re-signed with Upper Deck.  However, Upper Deck has not produced Be A Player branded cards since the 2009-10 series.

End Note

Like all other posts, please feel free to make comments.  I review all comments before they are posted in order to reduce spam and keep things on topic.  Also, it may take me a few days to review comments.

Footnotes

1: http://prezsez.wordpress.com/2011/06/10/could-this-be-the-end-of-be-a-player-trading-cards/

Buying Hot Rookie Cards on eBay: A Bad Investment

Preface

As with other postings, I again want to emphasize that sports cards are a lousy investment.  Buy sports cards for any other reason than to make money.  Buy them because you love sports, admire a certain player, love to make sets or any other reason than to make money.

The Hot Rookie or Young Player

Rookie cards are the currency of sports card collecting in the modern era.  After the market for sports cards shifted from being a market for children to a collectables market at the beginning of the junk wax era in the mid-1980s, the only cards that have high value are rookie cards of famous players.  The best evidence of this fact is to open an issue of the Sports Market Report or go to PSA’s web site at look at the value of cards from recent years (go to: http://www.psacard.com/SMRPriceGuide/ ).  Only Rookie Cards in High Grade (PSA 9 or 10) are very valuable.

Why are rookie cards worth more?  To somebody not in the sports card hobby, this is actually a legitimate question.  The answer is that having a rookie card means that you have a card of a player before they became famous at professional sports.  It’s usually a player’s first chronological card, so there is no ‘sports card history’ of that player.  In other words, you have a card of that player from when he or she was just some ‘Joe Schmo’ and not on the cover of GQ.  Also, a player’s rookie year is likely to be the year where the least number of cards are printed of the player.  Any player that is a star in their rookie year has increased number of cards printed of him or her in subsequent years because of increased popularity.  For example, Panini Prestige printed a complete seven card special insert series of Tim Tebow cards in their 2012 Prestige series just largely because he’s Tim Tebow.  Supply expands to meet demand.

Caption: The Hot Rookie card: 2011 Topps Chrome Colin Kaepernick Black Refractor auto /25.  This card sold on 1-20-2013 on eBay for $1500.00 in an auction that garnered 31 bids.  Kaepernick has started 1/2 the season and has led his 49ers team to the Super Bowl in his 2nd year in the NFL.

As a matter of fact, not even all rookie cards of great players are valuable.  Because Panini, Topps and Upper Deck have so many brands (Prestige, Chrome, Finest, Score, UD, Rookies & Stars, etc., etc.), there are literally dozens to hundreds of different rookie cards of various players.  Again, this is an example of how supply has expanded to meet demand and thus the average price of a rookie card for any player goes down.  Indeed, players that emerge during their rookie season can even have more cards printed of them in late-season card series, which is again an example of supply expanding to meet demand.

The one exception to this supply expands to meet demand rule is autographed rookie cards.  There is a reason that all the valuable hot rookie cards are now only autographed cards.  Autographed cards are limited to the number of cards that a player can or is willing to autograph for the various card companies.  While a player can obviously sign thousands of cards (or the little autograph stickers that are put on cards), the player cannot sign nearly as fast as printing presses churn out new non-autographed cards.  Also, players get tired of signing cards; machines do not get tired of printing them.  As a result, autographed cards become the scarce rookie card commodity.  Again, look at SMR or PSA’s web site at the value of great young players' cards from recent years across all sports.  The only rookie cards that have very high value are the autographed cards.

Buying Rookie Cards of Hot Players

This brings to the front the question of how does the collector acquire valuable rookie cards?  There are two basic ways.  First, the collector can buy new packs and boxes of a card company’s new issues in hopes of snagging one of the randomly inserted autographed rookie cards.  Premium card brands tend to have more rookie autographed cards inserted, which is why the collector pays more-dollars-per-pack for the premium cards.   The card companies also aggressively advertise the “hit-rate” per box of autographs with brands like Bowman Chrome and Bowman Draft Prospects topping the baseball rookie card brands because of aggressive signing of young prospects to autograph contracts.

The problem with buying packs and boxes, however, is that the collector has to roll the dice with Lady Luck on getting hot rookie autographs.  Your chances of getting a hot rookie autograph are much less than getting a card autographed by some “good player” who is not a rookie and thus has 15,000 autographs floating around on existing cards.

Second, and more commonly, the collector can go on eBay (or some other site like Beckett’s Marketplace) and buy a hot rookie autograph card from somebody who was lucky enough to get one in their packs or boxes.  This seems easy enough.  You pay the market rate for the hot rookie’s card, it gets shipped to you, you get to own it, and you capture its future appreciation in value as the player in question wins Super Bowls, scores hat tricks, hit home runs or whatever he or she does.  If it was so easy……

It’s not.  When you buy a hot rookie on eBay, you enter a market where the value of the hot rookie card is tremendously over-inflated as an investment due to non-rational thinking.  Markets and emotions do not mix very well, and the sports card market is one that is jet-fueled by emotion and speculation.  For example, most sports card collectors love sports and have emotional attachments to particular teams and particular players.  I personally think this is a good attribute of collectors and sports cards, but it is a bad recipe for investing.  For example, what makes us search for the highest yield in Certificates of Deposit (for those of us with savings) is that we have no emotional attachment to the financial institution that takes our money as long as they are FDIC insured.  This attribute is what makes the market for Certificates of Deposit so competitive and efficient with relatively low-profits for banks.  We rationally search and take the highest interest rate.  No emotion, no mistakes, pretty rational.

Here’s why the market for hot rookies is irrational:

1. It suffers from hype.  ESPN and the culture of 24 hour media attention raise the profile of young rookie players who are doing well.  They get a disproportional amount of media time.  Also, marketers, looking for the next young star to lock into their advertising plans, tend to make younger stars the focus on their advertising.  For example, how many times have you seen Robert Griffin III on television advertisements this year?

2. It suffers from distorted supply.  For example, let’s say that Robert Griffin III (RG3) does go on to become a Pro Football Hall of Fame Player and is enshrined in Canton, Ohio.  In this case, RG3 would end up signing about 100,000+ more football cards over the rest of his career as supply would rise to meet demand.  This would have a severe effect on the price for autographed RG3 cards.  While there would still be the same number of autographed RG3 rookie cards in existence as today, some of the demand for those cards would be siphoned off by people that just want an autographed RG3 card, just not necessarily a rookie card.  Those people in 2012 have to chase the smaller number of RG3 rookie cards on the market.  In the future, they can chase the any of the 100,000+ cards signed in the future.

3. It suffers from biased expectations of the future.  Psychology shows that there is a human tendency to extrapolate today’s norms into being the future’s norms and to underestimate the chances of bad events happening.  So, for example, because football players like Colin Kaepernick, Andrew Luck and Robert Griffen III had great years this year as rookies (or a 2^nd year player in the case of Kaepernick), the estimates of their future accomplishments by many of the buyers on the market assume continued high performance into the long term future.  This is not likely the case.  Without examining the merits of any of the three players, history suggests that injuries, loss of skills, regression to mean performance, off-the-field events or poor coaching will keep them out of the Hall of Fame.  While I am not a betting person, the odds are probably 1-3 that not one of them ever makes it to the Hall of Fame.  While they have shown they are great players for a short period of time (i.e., one season), Hall of Fame credentials are built over a decade of strong performance.  In the short-term 24 hour media world that we live in, nobody is thinking ahead a decade.

Because of these three market anomalies and collectors' emotional attachments to players and teams, the market for hot rookies itself is way too hot or super-inflated.  Prices rocket upward to the point that even if the player go on to make the Hall of Fame, the card probably does not gain too much in value in the future or even drops.  Given the odds of not making the Hall of Fame in any sport, buying hot rookies is an investment huge negative expected value.

Some Evidence

If you do not believe the thesis of this post, let’s look at some data.  I went over to the shelf and pulled out SMR magazine from February 2007 (5 years ago).  On page 92, the valuable PSA graded rookies from 2006 football card issues are listed (similar to how 2012 football card issues would be listed in February 2013 SMR today).

The players whose cards were valuable were:

Jay Cutler

Matt Leinert

Reggie Bush

Vince Young

DeAngelo Williams

AJ Hawk

Their autograph cards in PSA 9 condition were listed as being worth anywhere from $140 to $345. (footnote 1)

Here are some comparisons from eBay today:

2006 Donruss Elite Reggie Bush #204 Auto /100

Last sold on eBay in BGS 9 grade for $25 including shipping on 11-12-2012

SMR in February 2007 was $275.00 in PSA 9.

2006 Donruss Elite Matt Leinart #192 Auto /100

Last sold on eBay ungraded for $13 including shipping on 11-21-2012

SMR in February 2007 was $140 in PSA 9.

2006 Donruss Elite Vince Young #221 Auto /100

Last sold on eBay ungraded for $11 including shipping on 1-22-2013

SMR in February 2007 was $150 in PSA 9. (footnote 2)

While one could argue that 2006 was a particularly bad year for rookie cards of football players, it is an example of how hot rookie cards depreciate in value over time on average.  Players who are hot and the next Joe Namath usually are not. (footnote 3)

Occasionally there is the breakthrough player like Tom Brady, who was drafted in the fifth round and whose cards continue to have high value over time.  However, if you are a veteran collector, by the time you realized that Tom Brady was a great player his rookie cards had already taken off in price.  And for every Tom Brady, there are 25 Matt Leinarts.

What to do?

As I said before, collect great rookie cards for any reason other than trying to make money.  Buy a Colin Kaepernick rookie card because you love the 49ers and you want a piece of history related to their run to the Super Bowl in 2012-13.  Buy a Tim Tebow rookie card because you are a Florida Gator fan or like what Tebow stands for in his religious beliefs.  Buy an RG3 card because you like his pencil mustache and he won the Heisman Trophy.  Just don’t buy their cards to make money.

Also, if you build sets like me, you might want to focus on building sets where there are autographed inserts of rookies.  If you hit a hot rookie auto in a pack or box by chance, it can often finance building the entire base set plus some inserts if you sell it.

If you are not going to hold a hot rookie card for a long time, one can always try arbitraging the market.  That would entail buying a rookie when the price is low and quickly reselling if and when the price goes high.  Again, I do not think this is a good way to make money.  You either need to have insight into NFL talent that other people do not have or you are just playing roulette with your money.  It's better to buy a good low-risk mutual fund.

End Note

Like all other posts, please feel free to make comments.  I review all comments before they are posted in order to reduce spam and keep things on topic.  Also, it may take me a few days to review comments.

Footnotes

1. PSA 10 cards of these 2006 rookies were worth much more, but these should not be considered due to the almost impossible-to-understand nature in which PSA 10s are handed out by PSA.

2. Data was taken by looking at all the completed auctions for 2006 Donruss Elite cards on 1-31-2013.  Donruss Elite was chosen because it was a medium-to-high end brand with autographs only being numbered to 100 on the cards.  It was one of three brands listed in the February 2007 SMR where cards had reported values.

3. It should be noted that Cutler’s autographed rookie cards still hold some value as reported in SMR.

1991 Pro Line Football Portraits: The Worst Junk Wax Set Ever

Prologue

Sorry about the long delay between postings.  Work has been busy.

A Really Bad Set of over 300 Cards

In previous posts, I have talked about the Junk Wax or Junk Era for sports cards that ran from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s.  During this era, the sports card companies went crazy producing virtually any kind of set that was eaten up by the customer, which had changed from kids to collectors.  A lot of really bad sets were produced in this era, because mostly anything that was printed basically ended up selling OK with hoarding collectors.

The 1991 Pro Line football set is the worst-of-the-worst in my opinion because it took sports cards farthest away from anything that a kid or even a sports fan would want to own.  In the 1991 Pro Line football set of 300 cards plus some inserts, there are:

1. No action pictures.  Most of the poses were sort of ridiculous vanity shots that kids sometimes now get for their high school yearbooks.  The pictures seem to have little connection to the players, their personalities or their positions.

2. Almost no player information on the backs of cards.  Instead, there are inane paragraph-long observations by the player profiled about what it’s like to be a rookie or star or whatever.  The cards had no stats, no schools, no player measurements, and no player trivia.   They were worthless for player information.

3. Most of the cards shamelessly display players wearing official NFL-licensed merchandise.  This set was more of a catalog for officially licensed NFL merchandise than a football card set.

4. A special subset had player’s wives showing off the officially licensed NFL women’s wear.  Player’s wives?!?!?

Caption: On the left, Erik Howard of the Giants displays his officially licensed NFL T-shirt and shorts while seemingly trying to hold in a massive dump.  On the right, Eric Allen shows off his flat-top haircut, officially licensed NFL Eagles warm up jacket, and officially licensed NFL Zuba Pants while sitting in front of what looks like the entrance to a Men's Room at Veteran's Stadium.  I own and keep these several cards only for their schlock value.

Why?

This set was the brainchild of a person at NFL Properties, which was the producer of the Pro Line set and not a sports card company.  Printing and distribution had to have been outsourced to other parties.

I can just see the conversation at NFL properties that got this set going:

Executive #1:  We should go directly into the sports card business.  Those things are selling like hotcakes.

Executive #2:  Yeah.  People will buy anything.  Donruss put out this crappy baseball set called ‘Studio’ this summer with pictures of players that looked vanity shots from a high school year book.  People bought’em. (footnote 1)

Executive #1: Really? No way.

Executive #2:  Yep.  And the best part is you don’t have to spend money on game photographers or even going to games.  You just take artsy looking still shots of players.

Executive #1: What if we put the players in NFL merchandise?  The commissioner says we need to sell more of that stuff.

Executive 2: What about the women’s merchandise?

Executive 1: The players have wives don’t they?

Executive 2: Awesome.  You’re a genius.

And so this atrocious set was born.

Caption: On the right, Jennifer Montana’s rear end is used on this insert card to hawk the NFL’s ‘Spirit Collectible’ line of women’s clothing.  On the left, Babette Kosar models a ‘Spirit Collectible’ team jacket while contemplating how she will have to divorce her husband Bernie when he burns through all his money.   I own and keep these cards only for their schlock value.

In Reality...

In terms of history, the 1991 Pro Line set did create some friction between the NFL and the Player’s Association (i.e., the NFLPA or player’s union).  The sports card companies had been getting legal permission to use the players’ images through the NFLPA and were paying royalties to the union.  NFL Properties went directly to the individual players in the 1991 Pro Line set and each was paid $5000 for participating and signing off on their image rights for this set (footnote 2).  The relationship between the NFL and the NFLPA was already icy in 1991, so NFL Properties probably saw no need give the union more money, because such money was often used to file lawsuits against the NFL.  No independent card company would have likely risked the wrath of the NFLPA in signing so many players directly and not going through the union.  Such a company would have risked not getting a license from the union in future years if the direct-to-players move did not work out.

In defense of the 1991 Pro Line set, it did have one innovation, which was putting autographed versions of the cards (about one-per-wax box) in the product.  Also, the autograph cards contained stickers or stamps to verify that they were genuine, which was ahead of its time in 1991.  That being said, NFL properties sort of blew the autograph inserts by having players sign the cards on the back. (footnote 3)  This makes the cards less presentable for the collector.

There still is a very active secondary market for these 1991 Pro Line autographs on eBay, and several collectors are passionate about trying to put together autographed sets (footnote 4).

Caption: Nick Lowery, in a very flattering pose, shows off his officially licensed NFL shorts and shirt.  For some reason, three pairs of shoes and a Chiefs helmet are placed randomly around Nick for ambiance.  I am throwing this card out after this post.

Market reception of the set seemed to be poor by 1991 standards (footnote 2).  My guess is that the autographs became a part of the set after focus groups “threw up” on the cards for being so bad.  Despite the modest reception, the NFL continued to produce two more Pro Line sets in 1992 and 1993.  NFL Properties seemed to have learned a little bit of a lesson by 1992, as the 1992 set had more action shots of players in real games interspersed with vanity photos.  Also, the hawking of NFL clothes was more subtle.  By 1995, NFL Properties had sold the ‘Pro Line' name to Classic Games and was out of the card business.

There are still plenty of factory sealed Pro Line 1991 football boxes around and they sell on eBay for around $12-15 when shipping is included (footnote 5).  This is less than they cost collectors when they originally came out.  Without the possibility of an autograph in each box, I suspect they would sell for much less.

In closing, what made the 1991 Pro Line set so truly awful is how far it strayed from what many sports card enthusiasts, myself included, feel is great about sports cards, kids and collecting.  Putting aside the obvious and ridiculous amount of product placement for NFL licensed clothing, the set seemed to have everything a kid would not want from a set.  Imagine that your parents gave you a box of this set by accident back in 1991.  You and friends could trade a Phylicia Rashad for a Stacey O'Brien while developing a craving for Zuba Pants.

In conclusion, there is no market for non-autographed cards from this set and such cards are truly junk.  Please throw all cards from this set in the recycle bin, so as to save some trees from being cut down and to save the the world from the embarrassment of this set.

End Note

Like all other posts, please feel free to make comments.  I review all comments before they are posted in order to reduce spam and keep things on topic.  Also, it may take me a few days to review comments.

Footnotes

1. The whole vanity shot of players idea was first fully implemented in Donruss' Studio brand of cards starting in summer of 1991.  While cards with vanity pictures (and players performing their hobbies and such) had appeared in cards sets before, the Studio brand centered an entire set around "studio" portraits of players.  Donruss Studio sets rank high on my list of worthless junk sets.

2. http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19911020&slug=1312041

3. Another interesting post on this set can be found here: http://sanjosefuji.blogspot.com/2011/03/good-bad-ugly-3-1991-pro-line-portraits.html .  That blog is where I became aware of the autograph location issue, which I have found mentioned in other descriptions of the set.

4. An interesting site that shows one person's passion for these autographs can be found here: http://bcn33rs.wordpress.com/about/ .  My perception of the market for Pro Line autograph cards is from examining all finished auctions on eBay on 11-11-2012.

5. The prices for wax boxes of Pro Line cards is from examining all finished auctions on eBay on 11-11-2012.

What is Junk Wax (or What are Junk Era Cards) and what caused the junk wax era?

Introduction

I am neither the first person nor probably the last to address this issue.  I want to first give credit to two very good articles about the junk wax era.  The first is by Ryan Cracknell on the Cardboard Connection web site (footnote 1).  The other is an eBay Guide by a person named Setbuilders, whom I cannot find his or her real name on eBay (footnote 2).

This posting will also reinforce a common theme you will see on this blog.  That theme is: Don’t Collect Sports Cards to Make Money!  In general, sports cards are a risky and lousy investment as compared to almost anything mainstream like stocks, mutual funds, gold or even a low-yielding money market account.  Sports card collecting should be done instead because you love doing it for any reason other than making money and you can spare a few dollars to indulge that love.  Rarely, will you make any money collecting.

Junk Wax

Junk wax stands for wax packs or boxes of wax packs of sports cards from the late 1980s or early 1990s that have very little value today.  This time period is also referred to as the “junk era” for sports cards.  Cards from this era have little value because they were massively overprinted in relation to what their demand would become and has been in recent years.  Hence, supply of these cards wildly outstrips demand, even for the best players’ rookie cards, which leads to low values or prices.  For example, the vast majority of 1988 Tom Glavine rookie cards that sell on eBay in PSA 9 (Mint) condition, sell for less than their cost of grading (footnote 3).  Thus, even though Glavine is a sure-bet Hall of Fame player who is not tainted by steroids or other PEDs, his cards are so abundant that they must be absolutely GEM-MINT  in order to get graded and sell at a profit.

The exact years of this junk era are unclear, but many argue that it runs from 1986 to 1993.  I think it actually started earlier than 1986, but 1985 issues by Topps, Donruss and Fleer sets had some amazing rookie players (Clemens, Puckett, & McGwire in Topps), which seem to make those sets look more valuable than say 1986 sets, which largely have Jose Conseco as the only key rookie and Jose’s stock as a great player sank like the Titanic long ago.

The baseball strike of 1994-95, which wiped out the 1994 World Series, is often seen as the end of the junk era (footnote 2) because it massively decreased interest in baseball.  This decline in popularity of baseball, which is the main sport for collecting sports cards, caused many sports card stores to go out of business (footnote 2) and several sports card manufacturers to begin having financial trouble that ultimately led to their demise.  The remaining companies had to adjust their strategies to survive (having multiple brands, shorter print runs, inserts, autographs, etc.), and ultimately demand and supply for cards came into balance, although newer cards will never likely have the value that vintage cards retain.

Makings of a Mania

The junk wax era had all the makings of a classic economic bubble in which assets trade or sell at prices that are very inflated over their true value (footnote 4).  I would refer to junk wax more as a mania than a bubble because economic bubbles usually burst very quickly leaving people who hold once-inflated assets with very suddenly much less valuable assets.  For example of a bubble, think of real estate in San Diego.  Housing prices dropped almost 30 percent in 2007 and 2008, which is a tremendous rate of deceleration (footnote 5) and stock market bubbles often crash in less than a day.  The inherent lack of value of junk era cards was discovered much more slowly and some people today still do not understand that their carefully collected and protected junk era cards are not worth very much (footnote 1).  In others words, the bubble did not just pop.  The lack of value of junk era cards became knowledge more slowly with those hanging onto their "junk wax" longer taking the worst losses.

The cause of the junk era mania was the transformation of sports cards being primarily sold to children (or purchased by parents to give to children) to sports cards being primarily sold to collectors or hobbyists (footnotes 1,2).  Even though the first baseball cards were packaged with tobacco products, baseball cards and subsequently other sports cards were often given to children by adults.  For example, even on the back of 1952 Red Man Chewing Tobacco cards is the trademark line: ‘These Baseball Cards are for Red Man “Chewers” and Their Boys’.  It was anticipated that cards would make it into the hands of children who would see the players as athletic role models.  By the 1960s, Topps cards were almost exclusively found in the candy and gum aisles of your local drug stores and general merchandise stores (or what were often called dime stores).  I remember buying the vast majority of my childhood cards from 1^st through 5^th grade at a drug store that I would stop at with my family after Church on Sunday to eat lunch at the counter.  I also purchased cards at another drug store that was a bike ride from my house and even in 7^th and 8^th grade several friends and I would ride our bikes up to this drug store to purchase a soda and Topps Hockey or Baseball cards.

Kids were not collectors but rather read, examined, tacked to bulletin boards or played games with their cards usually destroying them in the process.  I must have destroyed cards that would be worth thousands of dollars today.  For example, my friends and I created a hockey game where we shot dice at little goals using hockey cards that were in the palm of our hand.  Bobby Orr was one of my “lucky” players and I won many games with his cards but destroyed them in the process.  We also had baseball games with cards, stepped all over them and colored beards and glasses on the guys we hated from the Yankees (I grew up near Detroit).

The main point is that almost all kids acted like this with their sports cards.  It was part of growing up.  The vast majority of vintage cards printed were destroyed by their owners.  If not totally destroyed by their owners, they were put in boxes after their owners grew tired of them.  These boxes in most cases were inevitably thrown out by parents doing Spring cleaning in some future year.

However, there were a small number of adults who collected cards or by chance got their hands on some cards that survived being thrown out by somebody’s parent.  By the early 1970s, many of these people were meeting in clubs or swap meets to trade or sell cards.  It became apparent that some cards were valuable or desired (Mickey Mantle cards, tobacco cards, etc.), but there was little information about the value of these cards.  While some mail order houses advertised prices in generalist hobby magazines or developed mailing lists with cards and prices, there was no solid information on pricing.  There were a couple of low circulation publications like Sports Collectors Digest or Baseball Hobby News, but no systematic price guides.  This situation was not a big deal because the number of hobbyists collecting cards was rather small.

This changed with the 1979 Sport Americana Baseball Card Price Guide in 1979 by James Beckett and Dennis Eckes.  By collecting information from Hobby Dealers (who were not that many in number), Beckett and Eckes were able to lay out the values of various cards.  For example, a Mint condition 1951 Bowman Mickey Mantle card #253 was being sold for $90.00 by dealers (Beckett and Eckes, 1979, p. 32)  That price would be $285.59 in 2012 US dollars adjusting by the consumer price index.

Caption: This is a scan of my copy of the first Beckett price guide published in 1979.  My late father found this at a garage sale in the early 1990s.

Beckett followed with more price guides and was producing a monthly baseball card price guide magazine by December 1984 (footnote 6).  This was a major turning point for the sports card market because people realized that there was money in those pieces of cardboard with pictures of athletes on them (footnotes 1,2).  Newspapers caught wind of the value of sports cards and articles began running about how people were turning old attic finds into hard cash.

For new sports card issues by the early 1980s, cards had become collectibles and a flood of new buyers entered the market (footnotes 1,2).  These buyers, however, were quite different from the children who previously played with cards.  Most of the flood of new buyers were adults or at least teenagers, and they tended to preserve their cards in either plastic pocket protectors or other means that protected the conditions of the cards.  The goal of course was to have fun collecting AND to make money on their well-preserved collections when they would later sell them (footnote 2).  The confidence of these new collectors was buoyed by the continued rise in value of vintage cards.  For example, by 1984, the Mint condition 1951 Bowman Mickey Mantle card #253 had risen from $90.00 in 1979 to $375.00 in five years (footnote 6).

This set the stage for the sport card mania to take off full flight.  There was a limited supply of vintage cards available.  However, new cards came out every year and logically if these cards would similarly rise in value as did vintage cards, there was money to be made (along with the fun of collecting).  Or so people thought….

The flood of new supply of new cards to the market

The sports card hobby kicked into overdrive to meet this drastically increased demand in the early 1980s.  A number of factors began to dramatically increase the supply of new cards to the market.  They were:

1.  After years of legal wrangling, Donruss and Fleer entered as fully-licensed major baseball card producing companies in 1981 (see my prior post on how licensing works here: http://junkwaxandobservations.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-sports-card-royalties-work.html ).  These companies broke the 25-year Topps monopoly by not distributing gum with their cards but rather stickers.  Score would then enter the market in 1988, and Upper Deck would enter the baseball card market in in 1989.  Suddenly, there were multiple companies turning out baseball cards and more generally sports cards.  This would of course increase the supply of cards dramatically across the market (footnote 2)

2.  Sports card specialty stores began popping up everywhere like crazy to meet the hobbyist demand.  You could find vintage cards at these stores, but they extensively catered to the latest card releases by all the various card companies.  They became the primary distribution outlet for sports cards, as your local drug stores had limited shelf space and could not handle multiple brands of cards.

3.  None of the sports card companies practiced restricting their print runs.  They would sell as many cards as they could print.  Huge hobby demand drove the printing presses for cards into overdrive.  Print runs were never published.

While this huge avalanche of new cards should have been a sign that newer cards would not rise in price like older cards, several aspects of the market masked the oversupply (footnote 1).  First, most of the new collectors bought and stashed their cards in closets or storage units.  The stashing was done so that 20 years down the road, the collectors could cash out.  People bought unopened cases of wax boxes.  Also, the card companies made stashing and storing easier by starting to sell complete factory sets.  People would buy 20, 30 or even more factory sets, which ensure them that they had multiple crisp cards of any player that would make it famous.

Second, because people stashed new cards rather than selling them, there was no way to know what the appropriate price was for these stashed cards and sets (footnote 1).  There was no real market mechanism like eBay to let people know what the true value of a card was.  Indeed, card values seemed to oscillate with a player’s fortunes on the field with Mark McGwire cards probably being the most speculated and overpriced cards as Big Mac racked up so many homers.

Third, the people and groups that could have possibly foretold of this oversupply had an economic interest not to stop the mania.  Beckett was selling a lot of magazines as the sports card market sizzled.  The sports card hobby shops had no real interest in pointing out oversupply, even if they knew about it, because their whole business was dependent upon sports cards being collectables that people believed would increase in value.  The card companies had no real reason to think of restricting output on any particular issue because that was just lost money to them as long as people kept on buying.  Even if they had an inkling, none of the parties in the industry had the economic motivation to tell collectors that the “emperor had no clothes” when it can to the value of cards in the market.

The beginning of the end

Some observers perceive the years 1990 and 1991 as the peak of the sports card boom or mania (footnote 1).  The baseball strike of 1994-95 certainly started the beginning of the end of the mania.  The strike reduced demand for baseball cards and started driving collectors from the market due to disgust with both MLB and the players.   Some collectors began to unload their modern card collections at a fraction of what they thought they were worth.  These were actually the lucky collectors.

The manufacturers would also suffer.  After doubling printing plant capacity in 1991, Donruss-Leaf was sold by its owner to Pinnacle Brands, the maker of Score brand cards, in 1995.  This reflected the suddenly diminished market for sports cards.  Pinnacle Brands would declare bankruptcy in 1998 (footnote 7).  Sports card stores began closing.

As I said before, the sports card mania though was not a bubble and had a slow, halting depreciation in prices of cards from this era.  Indeed, there was a short rise in interest in junk era cards in 1998 and 1999 because of the home run race between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.  I remember McGwire’s 1985 Topps card going on eBay for $50 in ungraded state in 1998 if the card had a nice scan and looked in Mint shape.  However, this high point quickly faded with eBay becoming the main way that cards were bought and sold in the early part of the last decade.  Once eBay gained popularity and people started listing all their stored up “junk wax” in the early part of the last decade, reality set in.  It became abundantly clear that there were way, way too many cards still in existence from the junk wax era that were in pristine shape or not even opened in factory sets or wax packs.  Strong information about supply and demand from a market like eBay that has millions of buyers and sellers revealed the true huge oversupply of junk era cards.  Today, a 1985 Topps Mark McGwire rookie card sells for just under $10 in PSA 8 grade (average of prices checked on eBay, 10-8-2012, and includes shipping), which barely covers the cost of grading.  Ungraded versions with good looking scans sell for $3.00-$7.00.  I saw an ad on my local Craig’s List site today selling the following unopened factory sets for $5 each: 1988 Donruss, 1990 Donruss, 1991 Donruss, 1992 Donruss, 1988 Fleer, 1990 Fleer, 1991 Fleer, 1988 Score, 1990 Score and 1991 Score.  Five dollars is far less than these sets cost when manufactured.  I have seen this advertisement before, which indicates that the seller is not having that much success offloading the junk wax.

Also, the price of junk era cards or junk wax just seems to go lower as more and more people break out those old stuck away boxes and factory sets that they thought would make them wealthy some day.  It also does not help prices that many of the junk wax era heroes in baseball have been implicated in steroids scandals thus tainting their accomplishments.  McGwire, Sosa, Bonds, Clemens and company may make it into the Hall of Fame at some point, but their cards’ values will suffer from the stigma of PEDs.

One final ironic note may be that cards that ultimately may have the most value from the junk era are 'error' cards.  The infamous 1989 Billy Ripken “F**k Face” card has now passed the 1989 Fleer Ken Griffey, Jr. Rookie Card in value (PSA online SMR checked on 10-8-2012).  Indeed, a version of this same Billy Ripken card is now more valuable than the iconic 1989 Ken Griffey Upper Deck Rookie Card (PSA online SMR checked on 10-8-2012).  There are even collectors who specialize in collecting mainly error cards from the junk wax era (for one web site, see: http://junkwaxgems.wordpress.com/ ).  There were a lot of error cards because you had so many companies cranking out cards so fast for hungry collectors that proofing cards probably only slowed down their cash flow.

End Note

Like all other posts, please feel free to make comments.  I review all comments before they are posted in order to reduce spam and keep things on topic.  Also, it may take me a few days to review comments.

Footnotes:

1. http://www.cardboardconnection.com/why-sports-cards-early-90s-worthless

 2. http://reviews.ebay.com/Late-1980-apos-s-amp-Early-1990-apos-s-quot-Junk-Era-quot-Baseball-Cards?ugid=10000000002661402

3. Data on Glavine’s 1988 rookie card auctions comes from personal examination of eBay auctions that were listed as finished on 10-5-2012.  Topps Tiffany and Score Glossy Glavine rookie cards at PSA 9 go for higher amounts, so they might be considered an exception.

4. Nice discussion of the causes of economic bubbles can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_bubble

5. http://www.jparsons.net/housingbubble/san_diego.html

6. http://www.beckett.com/news/2011/12/turnbackclockdecember84/

7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donruss

Was Hal Chase baseball’s Pete Rose of 100 years ago? No actually he was much worse.

When I started putting together my T206 card collection in the late 1990s, I knew quite a bit about baseball history but not a thorough amount about the dead-ball decades of early last century.  Yes, I had read books about Christy Mathewson, grew up in the Detroit area knowing all about Ty Cobb and had heard about the Black Sox scandal (and Joe Jackson) from my Dad starting when I was about 8 years old.  However, some of the other great players of the T206 era were just names I had seen in record books or occasionally in stories.

This brings me to Hal Chase.  When I first started collecting T206 cards, I knew Chase’s cards fetched a premium over common T206 cards and that Chase was one of the star players of the era.  Therefore, I just assumed he was in the Hall of Fame.   Indeed, there are lots of Hall of Famers in the T206 set that are not household names even to baseball fans (know of George Davis, anyone? (footnote 3)).  However, I was to learn several years later that Hal Chase was not in the Hall of Fame.  He was indeed one of the great players of the dead-ball era, but he had committed the one unforgivable sin of baseball players: Gambling on games in which he played.

Caption: This is a picture of one of Hal Chase's T206 cards from 1909 that I own (he had several different cards in the set).  Chase played for the New York Highlanders at the time and was a rising star in the American League.  Chase's cards still sell for a premium over more common players in the T206 set, despite his not being in the Hall of Fame.

Modern baseball fans know of the gambling issue in the case of Pete Rose.  Pete holds the record for most career hits by a MLB player and would surely have been a unanimous first-ballot selection if it had not been discovered that he gambled on baseball games as both a player and then later as the Manager of the Cincinnati Reds.

Pete Rose may never get into the Hall of Fame.  If there was ever an advertisement for how not to behave as a person in the spotlight, Pete Rose would be it.  He is despised by many Hall of Fame voters because:

(1)  He is blamed for contributing to the heart-attack death of MLB commissioner Bart Giamatti, who shortly before his death banned Rose for life from baseball in 1989 (footnote 1).

(2) He has never shown much remorse for his gambling or Giamatti’s death.  Indeed, he even claimed that he was wrongfully punished by Giamatti for gambling from 1989 until 2004 when he finally admitted to gambling on games in his biography (footnote 4).

(3) He shamelessly capitalizes on the awful situation he created to make money in any way he can.  He signs memorabilia in Cooperstown outside of the Hall of Fame on the days of ceremonies where he IS NOT inducted into the Hall of Fame.  He later inscribed on 30 baseballs that he is sorry that gambled on baseball to coincide with the publishing of his biography where he admits gambling on baseball (footnote 2).  He will have a new reality series on television next year about his marriage as a 69-year-old man to a Playboy centerfold .  This will be Rose’s third marriage (footnote 10).

Indeed, Pete seems to be his own worst enemy.  Commissioner Bud Selig toyed with the idea of reinstating Rose back in 2003-2004, but Pete could not keep from purposefully doing stupid things like releasing his biography where he admitted gambling on the exact date that newly elected Hall of Fame players were announced in 2004, thus stealing headlines on the sports pages.  Selig thought again.  It’s likely that Pete Rose will never get into the Hall of Fame during his lifetime.

Hal Chase was worse behaved...

Hal Chase’s behavior makes Pete Rose look brilliant.  Chase was born in California (1883, Birth name: Harold Homer Chase) and played collegiately at Santa Clara University (footnote 5). He was drafted by the New York Highlanders (e.g., Yankees) in 1905 and would play his initial Major League years for the Highlanders/Yankees from 1905 to 1913.  Chase was known for his amazing fielding ability and very good, but not outstanding, hitting.  He did win the NL Batting Crown with Cincinnati in 1916, and was a fast base runner being one of the better base stealers of his era (footnote 6).  However, it was his fielding that made Chase a great player.  Both Walter Johnson and Babe Ruth claimed that Chase was the best fielding 1^st baseman they had ever seen.  He has been named to many lists of the best baseball players even to play the game.

However, that’s where the superlatives about Hal Chase stop.

Chase was also one of the shadiest characters to ever play baseball, even in the shady dead-ball era.  “Price Hal”, as he was referred to by many people, was incredibly popular with his teammates, a generally good looking man, and known to be a master poker player and pool shark.  He was a king of the evening and night life.  Based in a city (e.g., New York) where wild times were plentiful, this enabled Chase to mix with all sorts of people, including gamblers.  To add to this universe of temptations, Chase always seemed to have a chip on his shoulder about the pay of Major League players, which was poor by today’s standards.  In 1907, Chase held out for higher salary from the Highlanders and also played in the California League despite threats the National Commission (the ruling body of baseball) to keep him from playing in the majors.  He was also one of the players to jump to the upstart rival Federal League in 1914 until it folded in 1915 (footnote 5).  This was likely due to the chance to get better pay in the Federal League or at least escape his building reputation for lackadaisical play.  This perceived inequity about pay made it easy for Chase to probably justify to himself trying to fix games for money.

Caption: Vertical leaps like the one pictured above show Chase's athletic ability at first base.  This photo can be found at: http://z.lee28.tripod.com/therest/halchase.html

Given his position at first base and his fielding prowess, Chase was in a special position to be able to affect the outcomes of games.  As stated on one web site profiling Chase: “It was especially easy for the talented Chase to help his team lose. A bad throw here, a misplayed grounder there. It was all in a days work (footnote 8)."  This observation seems very astute in that Chase also holds the record for most career errors by a first baseman, despite his legendary fielding prowess (footnotes 5,8).  Either Chase was charged for errors in getting to hit balls that others could not even try to field or he misplayed them purposefully.  While some of the former likely happened, Chase was too talented to lead the Major Leagues in fielding errors at first base in so many seasons given his tremendous fielding skill.

Chase was accused of throwing games for money as early as 1908 (footnote 7).   In 1910, Highlanders Manager Gene Stallings accused Chase of throwing games.  However, Chase was backed by Highlanders' upper management and ownership because of his star status, and Stallings was fired and replaced by Chase himself as field manager (footnote 7).  After one season of Chase’s management and a middling finish in the standings, Chase was replaced as manager and returned to being just a player.  In 1913, when future Hall of Famer and then Yankees (team name changed in 1913) manager Frank Chance accused Chase of throwing games, Yankees’ upper management listened and Chase was traded to the Chicago White Sox (footnote 7).  Chase’s erratic and lackadaisical play for the White Sox was so obvious to fans that “fans and players alike would shout out, "whats the odds" at him before ball games.” (footnote 8).  His throwing of games had become that obvious.

By the 1914 season, Chase had jumped to Buffalo of the Federal League to escape Chicago.  When the Federal League folded, Chase was signed by the Cincinnati Reds in 1916 and led the National League in batting (footnote 5).  However, in 1918, the scrupulously honest Christy Mathewson, who was managing the Reds, suspended Chase for the final two months of the season for throwing games (footnote 7).  Mathewson brought charges against Chase to the National League office, but Chase was acquitted due to lack of evidence (footnote 5).  Chase was given one last chance by John McGraw and the NY Giants as he was signed for the 1919 season.  However, National League President John Heydler told the Giants to fire Chase late in 1919 as substantial evidence surfaced, albeit late, to support Mathewson’s accusations that Chase helped fix games in 1918.  At this point, Chase could not work in the National League.  Hughie Jennings, then managing the Tigers, told all American League Clubs also not to hire Chase because of Chase’s past, and thus “Prince Hal” was out of the major leagues for good (footnote 5).

Chase spent the next decade bouncing around the unregulated “Bush Leagues” of the Southwestern United States and Mexico.  He was accused of throwing more games (footnote 5).  After a number of injuries, Chase retired to a life of drifting up and down the West Coast doing odd jobs.  He ended up being indigent and was forced to move in with his sister in his later years.  He died in a Colusa, California hospital at the age of 64 (footnote 9).

The above paragraphs are just a small outline of Hal Chase’s gambling issues.  Chase was also thought to have played some part in the Chicago Black Sox scandal to throw the World Series in 1919.  Chase would later admit to knowing about the fixed World Series before it a happened but claimed he was not part of it.  When asked why he did not come forward, his answer was simple" “I was no squealer.” (footnote 9).  Chase undoubtedly corrupted many of the players around him with his gambling schemes.  Many of his documented cases of fixing games involved other players.  Indeed, it was Chase’s widespread gambling influence on his peers that likely prompted Kyle Lobner in the online Baseball Almanac to say:

Many baseball historians see Chase as the primary source of corruption within his era, and a few name Chase as being responsible for the birth of the Commissioner's office, which was created to help curb corruption in baseball. Chase was definitely an excellent player: a quote from a June 1913 issue of The Sporting News sums it up nicely. "That he can play first base as it never was and perhaps never will be played is a well known truth," it says. "That he will is a different matter." (footnote 7)

There is some controversy over whether Chase was ever officially banned from Major League Baseball.  While many writers say that Chase was banned, others assert that there is no evidence of his actual banning.  However, it matters little, because it was very clear that after 1919 Hal Chase could not get a job in organized baseball and was seen as a pariah.  That being said, Chase’s talent and fan appeal were clear, and many, many newspapers reported his death in 1947.

Unlike Pete Rose, Hal Chase at least showed some remorse for his behavior in the twilight years of his life.  Several quotes stand out:

"You note that I am not in the Hall of Fame. Some of the old-timers said I was one of the greatest fielding first basemen of all time. When I die, movie magnates will make no picture like Pride of the Yankees, which honored that great player, Lou Gehrig. I guess that's the answer, isn't it? Gehrig had a good name; one of the best a man could have. I am an outcast, and I haven't a good name. I'm the loser, just like all gamblers are. I lived to make great plays. What did I gain? Nothing. Everything was lost because I raised hell after hours. I was a wise guy, a know-it-all, I guess." (footnote 5)

"Baseball was good to me.  I guess I made $150,000 in all - and legitimately - in Baseball.  But I muffed my big chance.  I guess I got a little too smart." (footnote 9)

So while Pete Rose may be the modern king of showing boorish behavior that laughs in the face of baseball, Hal Chase's crimes against the game make Pete Rose look saintly by comparison.

For More on Hal Chase....

For more reading on Hal Chase, I suggest Donald Dewey and Nicholas Acocella’s book titled The Black Prince of Baseball: Hal Chase and the Mythology of the Game. (2004, Sport Media Publishing).  While I did not read this book in preparing this post, it seems to be quoted frequently by people who have written about Hal Chase online.

Footnotes

1. http://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/08/opinion/put-rose-almost-in-the-hall-of-fame.html

2. http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=kreidler_mark&id=2593357

3. http://baseballhall.org/hof/davis-george

4. http://psychologyofsports.com/2004/01/10/experts-say-pete-rose-coming-up-short-on-remorse-contrition/

5. Much of the general knowledge about Hal Chase in this post comes from his Wikipedia page, which is quite thorough and largely consistent with other sources.  That page can be found here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Chase

6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_leaders_in_career_stolen_bases

7. http://www.baseball-almanac.com/articles/halchase.shtml

8. http://www.thedeadballera.com/BadBoneChase.html

9. Ottawa Evening Citizen, May 19, 1947, p. 21.  Article can be found here: http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=fB4vAAAAIBAJ&sjid=IdwFAAAAIBAJ&pg=3062,4392193&dq=clark-griffith+hal-chase&hl=en

10. http://insidetv.ew.com/2012/07/17/tlc-pete-rose/