Allen Ginter Cards

Baseball card collecting hanging on as a hobby

One day, Bob Ferri of Old Forge had an idea to try to make a living from his hobby:

Baseball cards.

Pitching the idea to his wife, Ferri told her that he felt he knew the market and could compete.

"It had been bugging me for a while. I just had a feeling," said Ferri, who had worked at the Tobyhanna Army Depot. "Finally, I said, 'I have to try it. If it lasts a week, a month, a year, whatever, I'll go back to work if it doesn't pan out.'

"She said, 'You've always supported us up to this point. If you think you could, go ahead.' "

More than 30 years later, he hasn't looked back.

Every Wednesday, Ferri sells cards at a stand set up at the Hometown Farmers Market in Tamaqua. He also organizes weekend sports memorabilia shows at area malls as well as shows every Tuesday and one Sunday per month at the Clarion Hotel in Scranton.

Because he has been in the business so long, Ferri has seen baseball cards come full circle. While the industry is not thriving the way it was in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it is not dying either.

"You lost all the speculators - the people who thought they were going to get rich or send their kids to college," Ferri said. "But for a hobby, it's definitely the best thing going."

Card crazy

For many years, Topps was the only producer of baseball cards. Then, in the early 1980s, Donruss and Fleer were permitted to make them, meaning more cards.

When Upper Deck joined the fray in 1989, the industry really took off. The competing companies kept trying to outdo each other.

"In the old days, it was just basic cards," Ferri said. "Then in the late '80s, there were insert cards, holograms, all different types of things. People started chasing that."

Indeed, people began collecting not because they were baseball fans, but because they were looking to make money.

Gone were the days where a kid would open a pack of cards and study every one of them, maybe flip them in the schoolyard with his friends or put his doubles in the spokes of his bicycle. Now, a kid would open a pack and immediately ask, "How much can I get for this card?

Custom Allen & Ginter Baseball Cards | Parody Cards | Baseball ...

How cool are these Allen & Ginter custom cards?

As many of you know by now, I really like the idea of parody baseball cards or even just well done custom cards.

The 2011 Topps Monopoly set has received about 5000 hits or so on my YouTube page.  That set was created by Beardy of mojobeardy.wordpress.com.

This new set that I am showing you now was created by a member of BlowoutCards forums, Metsfan1121.  To date he has created about 32 versions – each and every one is better than anything that Topps has produced.

Perhaps some day Topps will take the hint and start producing “hit” cards that collectors actually want.  How many Carlos Marmol relics do we really need anyway?  In 25 boxes of Lineage recently, my club pulled 5 Ty Wigginton sticker autographs.  That’s 1:5 – a 20% chance in any given box at a Wigginton sticker auto.

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