Baseball Cards trying to make a comeback

[davidrea1]

Comeback Kids?

Players Union Tries to Lure
Youths Back to Baseball Cards;
Flip 'em, Fling 'em, Trade 'em
By JULIA ANGWIN
May 10, 2006; Page B1

When Tom McCarthy was a boy, he and his friends would do what generations of boys before them had done on rainy summer afternoons. They'd take stacks of baseball cards and trade them. Or they'd flip them onto the ground one at a time, the winner of the game -- and the cards -- determined by whether the colors on the cards' team banners matched.

But three decades later that childhood passion is a mystery to Mr. McCarthy's two sons, aged 8 and 11. "They are interested for, like, five minutes, but then they put them in their folder or they lose them," says Mr. McCarthy, 37 and a radio broadcaster for the New York Mets. Instead, he says his sons channel their love of baseball into videogames, fantasy leagues and collecting hats and jerseys. "There's a nostalgic part of me that would love to see them have an interest in collecting cards."


He's not the only one. After more than a decade of steadily declining baseball-card sales, the players whose photos grace the cards are taking action. The Major League Baseball Players Association, which licenses the players' likenesses, names and biographical data to the trading card companies, is making a major push to get kids to play with cards again.

This week, the players union is launching its first-ever television advertising campaign for baseball cards, hoping to lure kids and their parents back to the traditional pastime. The union has also convinced card manufacturers to sharply cut back on the number of cards being aimed at adults and to push kid-friendly $0.99 and $1.99 packs.

"We found that kids really like the cards, but they're not sure what to do with them," says Judy Heeter, director of business affairs for the union.

In the age of videogames, iPods and MySpace.com, it's an uncommonly difficult marketing challenge. Baseball cards are a relic of a quieter time, when generations of American boys spent hours sifting through their shoebox hoard, flipping them, flinging them, playing imaginary baseball games with them, trading them with friends or sticking them in the spokes of their bike wheels.

Sports broadcaster Bob Costas, who famously carries a 1958 Topps All-Star card of New York Yankee Hall of Famer Mickey Mantle in his wallet, says his favorite game growing up on Long Island was "knock-a-leaner." A card was propped against a wall, and the players tried to fling other cards at it to knock it down. Every card that missed became part of the pot to be won by the first kid to topple the leaner.

"You'd show up with all your cards in a shoebox," Mr. Costas, 54, says, "and some wise guy would say one shot for the whole box."

To rekindle that kind of devotion, the union is putting roughly $3 million into a marketing campaign to show kids how to play with trading cards. The card manufacturers are spending another $4 million on marketing. The TV spots, created by WPP Group PLC's Geppetto Group, show kids buying the cards, taking them home, swapping them, putting them in an album and having the players on the cards come to life. The tagline is "Bring the game home."

It's not all a low-tech play. The TV ads will also steer kids, mostly boys between the ages of 6 and 13, to a Web site where they can learn to play games such as throwing the cards onto a printout of a bulls-eye or playing a memory game modeled after the perennial kid favorite "Concentration." Kids will also earn points for each card they purchase and win prizes.

"Instead of changing the product, we want to change the way people engage with the product," says Christopher McKee, creative director of Geppetto.


The first baseball cards were introdcued by tobacco companies in the 1860s. By the 1930s, gum companies were also including cards. The modern era of baseball cards was launched in 1948 when Bowman, now owned by industry-leader Topps Co., introduced a 48-card set. Kids used to buy "bubblegum cards" at the local candy store, ripping open the packs, stuffing the thick sticks of gum into their mouths and inventing simple games to play with the cards.

By the 1990s, cards had become a big business, with six companies making cards -- some without the gum. Adults, realizing their childhood collections were valuable, started buying cards again. Card makers competed to make their sets expensive and rare. "It was appealing to serious-minded collectors," says Kerri Stockholm, senior marketing manager at card maker Upper Deck Co., "but that was when we started to lose kids."

But the speculative bubble soon burst. Sports trading-card sales peaked in 1991 at $1.2 billion before plunging to about $250 million last year, according to the industry trade magazine Card Trade.

This is a big issue for the union because trading cards are its top revenue source from licensing, generating more money than clothing, videogames and online fantasy leagues. The players association began trying to reignite children's interest four years ago with a program that encouraged Cub Scouts to collect trading cards. The association distributed cards to interested Cub Scout groups; scouts could earn merit badges based on their card collections.

But studies showed that kids were still confused by the vast array of cards on the market. So last year, the players association cut back the number of licensees to two -- Topps and the Upper Deck -- and cut by more than half the number of cards sets produced to 40 from 89.

Both card manufacturers, Topps and Upper Deck, recently have begun their own marketing efforts. Last month, Topps launched a joint Web site with Sports Illustrated for Kids, letting kids play online games using cards they have collected. In April, Upper Deck began its first television ad campaign for baseball cards in more than a decade with the tagline "Get more than lucky." The Upper Deck campaign also promotes a way for kids to win points for each card and win prizes such as a private clinic with New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter.

In a conference call last month, Topps Chief Financial Officer Cathy Jessup said the new program of fewer cards had already begun to yield results. She said sales of the company's first set of cards this year were up 55% from 2005, and sales of the second set were up 35%. "The vast majority of the season is still ahead of us, but we're optimistic at this early stage," she said.

But for 8-year-old New York City resident Jordan Stanton, who plays outfield and second base on his local team, his attachment to baseball takes a different form. Jordan says he and his friends mostly play Electronic Arts Inc.'s "MVP Baseball 2005" baseball videogame when they're not on the diamond. "I'm more interested in baseball than card playing," Jordan says.

[dlong1]

I've been saying that for 6 years now. The kids are the life blood of the hobby. The card companies have priced the kids out of it. What kid can afford a $15 pack? They can buy Yugio cards cheaper, and it's a card game too.

Six years ago I owned a card shop, but business was really bad. We used to have 12-15 card shops and 2 bigger shows a month in our city. Today we have 5 shops (and one is getting out of sports cards) and 1 rinky-dink show a month. If the card companies can come up with lower priced packs with some nice inserts, like Ultra used to do, maybe we can see a resurgence in kids market.

Dan

[streicher187]

This is why I went to non sports, I was getting tired of laying down 100-200 dollars a box.. And pulling a 5.00 auto and a 2.00 gameused when I can spend 50.00 a box and have a shot at an angelina Jolie or Jessica Alba autograph .. The return on boxes was MUCH better I have bought a few family guy boxes kept the autos and sold the sketch cards for price of box if not more

[alonzomourning]

Forget about kids not being able to afford packs, I'm 24 and can barely afford any, lol. Packs and boxes are ridiculously expensive for what you get. I just bought a box of First Row Basketball for like $100 (actually pretty cheap for that product) and pull autos of Jason Maxiell and Bracey Wright and jerseys of Shaun Livingston and Julius Hodge. What a waste, I doubt I could get $10 for what I pulled from that box. Nowadays you are better off just cherry picking the ones you want off eBay. And I have to agree with Streicher, non-sport boxes provide a much better value.