Baseball Cards in the Publishing Spotlight

 Content Originally Published by Sports Collectors Daily on Tuesday December 28, 2010.

2010 was a pretty good year for books that had baseball cards in them and weren’t considered price guides.

Heck, a rare baseball card was even the focal point of a movie starring Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan, but it was refreshing to see vintage cardboard in a new light.

Josh Wilker’s critically well received Cardboard Gods was more about growing up and his relationships with family than it was about the cards he collected as a youngster, but the cards still served as the focal point.  The book was an outgrowth of his popular blog.

Die-hard collectors probably fell a little harder for Mint Condition, a book about the history of baseball cards and some of the major players in the hobby.

Dave Jamieson was a collector as a youth and remained fascinated by the hobby’s rapid growth throughout the 1980s and early 90s as well as the history behind it all.  He covered everything from early tobacco to modern era business in the book.

We published excerpts earlier this year and both books got a significant amount of national attention.  In fact, both writers are still getting interview requests from time to time as the year draws to a close.

Bruce Markusen did a recent Q&A with Jamieson for Hardball Times.  You can read it here.