Sports cards went from boom to bust - INFORUM
Fritch was born in 1980. Spurred by like-minded family members, he started collecting trading cards when he was 5 or 6 years old, about the time the industry exploded like a Nolan Ryan fastball. Fritch, now 35, estimates his collection ballooned to more than 50,000 cards. Engwall, executive director of the Minnesota Deer Hunters Association in Grand Rapids — when he’s not managing his fantasy baseball team, that is — got swept up in the Twins’ pennant fever of 1991, when young phenom Scott Erickson looked like the... Engwall promptly purchased 100 Erickson rookie cards and thought he had “money in the bank. What was a bustling billion-dollar industry in the early 1990s has crashed like Jose Canseco’s reputation. They began flooding the market with billions of sports cards, which were viewed by buyers — young and old alike — as investments. That’s a far cry from earlier generations of sports-card aficionados. People like Engwall bought cards to use and play with — and for the bubble gum tucked inside each pack. Adam Jackson started collecting when he was 3. He collected the four major sports, with an emphasis on football. Source: www.inforum.com
