Card Sharks by Pete Williams

craig44

If you have not read this book, you should. I read it probably 25 years ago, and am almost through it again. It is about the rise of Upper Deck. it was written in the mid 90s. the first part of the book gives a history of baseball cards from the tobacco era right through 1981 when fleer and donruss joined topps.

the rest of the book gives a very detailed history of the upper deck company. I find it fascinating. I just finished the chapter about the reprinting of 1990-91 canadian hockey. man, McWilliams was a crooked guy. It is really shocking that Upper deck survived the reprinting. they printed an additional 900 cases and the first 100 were dated for 2 months later than the originals. Mcwilliams had a cow and they then back dated the remaining 800 cases to the original production date. the original 400 cases were selling for $10k each at the time!! huge money for 1991. they also reprinted other cards like the Murphy error and the Griffey rookie.

if you are looking for a summer read, I recommend this one!

1982FBWaxMemories

I seriously wonder if any one in the trading card hobby is even remotely honest. Probably not!

ElMagoStrikeZone

And so the outpouring of Griffey Jr graded PSA 10 shall never stop. An industry within itself. There must be millions of them.

junkwaxgems

@craig44 said:
If you have not read this book, you should. I read it probably 25 years ago, and am almost through it again. It is about the rise of Upper Deck. it was written in the mid 90s. the first part of the book gives a history of baseball cards from the tobacco era right through 1981 when fleer and donruss joined topps.

the rest of the book gives a very detailed history of the upper deck company. I find it fascinating. I just finished the chapter about the reprinting of 1990-91 canadian hockey. man, McWilliams was a crooked guy. It is really shocking that Upper deck survived the reprinting. they printed an additional 900 cases and the first 100 were dated for 2 months later than the originals. Mcwilliams had a cow and they then back dated the remaining 800 cases to the original production date. the original 400 cases were selling for $10k each at the time!! huge money for 1991. they also reprinted other cards like the Murphy error and the Griffey rookie.

if you are looking for a summer read, I recommend this one!

I often recommend this book to newer hobbyists.

The reprinting of Griffey and Murphy RevNeg (and Jordan SP1) cards is nuts and really should be common knowledge at this point. When you combine what was detailed in the book about McWilliam ordering reprints of valuable secondary markets cards PLUS the 800ct box of 1990 Mike Witt cards found in 2013, it's hard to dispute that he (all of them really) were shady.

An interesting tidbit on french hockey, I have been opening these boxes since then (whenever cheap) and it is very apparent when you break a box whether it comes from the initial run (4 hi # cards) or the reprint run (6 hi# cards). I really loved the bit about how angry he got at the production manager for not changing the date on the reprint cases.

@ElMagoStrikeZone said:
And so the outpouring of Griffey Jr graded PSA 10 shall never stop. An industry within itself. There must be millions of them.

More of that card out there than any other 1989 UD card!

bgr

and yet still hard to find centered...

jordangretzkyfan

So there were only 1300 cases produced of 1990 UD hockey including the reprint? Huh, still seems very low for that era and maybe undervalued given all the HOF rookies.

junkwaxgems

@jordangretzkyfan said:
So there were only 1300 cases produced of 1990 UD hockey including the reprint? Huh, still seems very low for that era and maybe undervalued given all the HOF rookies.

Hard to believe given how much sealed of this stuff that I saw (and broke) through the 90s to now. One of the nicest looking sets ever produced and the Fedorov and Bure YGs are iconic cards.

JoeBanzai

Just ordered the "Card Sharks" book. Looking forward to the read.