Multimedia Reporting (Kuhr-Musser)

Enter the Sports Dome on Massachusetts Street. Weave your way past the athletic jerseys, t-shirts and huge wall of baseball caps and license plates. Beyond the key chains, and headbands, all the waya to the back wall of the shop. Take a good look, because it’s the only wall like it in Lawrence. The shelves on this wall and the display cases in front of it are dedicated to one thing: sports cards.

Collectors, shop owners, card show hosts and vendors all agree that the hobby of sports card collecting is on the decline. People are busy with other activities such as video games and television, they say, and companies now print so many cards that people aren’t especially attracted to the hobby any more. Some collectors also say the focus of the hobby has turned from collecting for the love of it to doing it for money.

Brian Hoffman, owner of Sports Dome, said when he collected in the 1980s there simply wasn’t as much to do as there is now. It’s not that Hoffman has not tried to pique kids’ interests. About six months ago he started running an ad in local youth magazines with a coupon for a free pack of cards. All kids had to do to receive their pack was bring in a picture of themselves wearing a sports uniform. Hoffman would then choose a “Sports Dome MVP of the Month” from the entries and sponsor them by running the picture in the Lawrence Journal-World. So far, only one has brought in the coupon.

"I think we’ve finally lost out of the Gameboys and Nintendos of the world,” he said. The Internet has also played into the Sports Dome’s decreased foot traffic, Hoffman said.

This Honus Wagner tobacco card is one of the most valuable cards in the world. It went for over $1 million in a 2000 Ebay auction. Photo courtesy of www.wikipedia.com

“Ebay has killed my card industry. Just killed it,” he said.

But for others in the industry, the Internet has opened the door.

Mandy Fuerst, vice president of events and marketing of Tristar Productions, which puts on several sports card and collectible shows across the country, says that the Internet has amplified their business.

“It’s augmented what we do. It’s an advantage for collectors and different exhibitors across the country outside the locally hobby stores,” Fuerst said. She added that the Internet also makes collectors more knowledgeable and price savvy.

But the fact that people dwell on prices in the first place may be hurting the hobby as well.

“They don’t digest all the information on the card anymore, and it’s sad,” said one collector who frequents Sports Dome, but doesn’t want to be named. He said he has collected for 50 years, and added that the card industry is now too prolific to attract interest like it used to.

“They’re produced in such mass quantities. Cards from when I was growing, you can’t get any more of those. I was paying a penny a card,” he said.

Mike Williamson, owner of Bryan’s Collectibles in Raymore, Mo, has been a collector since the 1940s. He agreed that the mass quantities of cards have hurt the hobby.

Card making companies, like Upper Deck, have tried adding pieces of players jerseys or thier autographs to cards to lure collectors. This card features both. Photo courtesy of Brent Schultz (click to enlarge)

“Collectors only want things that are hard to find. That’s the reason they collect them in the first place,” Williamson said. “If you make a million of something then people aren’t going to want it.” Williamson sells at various expositions across the nation, including Tristar’s. He said that collectors had a big interest in the mid-1980s through the early 90s, but by 1992 large retail stores like Sears took an interest. To compensate for this, card companies started printing more cards. That chased off collectors, Williamson said.

The Major League Baseball Player’s Association has stepped in within the past year to try to solve the problem by limiting the number of products a manufacturer can produce. One stipulation was that companies were not allowed to make rookie cards of players who were not on a team’s 25-man roster or hadn’t played a game with the team the season before. On April 20, The Wichita Eagle reported that the Topps company had accidentally produced and distributed about 100 cards of Royals third baseman Alex Gordon, a player who did not meet those requirements. During the next week, Gordon’s cards were going for up to $3500 on Ebay.

Fuerst attributes the focus of value over the love of collecting to Beckett magazine, and to Professional Sports Authenticator. Beckett is the standard price guide for the card industry, with pricing for basketball, baseball, football, hockey and auto racing. Professional Sports Authenticator is a grading system that gives cards a rating of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest. It takes in to account factors such as sharpness of the card’s corners, how it is centered and glossiness. The difference between a card being rated nine and a card rated 10 can mean hundreds of dollars.

Brent Schultz, Lawrence sophomore, regularly buys and sells cards on Ebay. He says he does it for the pleasure and the money.

“For me, it’s a fun way to make money doing something that I’m interested in,” Schultz said.

He has collected since the second grade and uses the hobby as a way to help pay for rent. Two years ago when he was short on cash, Schultz decided to take his chances at obtaining an extremely rare Lebron James rookie card which only 23 were made. He bought a dozen boxes on Ebay that potentially contained the card at $9 per box. He found one of the cards and sold it online for $340: A profit of $232.

Hoffman used to have customers come to his shop just to talk about sports.

“That’s what I miss. At the height of it I’d have 40 guys see me every two weeks. I’d spend 15 minutes with each guy just talking sports.”

In September 2005, Sports Dome moved a block from 9th and Massachusetts to their now-larger location. Because of the decrease in card sales, Hoffman now specializes in more clothing, hats and collectibles such as sports clocks and pennants, and needed a bigger space to house all of it. Though the shop has traveled across Lawrence four times since Hoffman opened in 1992, and his card business has declined, one thing will stay the same. The wall of cards in the back will be there.