1991 Stadium Club (A MUST HAVE) but....

Any one who collected in the late 80s and 90s would tell you that this set was the set to have!  I remember going to card shows when this card came out and the tables that had any packs were lined up with people wanting them.  I was only 12 at the time and I went to a show with my dad in St. Louis.  My dad didn't know much of anything about cards, he was just there to supervise me.  I remembered at that time Series I packs were going for $4 a pack!  I had brought with me $20 and a 1969 Topps Nolan Ryan if I found someone to trade with me. I ended up trading my 1969 Topps Nolan Ryan (valued at that time at $400) for a box of Series I Stadium Club!  I opened the first pack and it was a smell I would never forget.  The smell of freshly coated baseball cards (yes, I sniff my cards) was amazing, and it was my first truely big buy in my collecting life.  After the year ended the Stadium Club fad started to go away.  Fleer Ultra began to coat their cards and add more inserts.  The values for the set at the end of 1991 was $200 for 600 cards. 

 Above is from the July 1994 Beckett, which the 1991 Stadium Club went from $200 to $135 and is still going down in price.

Today (Sept 2012) the 1991 Topps Stadium Club is now $60.  Remember how many adults and kids were thinking that I need to buy these cards, they are investments, etc.  I now wish I didn't trade my 1969 Topps Nolan Ryan for a box of Stadium Club Series I.  The total price drop in 11 years is $140!

Because cards started out priced so high, and every year the cards go down, down, and down some more, it becomes hard for hobby shops to make any money.  So having so many high priced cards and packs that hobby stores had to buy suddenly in the mid to late 90s crashed and these investments turned into trash.

Even though Stadium Club lost $130 over its life it is still a really good looking set and for the first time Topps really was spot on in their photography.  This set was able to get Jeff Bagwell and Luis Gonzalez as rookies, but it would have been an even bigger hit if it had Jim Thome, Mike Mussina, Chipper Jones, and Ivan Rodriguez.  That would have been one hell of a set of cards! 

I see these wax boxes on ebay or Dave and Adams for around $25, if you don't have any or many of them, it is a fun open!  Series I has more value in players, but Series II has the rookies like Bagwell.

Overall, a cheap very attractive card!  Don't buy to expect the values to increase, unless Bagwell goes into the hall of fame.

- Jason