The end of World War II marked the beginning of a prosperous era for the United States, helped along by the lifting of restrictions on materials such as paper and metal.
So, when baseball players returned from battle and took to the diamond again in 1946, gum companies began to plan for how they might capitalize on the game’s popularity by reintroducing baseball cards to America’s youth.
In 1948, both Leaf and Bowman produced baseball sets, while other companies started planning for their entry into the market. From that foundation, baseball card collecting would grow, step-by-step, from a pastime for little boys to a marginal hobby for adult men to a full-blown industry over the course of the next seven decades.
Along the way, certain key cards would help to shape hobby trends and propel baseball cards to new heights. What follows is a list of the 10 most important baseball cards of the modern era, presented in chronological order of their initial release. Click the title of each card to see them on eBay.
After four long years of nothing but war in the news, Americans flocked to baseball in the late 1940s with renewed fervor, and they embraced their diamond heroes with great relish. Stan Musial had lost one year of his career to the war, but he returned to the St. Louis Card
inals at the front-end of his prime years and poised to dominate the National League for years to come. When Bowman and Leaf began producing baseball cards in 1948, Musial was a perfect choice for inclusion in both sets. His Bowman issue is the first important rookie card produced by one of the enduring post-war card companies and helped to establish the baseball card playing field for the 1950s and beyond.
The simple black-and-white headshot is still popular with collectors of vintage cards, with mid-grade copies fetching a few hundred dollars. Higher grade examples range from about $1500 for PSA 7s to tens of thousands for PSA 9s.
Long before Don Mattingly spawned the modern rookie-card mania and Pete Rose forced collectors to take a second look at seasoned vet
erans (see below), Mickey Mantle was the unquestioned icon of the baseball card hobby. Mantle, after all, had roamed center field for the New York Yankees in the 1950s and 1960s, and he put up numbers that had him on pace to shatter all kinds of records, if only his body had held out.
Though Mantle proved to be mortal after all and left baseball in 1969, his baseball cards never lost their appeal, and his 1952 Topps issue has always been the ultimate prize in any post-War card collection. Though it is not his rookie card — that honor belongs the 1951 Bowman issue — his 1952 Topps pasteboard is the first card of the modern era’s biggest star issued by its dominant card manufacturer.
That marriage kept the 1952 Topps Mantle at the top of the baseball card heap and appreciating in value through all of the hobby developments and economic ups and downs of the last six decades. Today, even low-grade copies bring several thousand dollars at auction, and a PSA 8 fetched more than $268,000 in a December 2014 sale.
In August of 1984, the Montreal Expos traded Pete Rose to the Cincinnati Reds for a bowl of Skyline Chili, and the countdown was on. Rose was on the hunt for Ty Cobb’s all-time record for hits, and he would be doing his stalking on the Riverfront where it all began.
For the first time since baseball cards became mainstream a just a few years before, the hobby would have the chance to react to history in the making as an icon marched toward a major career milestone. By the end of the 1984 season, Rose stood at 4097 hits, just 94 shy of Cobb’s then-tally of 4191.
The buzz around Rose’s cards crescendoed throughout the fall, and, by Christmas, his 1963 Topps rookie card was bringing $300-500 at local card shows. It marked the first time that a multi-player RC had garnered much attention in terms of value appreciation, and it pulled all of Rose’s other cards up the price ladder with it. In an era when the hobby was in the embryonic stages of an explosion, the Rose card was constantly in the media spotlight which helped fuel the growth.
Today, mid-grade Rose rookies bring several hundred dollars at auction, while higher grade examples run into the thousands.
As Pete Rose spiraled into disgrace during the 1989 season, Nolan Ryan began his remarkable late-career run with the Texas Rangers that would elevate him from superstar to living legend and salvage the image of geriatric Major League players. With every no-hitter, Cy Young vote, and strikeout record he set, Ryan ratcheted demand for his cards to new levels, and none was more mesmerizing than his 1968 Topps rookie card.
Aesthetically, the card had few redeeming qualities, as Ryan shared space with fellow New York Mets rookie Jerry Koos
man, and their awkward head shots were framed by the set’s infamous burlap border. During the summers from 1989-93, though, the card took on an almost magical appeal, and its appearance in cases at local card shows would draw a flock of collectors big enough to clog the aisles and make dealers nervous about so many folks gathered around their other cards.
By the time Ryan retired in 1993, ungraded copies of the card were bringing four figures, and the transfer effect to Ryan’s other cards was significant. Collectors who wanted a piece of the Ryan Express but could not afford the 1968 Topps issue turned instead to his more attractive 1969 Topps card and, when prices for that one climbed into the middle hundreds, they moved on to 1970, 1971, and so forth. In effect, Ryan’s rookie card forced collectors to realize the untapped value that lay in early-career cards of baseball’s biggest stars, and we were quick to embrace the concept.
Even though none of Ryan’s cards could be considered undervalued at this point, that game-changing rookie card continues to rise steadily in value, with mid-grade copies bringing $400-500 at auction. On eBay, prices for Ryan rookies vary greatly by grade. A PSA 8 sold this week for over $2,300 and slabbed examples that score a MINT grade by any of the major services generally sell for between $10,000 and $15,000.
When unheralded first baseman Don Mattingly carried a .324 batting average into May of 1984, hardly anyone batted an eye. After all, the Detroit Tigers were threatening to never lose another game, and Tony Gwynn was batting .434 for the San Diego Padres. As spring turned to summer, though, Mattingly cranked up the heat with his swing, and he swaggered into the All-Star break carrying a .330 average and having smacked 12 home runs with 53 RBI and 49 runs.
That hit barrage sent collectors scrambling for Mattingly’s rookie cards, which, luckily, could be found on store shelves across the nation, as Topps, Fleer, and Donruss all included first-year Mattingly cards in their 1984 issues. By that time, however, it had become clear that something very different was happening with the 1984 Donruss set.
From 1981-83, Donruss had struggled to get their feet under them as a new baseball card manufacturer, and their sets were riddled with errors and plagued by odd design choices and funky photo coloring. In an apparent attempt to make up for those shortcomings, the company pumped up their production levels high enough to ensure those first three issues would be as common as ballpark hot dogs well into this century.
With the first packs of their 1984 offering, Donruss began to turn their image on its head. A clean, classic card design that focused on much-improved color photography made collectors clamor for the new cards even before it became clear that the Donruss cards were much harder to find than their Topps and Fleer counterparts.
By the time Mattingly outlasted teammate Dave Winfield to take home the AL batting title with a robust .343 average, his Donruss card was on every collector’s want list. The room buzzed every time one of the cards appeared in a dealer’s showcase, and they rarely lasted more than an hour before being snatched up.
Already humming after Darryl Strawberry stirred collector’s imaginations with his home run show as a rookie in 1983, rookie card mania was in a full froth by the time Mattingly finished his breakout campaign in 1984.
These days, the definitive rookie card of the 1980s can be yours, even in a mint 9 holder, for less than $100.
1984 Fleer Update Roger Clemens
Topps first dabbled with “Traded” sets at the end of 1974, and then again in 1976, but each of those was limited to 44 cards of Major League players who had changed teams during the season. It wasn’t until 1981 that Topps expanded its offering to 32 cards, representing a full printing sheet and including notable rookies who had made their debuts since the base set was issued the previous spring. Most collectors appreciated the extra shot of new baseball cards as the season wound down, but the traded sets didn’t cause too much of a stir aside from Darryl Strawberry’s lone 1983 card.
In 1984, though, Fleer joined the late-series market with their Update set, and word in the hobby was that the set was limited in production so that Fleer could test the waters without getting stuck with a load of unsold product. Spurred by that idea of scarcity and the first Fleer card of Dwight Gooden, the set was popular that fall and outpaced its Topps counterpart in terms of value, but no one was really sure if the set had legs.
By the time Roger Clemens reeled off 14 straight wins to start the 1986 season, though, collectors were scrambling to find his rookie cards, and the Fleer Update quickly rose to the top of the list. Kirby Puckett also developed into a legitimate superstar that season, and the duo helped to push the ’84 Fleer Update set into the low-to-mid triple figures.
Although Clemens has been undeniably tarnished by baseball’s PED era, the fury that surrounded his first Fleer card gave legitimacy to so-called XRCs — first cards that were not part of a major base set — and helped to further fuel the rookie card fire for more than a decade.
The set still isn’t ultra common. Today, graded MINT copies of the Clemens Fleer Update sell for around $100, while PSA 10s can bring $350-400.
1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey, Jr.
In the spring of 1989, collectors were treated to the emergence of a fifth major card manufacturer when Upper Deck followed up their promos from 1988 with a full-blown, 800-card set, issued in two series, that immediately divided the hobby. Carrying a then-outrag
eous price tag of $1 per pack, Upper Deck cards featured anti-theft devices like foil packaging and on-card holograms, and the card stock was thick and white, with beautiful full-color photos on the front and back.
In short, the premium card was born, and, while just about everyone loved the quality of the new offering, a large contingent of collectors decried the advent of Upper Deck as the end of baseball cards as an affordable hobby for young fans.
As the baseball season opened and the debate over Upper Deck burned on, young Ken Griffey, Jr., made his debut for the lowly Seattle Mariners. As chance (or a lot of planning) would have it, Junior was card #1 in the debut UD set, and as The Kid’s star rose during his first season, so did the prices of his rookie cards. The Upper Deck version led the way, touching double digits on the show circuit by fall, when Griffey finished third in AL Rookie of the Year voting.
In subsequent years, Griffey became perhaps the best player in the game, an it was clear that Topps, Donruss, and Fleer cards from 1989 were severely overproduced, propelling Junior’s Upper Deck card to new heights. By the time he landed home in Cincinnati to start the 2000 season, Griffey’s UD rookie card was fetching $150 in clean raw condition. Along the way, the popularity of Griffey and the perceived scarcity of the 1989 Upper Deck set made premium issues not just acceptable, but expected.
While the general perception today is that the UD cards aren’t quite as limited as they once seen, a PSA 10 Griffey will still set you back $300-400.
A year after Upper Deck broke the seal on premium card offerings, Donruss resurrected the Leaf brand in an att
empt to tap into the high-end market. The 1990 Leaf set was very attractive, but collectors were beginning to feel the crunch of too many card choices, and the higher price point was still hard for some to swallow. When Frank Thomas busted out of the gate in 1991 looking like the second coming of Ted Williams, though, the scramble was on for his Leaf rookie from the ’90 set. It became apparent quickly that there weren’t enough of the cards to satisfy demand, and prices skyrocketed.
Featuring several other key rookie cards, including Sammy Sosa, 1990 Leaf gained a toehold in the hobby that it never relinquished, helping to establish market support for multiple high-end sets and signaling the death knell for the 50-cent pack.
This card has lost most of its luster over the years, but at $10-$15 for a PSA 8, it’s a steal for the rookie card of a new Hall of Famer and a piece of hobby history.
In 1993, with Nolan Ryan on the verge of retirement and the Toronto Blue Jays heading toward their second straight World Series victory, 
baseball card sets proliferated at an unprecedented rate. Collectors had a hard time making sense of all the brands and all the razzle-dazzle of the new cards, so manufacturers had their work cut out for them in terms of distinguishing their offerings from those of their competitors. In their efforts to get the upper hand in 1993, many companies turned to early-career cards of promising prospects, including many who would never see the lights of a Major League Baseball stadium.
One young player who drew the attention of card manufacturers that year was New York Yankees minor league shortstop Derek Jeter, just 19 years old at the time. And, while Jeter had appeared in minor league sets in 1992 and in most major sets in 1993, it was his Upper Deck SP issue which hit the right combination of relatively limited availability, premium production qualities, and a budding superstar subject to capture collectors’ imaginations. By the time Jeter won the AL Rookie of the Year award in 1996, his SP rookie was the card of choice for The Captain’s many collecting fans, and it further solidified the market for high-end sets.
In the intervening years, the 1993 SP has become the definitive rookie card for a player whom many considered to be the face of Major League Baseball for nearly a full generation. While the card is readily available on eBay, a copy graded PSA 8 will generally set you back $130 or more, and PSA 9s almost always bring more than $1000. In fact, this Jeter rookie represents a condition scarcity, as only 492 PSA 9s and just 15 PSA 10s exist, despite more than 11,000 total submissions.
2001 Bowman Chrome Autograph Albert Pujols
By the early 2000s, the baseball card market had emerged from the cheap, overproduced cards of the 1980s and early 1990s, transformed to a land of limited and numbered autograph and memoribilia cards. Collectors embraced the higher quality of the cards and enjoyed the chase for treasure in every pack, but no one knew if any of the high-ticket items of the era could maintain their value deep into the new millennium.
Against that backdrop, Albert Pujols crashed the Major League scene in 2001 with the St. Louis Cardinals, and card companies took notice of the young slugger, right along with fans. By the end of the season, there were dozens of Pujols cards available, but one already stood out above the rest: his Bowman Chrome Autograph.
Limited to just 500 copies, available only by sending in a redemption card, the Pujols Chrome issue featured the popular refractor technology and, of course, the even more popular Pujols. Bowman has become synonymous with rookie cards, and rookie seasons don’t get much better than Pujols’ 2001, when he hit .329 with 37 home runs and 130 RBI. The card did wonders for Bowman’s ongoing niche as the ‘home of the rookie card’, whether some collectors bought in or not.
Although Pujols has not quite lived up to expectations with his new team, the Los Angeles Angels, he is at that point in his career where he seemingly passes a major milestone every month or so, and the Bowman rookie has kept pace with Pujols’ on-field performance. Belting his 500th home run led to a resurgence in interest last year.
Recent sales have landed in the same ballpark, and the card that some call the modern-day version of the 1952 Mantle shows no signs of slowing down.
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There have been hundreds of thousands of different baseball cards produced since World War II ended in 1945, so picking the most important ones is an inexact science at best. Without the 10 cards on this list, though, the hobby would not have reached its ultimate heights, and baseball cards would not be what they are today. For better or for worse, these cards represent our collecting heritage.
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