November 1990 Baseball Card Price Guide Monthly

Today I'm featuring one of the magazines in my collection, the November 1990 Baseball Card Price Guide Monthly.  I don't remember the particular publication, but it was one of the Krause Publications magazines, similar to Baseball Cards magazine.  November, 1990 featured Michael Jordan on the cover and on a card.

Michael Jordan on the cover of the November 1990 Baseball Card Price Guide Monthly.

There were five cards included inside, that you could cut out for yourself.  I think the first few times I got a magazine like this I did actually cut them out (I showed a Ricky Jordan that I did cut out like this before), but I started to keep the magazines intact instead.

SANART ad and Michael Jordan, Glenn Davis cards.

Part of the price guide and Marquis Grisson, Joe Carter, and Gregg Jeffries cards.

The pages behind these cards show the two main features of the magazine; first, and most important, are the ads.  I really bought the magazines for the ads, and would mail-order some cards a few times a year.  Then there was the price guide, which was fine, but was not entirely relevant -- Beckett was almost certainly better at being a price guide, and the prices changed so wildly in those days anyway that no guide was that reliable.

The backs of the Jordan and Davis cards.

The backs of the cards give a little write-up and include some "representative baseball card values."  They didn't change their template to say "basketball card values" for the Jordan.  The write-up includes investing advice -- Glenn Davis and Joe Carter won't make the Hall of Fame, so their card prices won't increase too much, and the time is right to put money into Gregg Jeffries cards, which will continue to climb.  Some of that was correct.

The Score Board ad.

Old Sports Cards ad.

Looking back, my favorite kind of ad is represented by the one on the left, from The Score Board.  This is a list of prices per card for lots of 1990 Score cards (minimum lot size 50), and 1990 Upper Deck.  I didn't collect as an investor in the 80s/90s, and I didn't have the money to buy 50+ 1990 Score John Olerud cards at $1.95 each.  More power to all those who went in for that.  "Score 1990 Baseball is the toughest issue of 1990, and is a good bet for the future," indeed. 

I think that the first place that Dad and I mail-ordered from was Old Sports Cards.  There wasn't anything particularly special about them, but I think they were a smaller operation than many of the other advertisers, and they were entirely reliable.  When we first ordered from them, probably in 1988, they had a half-page (or less) ad in a similar magazine.  Things must have been booming, and here in 1990 they bought a full-page ad.  I don't have any idea what I bought from them, but it was surely some combination of complete sets, single wax packs, and odds and ends.  An interesting item to note is the price of an unopened wax box of 1987 Donruss -- $74.95.  That's a bargain compared to the price in some of the other ads.  I do remember being fascinated by their list of non-sports offerings: Andy Gibb, Dinosaur Attacks, Flying Nun, Hysterical History, and so on.