1988 Baseball Cards

By Patrick Mondout

If you want to find the source of the "overproduction" problems that plagued the hobby for years, look no further than the 1988 sets. While you can find older sets produced in numbers far beyond their immediate demand (see especially: 1982 K-Mart/Topps), this was the first year (in retrospect) that so many cards were produced by all three of the major manufacturers (four, if you include Score), that all the regular-issue sets are worth less now than they were then.

At least Donruss could be counted on from 1984-87 for limiting production enough to make valuable cards (Fleer followed suit). The Topps sets from before 1984 came before the explosion of 100 card player lots and, while not hard to find, are at least worth more than what they cost at the time (the 1981 set only just barely).

All of this is unfortunate because it tends to taint these sets in the minds of collectors and each was among the finest each company had produced.¹ The Score cards were a revelation - the first ones whose print quality rivaled magazine covers. Fleer had an unusual and somewhat patriotic design that was well received and the Topps set had the least gimmicky look of any of their sets of the Awesome80s (and tradition was supposed to be their selling point).

I do have a solution to that problem. Consider it a "modest proposal." I suggest that anyone who needlessly holds on to cases of 1988 cards take them immediately to your local recycling facility. Those of you in states that do not encourage recycling, just go ahead and throw them one box at a time into the big barrel in the backyard and burn 'em. Only through eradication can these cards ever achieve the level of collector interest they deserve. It worked for the '52 Topps second series. It can work for '88 Topps.²

Here then is our look at the baseball cards of 1988. Click on a set below (or click here for the "oddball" sets) to start your journey:

1988 at a Glance Topps Donruss Fleer Score Fleer Update Baseball's Best

Notes:
1 - I mean this in a production values sense - the sharpness of the pictures, sharpness of the cut, etc. The '52 set was a good as any Topps set ever - relative to the time it was produced - in the same way that Citizen Kane was one of the finest movies ever produced when it came out in 1941. You might appreciate the gloss and special effects of the latest Star Wars episode or Stadium Club cards more, but neither was as good for their time as these classics were in theirs.
2 - According to Sy Berger - the man at Topps who designed the '52 Topps set and who was generally responsible for card production for a few decades - he destroyed two million of the '52 Topps second series cards after the company discovered that kids weren't interested in baseball cards in October (the start of the football season). Don't bother looking, they apparently ended dumped up in water (this was 18 years before the first Earth Day).