DragonKing Dark: The sports trading card bust of the 1990s
Continuing my 100 darkest moments in pop culture history series, I examine the sports trading card bust of the 1990s.
Generations of sports fans, especially with baseball, collected trading cards. In the past, these cards often also increased in value, especially for rookies who eventually became big stars.
Enter the speculators who were then fed by massive overproduction. By the early 1990s, every sport (including pro wrestling, football and hockey) and even pop culture properties (comic books, TV shows and movies) had multiple card sets.
Oversupply led to a crash in value and once the speculators fled, millions of people were left with boxes of worthless cards.
On this week’s DragonKing Dark, let’s look at the boom and bust of the sports card industry in the 1990s.
Karl Stern is a pro wrestling historian specializing in the 1980s and pioneer era (pre-1900) of pro wrestling. He is an author who has written several books on wrestling and independently runs the When It Was Cool retro pop culture website.