Baseball cards may have many aesthetic qualities (such as beauty, symmetry, evenness of layout or configuration, vibrancy or clarity of color, captivating imagery or photography, emotional appeal, and evocative portrayals of grace, prowess, and power), and they may be designed according to aesthetic conventions (e.g. a baseball card company may have a different design for its cards each year). Baseball cards may elicit an aesthetic response in the viewer, and the viewer may adopt an aesthetic attitude toward them.
Clean edges, sharp corners, unflawed surfaces, centering of the image, and excellent condition are all aesthetically appealing qualities of baseball cards.
Sports cards can be graded by such companies as Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA), Sportscard Guaranty Corporation (SGC), Beckett Grading Service (BGC), and Certified Sports Guaranty (CSG). Cards are graded from 1-10, based on such factors as centering of the image, sharpness of the corners and edges, cleanness of the surface, and overall condition. Graded cards are encased in slabs (rigid plastic containers that protect them). The grade assigned to a card is based on both objective factors (such as centering, sharpness of focus of the image, sharpness of the corners and edges, and absence of such defects as faded colors, worn or rounded corners, surface wrinkles or creases, pen or pencil marks, stains, and general wear) and subjective factors (such as overall eye appeal).
Valuable sports cards may sell for millions of dollars (e.g. a 1909 T206 Honus Wagner card sold for $7.25 million in 2022, and a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card sold for $12.6 million in 2022), so their monetary value may be comparable to that of prized artworks.
Some of the most valuable baseball cards in history have included the 1909 T206 Honus Wagner, the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle, the 1914 Baltimore News Babe Ruth (which sold for $6 million in 2021), the 1933 Goudey #53 Babe Ruth (which sold for $4.2 million in 2021), and a unique 2009 Bowman Chrome Mike Trout Superfractors rookie card (which sold for $3.8 million in 2020).
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| 1960 Topps Willie Mays All-Star Card. |
Baseball card collections may be found in museums of fine art. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC has a collection of more than 30,000 baseball cards that were donated to the museum by Jefferson R. Burdick (1900-1963), an American electrician who collected baseball cards, trading cards, postcards, posters, and other printed ephemera. The collection includes cards dating from the 1860's to 1963, among them many 1888 Old Judge Cigarettes cards, including one of Buck Ewing, many 1909-1911 T206 cards, including one of Honus Wagner, many 1933 Goudey cards, including cards of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, many 1948 Leaf cards, including cards of Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Joe DiMaggio, Stan Musial, Warren Spahn, and Phil Rizzuto, and many 1950 Bowman cards, including cards of Jackie Robinson, Yogi Berra, and Ted Williams.
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| 2002 Fleer Tradition #4 Brad Radke |
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| 2001 Topps #665 Nomar Garciaparra |
Baseball cards have design features that may be aesthetically appealing and distinctive. If they are particularly attractive or distinctive, then they may elicit the same kind of response in the viewer that a work of fine art may elicit. Although a baseball card may not be unique in the sense that a painting or sculpture may be unique (since there may be hundreds or thousands of copies of a single baseball card in circulation among buyers, sellers, and collectors), baseball cards may be considered as examples of mass art (they are mass-produced and mass-distributed). Does that make them kitsch (tacky, lowbrow, trivial, banal, or lacking in aesthetic value)? Not at all! They are certainly not lacking in aesthetic or monetary value for collectors and investors who may pay thousands of dollars for them and may seek the most perfect, highest graded, and most pristine cards they can find!
On the other hand, maybe baseball cards are a little bit kitsch! They may often be found at flea markets, sidewalk sales, antique shops, and shopping malls. They may be handed down as family heirlooms or serendipitously discovered among other forgotten items in closets and attics.
Although baseball cards are mass-produced and mass-distributed, there are an increasing number of one-of-a-kind cards. Major League Baseball (MLB) has partnered with Fanatics Collectibles, with the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA), and with The Topps Company to create one-of-a-kind cards for rookies making their debuts. (Fanatics acquired the rights to make trading cards for MLB in 2021, ending MLB's 70-year partnership with Topps. Topps began producing baseball cards in 1951, and since 2010 has had an exclusive deal with MLB that will end in 2025. Fanatics also acquired Topps in 2022.)
There is a fascinating variety of types and designs of baseball cards, from the 1909-1911 T206 tobacco cards (Piedmont, Sweet Caporal, American Beauty), to the 1915 Cracker Jack cards, to the 1922 American Caramel cards, to the 1933 Goudey gum cards, to the 1934 Gold Medal Flour cards, to the 1936 Wheaties cards, to the 1952 Topps gum cards, and so on. Indeed, there may be thousands of different types and designs of baseball cards.
If baseball cards are artworks, then what's the difference between them and memorabilia? Vintage cards may be valuable not only for their aesthetic qualities, but also for their historical interest (when they are rare or are memorable because they belong to highly admired sets or represent highly admired players). Thus, they may be considered as both artworks and memorabilia.
Other items of baseball memorabilia include autographed baseballs, autographed bats and jerseys, autographed batting helmets, and autographed photos.
Autographs may have their own aesthetics. Ideally, they should be legible and clear, not smudged or blurry, and they should be written over a lighter part of the background so that they are easily distinguishable. Also, they shouldn't cover up a significant portion of the card or obscure the player's face or upper body. They should be written in blue or black ink (blue sharpie is usually the preferred autograph pen) so that they align with or contrast nicely with the other colors in the background.
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| Autographed 1988 Donruss Eddie Murray, PSA certified. |
I'm a relatively new baseball card collector. I collected cards when I was seven or eight years old, using my allowance to buy Topps baseball cards at the local five and dime store, when I was growing up in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, but my cards got lost, and I didn't start collecting again until early 2020 (at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic), when I was living in Baltimore. Since then, I've been collecting mostly vintage cards, signed photo postcards, and autographed photos, although I'm not sure exactly how many I've accumulated.
Below is one of my favorite cards. It's an example of why I think baseball cards may be considered works of art.
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| Autographed Brace photo postcard of Joe DiMaggio, PSA certified. |
Joe DiMaggio was a Hall of Fame center fielder who played for the New York Yankees. He played thirteen seasons, from 1936-1951 (he served in the U.S. Army Air Forces from 1943-1945). He had a .325 career batting average, 2214 hits, and 361 home runs. He was a thirteen-time All Star, nine-time World Series champion, three-time American League MVP, two-time American League batting champion, and he still holds the record for baseball's longest hitting streak (56 straight games in 1941). His brothers Vince and Dom were also major league center fielders.
George Brace (1913-2002) worked as an assistant to the photographer George Burke (1874-1951). They were the official photographers for the Chicago Cubs, the Chicago White Sox, and the National Football League's Chicago Bears from 1929 to 1951. After Burke's death in 1951, Brace continued working as a photographer until he retired in 1994. He was a superb craftsman, and he photographed almost every major league player from 1929 to 1994 (over 250,000 images), including over 200 Hall of Fame players.
This particular autographed Brace photo of Joe DiMaggio is remarkable for its composition, and for what it reveals about the grace, ease, and power of DiMaggio's swing. It's remarkably beautiful and breathtaking.
So my answer to the question of whether baseball cards are works of art is that yes, they can be very original, imaginative, attractive, appealing, valuable, and in some cases very rare or unique works of art.
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