Download Mint Condition: How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession AudioBook Free
When award-winning journalist Dave Jamieson's parents sold his youth home a few years back, he rediscovered a valued boyhood possession: his football cards collection. Now was enough time to profit from the assets of his junior. But all the cards shops had sealed, and cards were retailing for next to nothing at all online. What possessed happened? In Mint Condition, his exciting, eye-opening, endlessly enjoyable book, Jamieson confirms the response by tracing the complete story of the beloved piece of American youth. Picture cards possessed long been used to promote, but following the Civil War, tobacco companies started sliding them into cigarette packages as collector's items. Before long the cards were wagging the tobacco. In the 1930s cards helped gum and candy makers survive the fantastic Depression. In the 1960s royalties from cards helped change the football players' connection into one of the country's most powerful unions, dramatically modifying the game. In the '80s and '90s, cards went through a magnificent bubble, becoming a billion-dollar-a-year industry before all but disappearing, surviving today as the rarified keep of adult collectors. Mint Condition is lovely original history filled with colorful characters, sure to delight baseball fans and collectors.
