Coming Soon: The Top 10 Most Valuable Cards of the 1980s

In the baseball card industry, the 1980s have received a bad rap based in large part to the glut of cards available in the market. As a consequence, the cards from that decade did not keep their value as much as those from earlier years. Having said that, my card collection from the 1980s is still quite special to me, because that is when I began collecting. Additionally, many of my favorite stars growing up made their card debut in the 1980s. The decade also saw the dissolution of the Topps monopoly, and most notably, the debut of Upper Deck during the final year of the decade which really kick-started the higher quality cards of the 1990s.

Through some recent acquisitions, I have now compiled what I believe to be the ten most valuable cards from the 1980s. My plan is to have an individual post on each featured card. My criteria were rather simple. I only used one card per player (thus, an ‘82 Topps Traded Ripken would moot the need to review his other ‘82 cards), the cards had to come from one of the major distributors (Topps, Donruss, Fleer, Score, Upper Deck), and they could not be a gimmick card such as an autograph or error card. I will begin debuting the list with #10 later this weekend.

On a related note, I am also considering an “oddball” type series of posts about cards from the 1980s. These cards aren’t necessarily the most valuable, but they are memorable nonetheless. If anyone has any suggestions for these cards, let me know.