Why Aren't Baseball Cards from the 1980's and 1990's Worth Anything?

One day a few years back I walked into my local baseball card shop with my binder full of great cards from the 1980's and 1990's. I had Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire rookies, I had many cards of all the great players like Sammy Sosa and Jose Canseco. Randy Johnson and Roger Clemens, you name it I probably had it. So I was appalled to find out that in many cases cards from the 80's and 90's of great players aren't even worth the cardboard they are printed on in most cases!

You heard it right. All of your cards from the 80's and 90's are essential worthless and just taking up space in your house. They will never be worth anything and you should throw them away or sell them for whatever pennies you may be able to get for them unless they have sentimental value. The question that is on every bodies minds reading this is "How did this happen?". You are probably especially upset if you purchased these cards during the card boom of the early 90's when they were at their peak values. A card you paid more then $30 dollars for is most likely now only worth 25 cents!

Well in the early 80's the price of cards from the 50's and 60's went way up. This caused the baseball card manufacturing companies like Topps and Fleer to produce a ton of cards to cash in. Also Donruss and Upperdeck entered the game and produced mass quantities of cards as well. This in turn created an over saturated market with too much supply and too little. Today warehouse upon warehouse and basements of collectors everywhere are stacked with millions of unopened packs with millions of stars from the 80's and 90's in them. This is the reason why these cards will never be worth anything.

In conclusion, if you want to build a baseball card collection you should definitely get cards from before 1980, but cards before 1970 will have the most value. These cards will never lose their value because there was a limited amount of them printed. They were not well kept and kids would flip them and put them in bicycle spokes. In the 80's and 90's people immediately would put the cards into plastic holders, making an over saturated market of mint cards. Today Topps and other companies use game used bats and jerseys inserted into their cards as well as autographed cards in packs to keep the tradition alive.