Sport Americana Baseball Alphabetical Checklist #5

by James Beckett III

Book Overview

Dr. James Beckett, the world's leading expert on sports card collecting provides an indispensable resource for baseball card collectors. It's complete with alphabetical player listings from 1886 to... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0937424595
• ISBN13: 9780937424599
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: Edgewater Books Distribution
• Length: 496 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

How to track down all of your favorite player's cards

Of course Beckett puts out what is pretty much considered the definitive price guide for baseball cards, which is also the place to go to if you are looking for a complete list of all the cards in a given year that you are working on (six cards to finish the 1953 Topps set and only four cards to go on the 1966). I also have my "Team Baseball Card Checklist" for working on Yankees cards by companies other than Topps. I do not have a need for the "Beckett Baseball Card Alphabetical Checklist," but I can see exactly what sort of collector who would value this book, namely those who are trying to get all of the cards for their favorite player. Of course, that was a lot easier to do in the olden days when there was pretty much just one major baseball card company producing cards. I shudder to think of how many dozens of cards come out each year for Derek Jeter or Alex Rodriguez. But if your favorite player is anyone from Henry Aaron to Jerry Zimmerman, then this is the book that will tell you what you are looking for when you hit the shops and shows (actually some guy made the majors this year who replaced Hammerin' Hank as the player whose name appears first, but I do not remember his name). As always, the good doctor provides more than well over a thousand pages devoted to players from A to Z. The introduction section contains sage advice on how to collect that covers everything from obtaining and preserving your cards to the differences between collecting and investing. There is also practical advise on how to use the alphabetical checklist. The target market for this particular checklist might be relatively small, but collectors will certainly appreciate having this available (I cannot speak to investors). Collectors of older cards will benefit even more from picking up this checklist because you do not need to pick up an updated version. There are thousands of new cards coming out each year, many of them featuring players who will never make it to the major leagues in the great quest to have the first official rookie card for the next Barry Bonds or Kerry Wood, but they are not making any more cards of the baseball cards of our youth.