Anyone who ever owned a baseball card binder from the 1990s can still recall its distinct smell. The wax packs contained a mixture of cardboard, plastic, and the subtle sweetness of old gum. That binder wasn’t a toy for a certain type of child. It was a portfolio. And Josh Katzowitz, the author of a recent essay at The White Coat Investor, did the best job of capturing that illusion in a long time.
When he was eleven years old, he recounts pulling out his three-ring binder once a month, turning the pages with the gravity of a fund manager, and calculating the purported value of his collection using his father’s bill-paying calculator. Numbers that felt huge were promised in the reference guide. Every time, the same conclusion was reached. He was going to become a millionaire one day thanks to these cards. It’s difficult not to wince a little on his behalf when you read it now because it’s the kind of confidence only a child can have about the future.
The fact that he isn’t upset about it is what makes the piece land. He simply acknowledges that he was mistaken. The majority of us were. The same wager was made by the Beanie Baby generation. The parents who meticulously sealed Star Wars figures in their original packaging, confident that future buyers would line up, as well as the comic book hoarders and Pokémon stockpilers, did the same. Every generation seems to require its own cardboard fantasy, and the lesson is never fully transmitted.
The harsh economic conditions of his time were beyond the comprehension of most children. He was collecting during what is now known as the “junk wax era,” when card manufacturers printed so many cards that the only true factor influencing value—scarcity—just disappeared. The holy grail of that era, a 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card, is still available in card shops in glass cases and is frequently less expensive than people anticipate. There was always a supply. It simply waited in millions of suburban closets.
He shares a brief tale about visiting his grandparents at a flea market in south Florida and finding a 1985 Mark McGwire Olympic rookie behind glass for twenty-five dollars. The moment is practically visible. The boy performing mental math, the dealer leaning against the counter, the early negotiation lesson. The essay feels honest because of these specifics. The particular afternoons that initially created the belief, not the spreadsheet of setbacks.
He probably decided to write the piece at this time because of the stark contrast with the current market. In 2020, Andrew Park, a sixteen-year-old from California, sold a Giannis Antetokounmpo card for $1.81 million. Alex Butler, a fifteen-year-old from Seattle, is said to be a millionaire after creating a card game at the age of seven. Stories like that spread quickly. The same fantasy that consumed the eleven-year-old in 1991 is fed by them. Naturally, the majority of readers will never experience such returns. The rule is not the headlines. They are the exception that upholds the rule.
The acceptance that lies beneath Katzowitz’s essay is what makes it subtly potent. Specifically, he’s not writing to warn anyone. He’s writing to acknowledge something. that a binder would never be the source of his retirement. that the work would need to be funded. Reading him gives me the impression that, whether they acknowledge it or not, most collectors eventually reach this point. The closet is where the cards remain. The heavy lifting is done by the 401(k). And somewhere, an eleven-year-old version of you is still using a borrowed calculator to add up the wrong numbers—seriously.
