When Baseball Cards Were Currency

Once upon a time in America, baseball cards weren’t collectibles or “investments.” A pocket full of baseball cards was a boy’s fortune. In the schoolyards and playgrounds, baseball cards were not flipped the way kids did back in the 1960s. Fanatics may own baseball cards now but Topps owns the past, that golden era when cards were currency, when borders were bets, when the schoolyards were loaded with boys learning the finer points of gaming commerce. Somewhere in Boston, in an air-conditioned corporate office, a former schoolyard baseball card shark is explaining “customer engagement” to DraftKings investors.