Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Cards Per Hour

I'm not a mathematician, statistician, or economist, so I don't know how valid or accurate this is. But I've always wondered what year was the most economical to buy cards. So I did some digging around.

Here's my premise: I will compare the cost of a single card (pack price divided by cards per pack) with the federal minimum wage for that particular year. I can then determine how many baseball cards you could buy with an hours worth of work at the minimum wage.

We can then look year by year and find the year that would give you the most cards per hour.

From 1952 all the way until 1972, cards were a penny each. The amount of gum you got went down as the pack sizes increased, but it was a penny per card. In 1973, the price per pack jumped to 15 cents for 10 cards, and the penny a card price was gone forever. From that point on, the price and/or the cards per pack changed pretty regularly.

As I was hunting around for retail pack prices, I hit a wall. I couldn't find any retail pack prices for the years 1995 - 2006. If any of you have a source for that information, I'd love to see it. I don't like having my chart full of ??????.

According to what I found, the best year to buy cards would have been.....



....1979! You could get a whopping 174 cards with one hour's work at $2.90 per hour. That's right. Work an hour and you've earned enough to buy 174 beauties like these.









And the 1979 Topps Cubs didn't have a single card that was airbrushed!

In 1979 the minimum wage had just gone up, but Topps was still charging 20 cents for a pack of 12 cards. And this was at a time when Topps was still the only game in town. Fleer and Donruss were still two years away. I was a senior in high school in 1979, and I was working part time in a minimum wage job, but I wasn't buying wax anymore. Too bad for me!

Now compare the 1979 number with today's, in which you can get 44 cards for an hours work. That's only a fourth of what you could get in 1979. And in 1979 you still got gum! Of course, in 1979 you didn't have any of the inserts or the glossy cards, you just had base cards on cardboard. But the question has to be asked: Is the chance of getting that autograph on a sticker or swatch of jersey worth paying four times as much for the pack?

Want to guess what my answer is?

Here's the complete chart, from 1952 to 2010. If you see that I've got something wrong, or if you have any of the retail prices that I'm missing, leave a comment and I'll edit the chart.

YearMinimum wageCost Per CardCards Per Hour
1952$0.75$0.0175
1953$0.75$0.0175
1954$0.75$0.0175
1955$0.75$0.0175
1956$1.00$0.01100
1957$1.00$0.01100
1958$1.00$0.01100
1959$1.00$0.01100
1960$1.00$0.01100
1961$1.15$0.01115
1962$1.15$0.01115
1963$1.25$0.01125
1964$1.25$0.01125
1965$1.25$0.01125
1966$1.25$0.01125
1967$1.40$0.01140
1968$1.60$0.01160
1969$1.60$0.01160
1970$1.60$0.01160
1971$1.60$0.01160
1972$1.60$0.01160
1973$1.60$0.015107
1974$2.00$0.019107
1975$2.10$0.015140
1976$2.30$0.015153
1977$2.30$0.015153
1978$2.65$0.017159
1979$2.90$0.017174
1980$3.10$0.021149
1981$3.35$0.020168
1982$3.35$0.020168
1983$3.35$0.020168
1984$3.35$0.020168
1985$3.35$0.023144
1986$3.35$0.023144
1987$3.35$0.024142
1988$3.35$0.027126
1989$3.35$0.030112
1990$3.80$0.031122
1991$4.25$0.033128
1992$4.25$0.037116
1993$4.25$0.04692
1994$4.25$0.06665
1995$4.25????
1996$4.75????
1997$5.15????
1998$5.15????
1999$5.15????
2000$5.15????
2001$5.15????
2002$5.15????
2003$5.15????
2004$5.15????
2005$5.15????
2006$5.15????
2007$5.85$0.19929
2008$6.55$0.19933
2009$7.25$0.16644
2010$7.25$0.16644


3 comments:

  1. The sheer fact that you came up with this post idea shocks and amazes me. Nice job.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Agreed, nice post. If there was a Hall of Fame for posts, this would get my vote.

    Minimum wage appears to be trending upward more slowly of late.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Awesome post, great job, and thanks for an unique perspective.

    ReplyDelete