Baseball Cards
Cardboard Box and Binder with Cardboard Sleeves and Assorted Baseball Cards, late 20th century
Ink on cardboard, plastic sleeves, plastic, and metal binder, cards: 3 1/2 × 2 1/2 in. (8.9 × 6.4 cm) each; box: 12 3/4 × 3 × 4 1/8 in. (32.4 × 7.6 × 10.5 cm); binder: 12 × 11 7/8 × 8 in. (30.5 × 30.2 × 20.3 cm)
Private collection
The ways in which people care for material items that they value and collect constitute conservation practice at the individual scale. Baseball cards, whether collected as items of childhood nostalgia, monetary investment, or hobbyist interest, embody various attitudes toward care, such as in the manner the cards are protected, stored, and displayed, ranging from plain cardboard boxes and plastic binders to sealed individual cases like those shown here. Such care is frequently driven by the standards of quality established by card-grading companies, which rely on physical condition as the core determinant of a card’s value. Baseball cards have also become vehicles of preservation themselves, as in these examples that contain jersey and bat fragments.
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