The Voice of the Hobby
The Voice of the Hobby
June 2019
By Jeff Clow
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Okay, here’s a blinding glimpse of the obvious - you’re reading this because you have an ardent interest in the Starting Lineup brand of sports figurines.
Right? I thought so. So here’s your question of the month.
Where’s the true hidden value of Starting Lineups? Is it the figure, the card or the mint packaging? Is it the year, or the sport or the team or the player portrayed?
The best and most reasonable answer? Well, it depends.
It depends on so many different factors. And it depends on whether you’re simply collecting to add to your collection or collecting with an eye to value down the road.
So, I have an interesting - and perhaps controversial proposal - to make. I think the most valuable aspects of Starting Lineups are the cards that accompany the figure.
Yes, you read that correctly. Not the package with the figure and the card in near mint condition. The cards alone - all sports and all years. A Kenner brand manager told me three decades ago that the Starting Lineup cards were the shortest print run of any MLB, NBA, NFL and NHL authorized and licensed cards - by a large margin.
Let’s take the rookie SLU card of Ken Griffey, Jr. He was at that time the hottest rookie to come to Major Leage Baseball in a decade. Topps, Fleer, Score, Bowman and Upper Deck and other large card companies each released hundreds of thousands of Ken Griffey, Jr. rookie cards. In fact, as hard as it is to comprehend - a total of 138 different companies produced Griffey, Jr. rookie cards. This fact is courtesy of a fine article online by a site called “Old Sports Cards”.
Because of the complexity of producing a figure and a package overseas, and the long lead times required - Ken Griffey, Jr. was a late addition to Kenner’s plans in 1989.
Kenner personnel were always tight lipped about production figures when I inquired back in the heyday of the SLU Hobby in the late 1980’s, but they occasionally would let me play the game of ask a roundabout question and get a ballpark answer. In 1989, I asked “how many Griffey, Jr rookie pieces are being produced”? They said “not many relative to the stars of 1989”. When I asked if that meant under a 100,000 figures - the answer was “significantly less”.
By the tone of the individual answering, my guess is under 50,000 total Ken Griffey, Jr. SLU rookie pieces were released in his rookie sliding pose.
Think about that absurdly low figure - especially compared to the big card companies. What would be your guess of the number of the Topps brand of cards for their version of the Griffey, Jr. rookie card?
My guess would be one million or more. Maybe a lot more.
Now take a look at the current value of Ken Griffey, Jr. rookie cards. Of course, the highest graded cards carry a premium value. But depending on the brand, prices tend to be anywhere from $35 (Topps) to $400 (Upper Deck).
Contrast that with the current value of Griffey, Jr. rookie Starting lineup complete packages - with the figure, the card and in near mint condition. All over the board online, but easy to find in the $50 - $75 range.
Now consider this hypothesis.
Let’s say there were 50,000 total pieces produced 30 years ago of this Griffey, Jr. SLU rookie and 40,000 of them ended up in collector’s hands. How many of that subset were opened in the subsequent 30 years?
Probably not many - let’s say 20%. Probably given to the grand kids to play with, or discarded along the way by an overzealous wife or Mother when the garage or basement got spring cleaned. But the cards were probably lost or suffered sufficient wear and tear to make them currently in fair condition at best.
That leaves a little over 30,000 SLU Griffey, Jr rookie packages still in decent to pretty good shape three decades later. Especially the card encased in that protective bubble.
So I think you see where this is all headed. A rookie near mint Griffey, Jr. card licensed by the MLB and issued by Upper Deck is now worth around $400 - and the same card officially licensed by the same MLB organization and issued by the Kenner Starting Lineup brand (in a very small quantity compared to Upper Deck) is currently worth under $50.
Really doesn’t make much logical sense, does it?
Continue my hypothesis and my educated guess is that there are only a few hundred near mint opened Griffey, Jr. rookie cards in circulation - the rest are still encased with the figurines in the packages.
Crazy, huh? But realistic. Seems hard to believe that the card likely is more valuable alone than as part of the MIB or MOC package all together.
But I believe strongly that it is.
Remember - scarcity creates value in collectibles and especially scarcity featuring a player who is still recognized by the public as a whole and who had a Hall of Fame career.
If most of the SLU rookie cards of Griffey, Jr. aren’t accessible because their current owners won’t open the package, then the very limited availability of the card alone is apparent.
Let’s say you are a Ken Griffey, Jr. fan and are trying to put together a set of all 138 licensed rookie cards of this remarkable athlete. What’s going to be harder to find in near mint or top graded condition - the Topps or Upper Deck card or the Starting Lineup card?
Said another way - if someone offered you a choice of rookie cards of Griffey, Jr. from officially licensed companies - and one is 1 of 1,000 in circulation in near mint condition, and the other is 1 of 200,000 in near mint condition, which one would you choose?
Obviously, one has to consider the brand name as being important - but aren’t the old tobacco trading cards from the early 1900’s valuable because of their scarcity versus their brand affiliation?
You may not agree with my overall hypothesis, but as President John Adams so aptly stated 250 years ago, “facts are stubborn things.”
Okay, if you agree with my assessment - does that mean you should actually open your Ken Griffey, Jr. rookie SLU package and sell the valuable card inside? Or have it graded to increase its worth even more? I know that would pain many die-hard SLU collectors to their core.
The answer once again - is that it depends.
Opening the package destroys the value - or at least destroys much of the collectibility of the piece for a collector of pure Starting Lineups. But it literally opens up the value of the card to the much larger world of baseball card collectors worldwide.
And that ultimately creates the dilemma. Most SLU collectors wouldn’t even consider opening the package because they heard (or read) for decades that “mint in box” has been the holy grail for toy collectors for almost a hundred years.
But is a Starting Lineup package simply a toy? Or is it a sports collectible? Or is it a baseball card with some extraneous items thrown in - a figure and maybe a coin.
It’s really all three. And it’s only the owner that can determine how to categorize it.
Twenty or 50 or 100 years from now, when the supply of Starting Lineups in general is greatly diminished, the components of a Starting Lineup package each will likely have improved value, but the cards themselves will likely be the ultimate winners in the long term value equation.
The Voice of the Hobby
By Jeff Clow
May, 2019
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The Thrill of Victory and the Agony of Defeat
Collecting Starting Lineups over a 30 year period reminds me of the famous opening sequence of a network television series on ABC many moons ago. The Wide World of Sports premiered with famed announcer Jim McKay telling us of “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat” that are the two sides of all sports worldwide.
I am of the belief that the same can be said for sports collecting in general - and the collecting of SLUs in particular. My personal journey has had the highs and lows that characterize any sporting endeavor whether you’re a participant or a spectator.
After three decades I experienced the agony when I recently sold the vast majority of my Starting Lineup collection in a living estate sale. We will get to that in a moment. But first I’d like to share with you a bit of my journey as an SLU collector and a passionate fan of this wonderful hobby of sports figurines. Perhaps it will mirror somewhat your journey as well.
In 1988 I saw my first Starting Lineup figure at a baseball card show in Cincinnati when accompanied by my then 8 year old son. A friend of mine had suggested baseball cards as a way to share a hobby together. When we saw the first baseball figures that Kenner had released earlier that year, we instantly knew that that was what we needed to collect.
Over the next several months we visited dozens of local and regional stores in search of different teams and players. We’d hop out of the car and head into the stores with anticipation that maybe they’d have some new pieces we had not found before - and often they did. We were always excited to add new figures to the collection and we first displayed them in his room. We found out early on from another collector that they should be kept in unopened condition.
We had so much fun. Doing it together without needing deep pockets was wonderful - and finding that most stores sold them for $2.99 or $3.99 each was within our budget without breaking the bank. I had my son keep the list of what we had and what we needed and we spent many a weekend and evening together in pursuit of our goal. We were determined to put together a complete 1988 SLU baseball set and we did ultimately.
As I type these sentences I feel myself tearing up a bit. It wasn’t the figures themselves that bring a tear to my eye, but the unbelievable memories of doing it with my son that are etched in my heart. And that “thrill of the hunt” will probably never be replicated again at retail stores because the collecting of items has changed so very much with the advent of the internet, the world wide web, and the likes of Amazon and eBay.
Luckily there’s still a strong sense of a collecting victory today when you are able to locate a piece that you’ve looked high and low for several years. Or to pull off a trade with someone across the country. Or to go to a garage sale or a flea market and find a piece you’ve never seen and pick it up for next to nothing. It is still a thrill and that will likely remain strong for years to come.
Of course, for me those first few months of collecting expanded greatly when I innocently wrote the then editor of Tuff Stuff magazine and asked why they didn’t have an SLU price guide. From that initial inquiry, a whole slew of things happened and next thing you knew, I was writing a magazine column about Starting Lineups. Little did I know that I would end up writing hundreds of articles and columns over a 15 year period.
And of course, my collection kept growing to the point where there were large packing boxes full of hundreds of figures of all sports. In my “real” job in corporate sales and marketing for a large company, the collection followed us as we climbed the corporate ladder and relocated several times. By then my son had moved on to teenage pursuits and the collection was no longer displayed. But I was proud of it and resisted the urge to sell or trade even one piece as the years and then decades zoomed by quickly.
Sound familiar?
In the back of my mind, I just knew that the collection was valuable and surely it would be even more valuable as the years progressed. Moving the pieces was a hassle and I wasn’t adding a lot of new figures to the collection, but once in a while a piece would surface that I went out in search of at the local retailers. Not as much fun as doing it with my son - but still very fulfilling whenever I stumbled upon a piece that was released in short supply.
Sound familiar?
Ultimately I stopped writing monthly columns for Tuff Stuff and Hasbro eventually pulled the plug on releasing any new Starting Lineup figurines. For me, the next decade was one of dormancy as if my collection was taking a long winter’s nap. It didn’t grow, it didn’t decline - it simply was stored and seldom visited.
But then last year I stumbled upon a group of SLU collectors still fighting the good fight and keeping the hobby alive. And my interest was both piqued and reignited as I saw their posts on social media sites. A lot of the names were familiar to me and there was a fair number of newcomers that seemed to display the same enthusiasm that comes from dedicated collectors. I spent hours reading the posts and checking out the photos. The passion was still there - it had just been buried for awhile.
I pulled out several of my boxes of figurines and started to feel that old familiar tug of collecting. It made me happy to realize that Starting Lineups were still a great collectible even if the prices had not skyrocketed over the years. And for newcomers, the low overall prices made getting into the hobby even cheaper than when the figures were first released.
So for me the roller coaster ride had been a good one with a lot more ups than downs. Until the inevitable happened and my wife and I decided it was time to give up the big house and move into a condo. When you’re in your 60’s, it’s the next logical step of housing. But then came the agony of realizing that the condo had limited storage space and nowhere to store all those large boxes.
So, very reluctantly we decided to hold a living estate sale run by people who do this type of sale as a profession. And they sent in a team and painstakingly looked at every piece of my SLU collection as well as many of our household goods and furniture items. It took several days to get it all sorted.
When the sale rolled around, there were several people interested in buying my whole collection and ultimately one individual got almost everything. My understanding is that he will be breaking it up and selling it individually over the next several months.
As I saw the collection photos being displayed, I felt a bit of sadness. But when I heard that the collection would continue to live in other collections across the country, I brightened quite a bit. To think of those figures of mine making other collectors happy seems like a very positive outcome.
My personal plans are to continue to be an active member of the Starting Lineup community of the future. I am very excited about the health of our hobby with the emergence of the stadium giveaways featuring new players and new teams in the SLU universe. And yes - I found a little spot in the new condo that I am holding open for a new figure or two as they are released.
Once an SLU collector - always an SLU collector.
The Voice of the Hobby
By Jeff Clow
April, 2019
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One of the most debated subjects in the 31 year old history of the Starting Lineup brand of sports figurines is also one of the most confusing to almost everyone.
The subject is both a simple one and a complex one. Whether it goes by the name of pricing, or value, or secondary market pricing - it all boils down to one basic question.
“What’s my SLU figure (or collection) worth?”
For most of us who have been in and out of the hobby over the last three decades, the recent softness of Starting Lineup pricing on the vast number of pieces is both puzzling and a bit disheartening. On the surface it seems almost incomprehensible. Pieces that were released in 1988 or 1989 are selling now often below their original retail price of $3.99. How is that even possible?
Recently an SLU collector from the past posted his collection for sale on one of the SLU groups on Facebook. He had searched for “SLU Price Guide” online, and the number one result currently is a web page posting by the now defunct Tuff Stuff magazine. So he looked up several dozen figures that were listed and determined that his collection should have a worth of several thousand dollars. He probably smiled to himself and was pleased to find out that his collection had good value.
Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? After all - anyone else who searched for SLU pricing online would likely see the same price guide and understand his rationale. Plus - most of his stuff was the early years and he had some pieces that were really popular back in the 1990’s.
But when he posted his collection for sale and mentioned the price, the only thing he heard back from fellow collectors was blowback. Many other collectors told him that the collection was not worth anything close to what he was asking, and that unless he sold a few choice pieces separately, he’s not going to get anyone to pay anywhere near his asking price for his collection.
When he replied that the pricing was based on the Tuff Stuff Price Guide online, the reality was apparent to almost everyone reading his post.
This collector apparently had failed to scroll all the way to the bottom of the price guide and see the footer at the very end. It says “Tuff Stuff Online - 2007”. Or perhaps he did see that small print and decided that the figures were surely worth what was shown or even more - since a dozen years had passed.
Things get more valuable as they get older - right?
Well, unfortunately that’s not true and probably never has been true for collectibles. But we’ve all heard something along those lines and probably believed it to some extent.
What makes something valuable is a three fold proposition. One is its condition - such as the term MOC for toys - which means “Mint on Card”. An item that has stayed in its original packaging and looks brand new even if it was manufactured 30 years ago. This is often shortened in the SLU universe to “mint or near mint”. If the package has a ding or two on its corners, then it becomes “very good or good”.
The second thing that determines price is supply. An All Star piece from most any SLU sport was made in quantities that were three to five times the normal for other non All Star pieces. And back in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s the SLU marketing of SLU players was regional except for All Star cases. So the town of Cincinnati would have the Reds and perhaps some cases of the Indians for the MLB release. But there weren’t any other teams available locally.
So if you were trying to put together the whole set of players from 1988 - a total of 124 pieces - you would have to travel to other regional cities to find the teams and players you were looking to add to your collection.
Back then there was no internet and initially no price guides anywhere. So an informal network of traders evolved in the classified section of sports collecting magazines. It was not unusual to see a collector in Houston, Texas offer up Astro figures for trade for players from teams outside of his local area. He could find Rangers, but he couldn’t find Dodgers or Angels unless they were in the All Star case.
Said another way - he wanted them and they were not easily available to purchase at his retail stores. So it boiled down to that classic economic model - supply and demand.
And that’s where our third aspect of pricing comes into play. And in today’s world of instant information for almost everything, it has become the most important element in the pricing of Starting Lineups.
Demand.
When SLU’s became the red hot collectible of the early 1990’s the number of collectors grew astronomically. Thousands and thousands of people heard that Starting Lineups were valuable and started collecting them. The hobby seemed to double overnight and then it doubled again and again and again. It was like the beanie babies craze of the 1990’s and prices doubled and doubled again as well.
The prices grew so quickly because there were tens of thousands of people entering the hobby and searching for SLU figures that were in short supply. You had the kids that the toys were originally targeted for and also sports collectors that liked a particular player or team. And then you add in collectors of all ages and there developed quickly an imbalance of supply and demand.
When there are more people wanting a piece than there are pieces available, the price jumps in direct correlation to the demand. If ten collectors want a 1988 Nolan Ryan baseball piece and there’s only three available, then the price will invariably rise month after month.
As new collectors entered the SLU hobby back in the early days, they would be in search of some of the premier pieces. When the first SLU price guides appeared in sports collecting magazines like Tuff Stuff or Beckett, the price guide editors only had one source of pricing information. And that was the small group of SLU dealers who had sprung up by 1989 and were literally the only ones who knew what a particular SLU figure was “worth” on the secondary market.
So the dealers were asked by the magazines to fill out pricing reports for recent sales. Many did so and tried to be honest about their reporting - but there were also others who decided to fudge their answers to make a piece or a set appear to be more valuable. And since there was no way for their prices to be checked, the practice continued for many years. It was an inexact science at best, but it was the only pricing guidance out there in the early 1990s.
It is probably fair to say that even today, prices on SLU figures in short supply can vary greatly.
But the most likely reason that the secondary market value of most Starting Lineups has plummeted is that the demand part of the equation has gotten much smaller. Starting Lineups ceased production in 2001 and thus both kids and sports collectors who liked a player or a team stopped buying them because they weren’t available at retail stores.
Recall that those two groups were two thirds of the demand equation. That leaves only collectors - and many of those collectors dropped out when Starting Lineups stopped being made every year. Or they went into hibernation and kept their collection intact in the garage or the basement.
Years passed and then something triggered that collector to sell his or her collection. A smaller house, a divorce, a job loss or a need for some extra cash. By then, the internet had emerged as the true marketplace for Starting Lineups and so the collector put their full collection - or perhaps the prime pieces - on an auction site like eBay.
And said individuals were likely in for a shock. The piece that was worth $100 back in 1995 was only worth $10 because there was no longer a large market of buyers interested in the piece. And so the seller either gave up and sold the figure for pennies on the dollar of what he or she thought they should be worth, or held on to them. But lots of people who had held onto their pieces for decades decided to liquidate their collections, and because there were many pieces now for sale and not many collectors - the prices plummeted.
The exception is the truly short printed pieces of MLB, NFL and NBA players who weren’t released in All Star cases, and are still truly in short supply. A 1988 Karl Malone SLU figure was only released in and around the Utah market and thus has always been a rare piece. Prices have been as high as $700 in the past - and this figure in near mint condition continues to command relatively high prices.
Two other subsets of SLU figurine collecting also continue to have more demand than supply - prototype SLU figures that were made by Kenner/Hasbro and are literally one of a kind, and error pieces that have stayed in demand over the years. A player with the wrong ball cap on or a figure with different uniform coloration can still command premium pricing.
Will Starting Lineups ever rise in value in the future? Very hard to ascertain that answer. But it is fair to say that if Starting Lineups were released again as a retail brand, the likelihood would be that a whole new generation of collectors would enter the marketplace.
The Voice of the Hobby column by Jeff Clow
March, 2019
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For many Starting Lineup collectors, the hobby reached its zenith in the 1990’s when SLU conventions began being held across the nation. If you’re an oldtimer that began collecting in the 1980s or 1990s, you may have personally attended one of these massive gatherings. And if you’re relatively new to the hobby over the last 20 years, then you may have heard of an SLU convention, but didn’t have the chance to participate.
For both groups - let me set the stage for a walk down memory lane.
Imagine a time when you’ve driven several hundred miles to attend your first ever convention. You park in the designated parking lot of the host hotel and as you check in to the hotel, you are amazed to see dozens of people in the lobby with Starting Lineup figurines in their hands. There’s a guy with a luggage cart that has a dozen cases of SLUs wheeling through the lobby and headed to the Convention Center that adjoins the hotel.
Your pulse quickens a bit. These are people just like you that apparently have a deep passion for SLUs. As you walk to your room on the 5th floor with several figurines from your collection that you’ve carried all this way from home, a man with a big smile on his face stops in front of you and asks what you’ve got to trade. As you begin to show him your stash of figures, two more people come out of their rooms and join in the discussion. Each of them introduce themselves and ask you where you are from - and when you reply, they tell you they are from Ohio, and Texas and New Jersey.
Ten minutes ago as you drove up to the hotel, you were questioning yourself as to whether it was worth the time and money to drive so far to a remote location because you had read other SLU collectors would gather here. But your wife had encouraged you, and you thought it might end up being a fun experience. Fast forward to your first encounter here in the hallway of the hotel and you’re thinking that this is pretty cool.
The trio of strangers tells you they are headed down to the hotel bar to meet some other collectors, and you drop off your stuff in your room and head down with them. As you approach the bar, the noise gets louder and louder - and as you walk in you see dozens of people who all appear to be here for the convention. Over the next couple of days, you’ll spend a fair amount of time here. Not because of the booze, but because of the camaraderie of strangers who become instant friends as you all swap stories and talk incessantly about the hobby. Whether the subject is the latest SLU rookie piece or case packs from the past, you’re talking with other people who seem to have as much joy in the hobby as you have had the last few years.
If you’re nodding your head right now, you were probably one of the thousands of collectors that headed to SLU conventions in Delaware, New Jersey, Dallas, Cincinnati, Anaheim and Atlanta. If you’re thinking that you would have liked to have been there, then you’re probably someone who has joined the hobby after the decade of SLU conventions had passed.
My personal association to the SLU Convention phenomenon started in early 1993 when Rob Rogers of Newark, Delaware contacted me about his idea to have the first ever SLU Convention in a venue in the greater Philadelphia area. I had been a columnist for several years with Tuff Stuff magazine and the hobby was approaching its five year anniversary since the first SLU MLB release of 1988. Rob laid out his idea to host the convention and bring dealers and collectors together for a hobby gathering. I was intrigued and agreed to highlight his idea in my column.
Rob also graciously asked me to be the featured speaker at this convention - a kind invitation that I immediately accepted. My May, 1993 column announced the convention in print and emphasized that the main intent of the convention was to bring collectors and dealers together from across the nation for a two day weekend of trading, buying and selling.
The first SLU Convention was held the weekend of July 17th, 1993 at the Brandywine Terrace Convention Center in Claymont, Delaware. I was unsure of the turnout until I left the host hotel and went to the convention site where several hundred people lined up outside waiting for the doors to open. Instantly I knew that the idea for a convention was a brilliant one, and the weekend proved a big success.
As in subsequent conventions held across the United States, Kenner (and later Hasbro) personnel were in attendance. The highlight of many SLU conventions were the prototype auctions - where Kenner auctioned off SLU one of a kind hand made prototypes. At this first convention, over $10,000 was raised on these auctions and all the proceeds were donated to the Make a Wish Foundation (which grants wishes to terminally ill children). The highest winning bid was $1,000 for a 1992 Michael Jordan prototype.
In preparation for this column, I reached out to several well known dealers who were mainstays in the SLU Convention circuit. One of them was long time dealer Jake Bower of New Jersey.
“The original Delaware Convention was an ultimate chaos period - people came from all over the country. It created unbelievable excitement. There wasn’t any eBay or Amazon or even internet and everything was word of mouth and from magazines. It was actually the first show I did. Collectors had money to spend and it was an SLU frenzy. A great chance to meet so many people that you had talked to on the phone. I went to every Convention that was held after that - Cincinnati was the best as it was more centralized and Kenner was headquartered there.”
The promoter and hosts of the Cincinnati SLU Convention were Mark Hensley and his wife Laurern who made Cincinnati a must attend destination for 7 years. “I vividly recall our first convention experience in Delaware. The fact that so many people made the journey was inspiring to say the least. So Laurern and I decided to give it a try and put together a gathering in Kenner’s backyard.”
“Many people used precious vacation time to come. We didn’t just want to make it a convention - we wanted to make it a memorable experience.”
As the SLU Convention idea spread across the nation from East Coast to West Coast, Kenner decided to release a special “Convention Only” figure at each venue.
“I thought it was an amazing chance for true hardcore collectors to get a figure that was not available in retail stores” recalls Hensley. “My favorite to this day was Joe Montana’s Convention piece.”
Longtime dealer Rick Romito has similar recollections of the SLU Conventions. “I remember all the legends of our hobby were there - Mark Hensley, Jake Bower and Dale Carlson. It was so neat to see them all in one place. The first big one was the 1994 Convention run by Mark. Several thousand people lined up around the Cincinnati Convention Center. It was unbelievable how hot and far our hobby had come.”
Romito continued, “What stands out for me was that Kenner did the special convention piece which automatically became the hottest piece in the hobby. And the prototypes that were auctioned off went anywhere from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars! Those auctions were fun. My personal favorite memory was selling an error Jackie Robinson piece for $600 because it had the wrong number on the back. Our hobby was always about the thrill of the chase - finding rare pieces and doing it with family and friends.”
It’s interesting that these gentlemen can recall with such precision their vivid memories of the SLU Conventions after twenty plus years. I believe it reinforces my personal feeling that the collecting of Starting Lineup figurines is one of deep passion for many people.
Will we ever be able to gather together again in large numbers at an SLU Convention in the future?
I sure hope so. Don’t you?
The Voice of the Hobby column by Jeff Clow
February, 2019
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It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to the launch of the next great phase of Starting Lineups. When I was approached by Hank Reed, the founder of this new website, I felt a sense of dé·jà vu. It took me back to 1989 when the editor of Tuff Stuff magazine asked me to write a column about Starting Lineups. Back then, I was living in Cincinnati and had written him asking why he didn’t have any coverage of an emerging hobby - the collecting of the Starting Lineup brand of sports figurines.
That request in 1989 came out of the blue. But the more I pondered it, the more I thought it felt like something worth doing. I had developed a passion for collecting SLU figures by that time, and in my professional career I knew that passion was an integral part of any venture.
Fast forward to 2019 and once again the opportunity to help relight the fire of SLU collecting is offered to me. The same thought process once again crosses my mind. Is it worth the effort? Is it realistic? Is there a path to success?
And then I had a long conversation with Hank Reed. And without putting words in his mouth, I can say unequivocally that I heard the same passion in his plan to launch SLU Authority and help usher in the rebirth of a dedicated place for SLU fans worldwide.
The word that came to mind for me almost immediately was dormant. Webster’s dictionary defines dormant as “marked by a suspension of activity: such as
a: temporarily devoid of external activity - a dormant volcano
b: temporarily in abeyance yet capable of being activated - seeds will remain dormant until spring”
And that seemed like the perfect metaphor for the state of the hobby today. Not dead and definitely capable of being activated.
2019 is a long way from 1988 when Kenner launched the Starting Lineup brand of sports figurines. The brainchild of then Cincinnati Bengals football player Pat McInally. He had sold his condo to a Kenner executive and was asked for his ideas for a new addition to the Kenner lineup of toys. McInally - the only person among NFL players that has been verified to have gotten a perfect score on the NFL’s Wonderlic Test - famously said that the action figures of that era were based solely on fantasy. Why not action figures showing the real life players of the MLB, NFL and NBA.
Why not?
And thus from those first observations from a very smart football player, the Starting Lineup journey began. Originally targeted at kids - within a year the market morphed almost immediately to collectors of all ages and the hobby grew quickly to become a worldwide phenomenon. And I was fortunate to be involved as a member of that first band of collectors to realize the universal appeal of these relatively inexpensive sports action figures.
This brief history recap is probably well known to many of you who are reading this column. However, in the intervening years a lot of water has passed under the bridge. The hobby exploded in the 1990’s and that decade is often referred to as the golden era of Starting Lineups. Tuff Stuff magazine and then Beckett and several other magazines began covering Starting Lineup collecting and had price lists showing the mostly increasing values of SLUs. Then there was the first ever Starting Lineup convention in Dover, Delaware and the first fist fights in the aisles of Toys R Us among overzealous collectors and dealers. In fact, the hobby exploded to such a large extent that the Wall Street Journal had an article about the phenomenon of Starting Lineups.
Fast forward to today. The hobby is still alive and well, but the numbers of collectors is a fraction of what it was back in the first golden era. Why that occurred is likely the result of many factors and perhaps the biggest one is Hasbro’s decision to stop producing new Starting Lineups in 2001. Without a steady stream of figurines of new professional players, many collectors decided to stop their collecting efforts. They didn’t all leave the hobby - but many became dormant collectors.
But then 15 years later, something magical occurred. In October of 2016, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers released a Starting Lineup figure of QB Jameis Winston. In November and December of that same year, two other pro teams released SLU type figurines - and a whole new generation of collectors decided to join the hobby.
So how does a dormant brand come back to life? The same way it started life - featuring sports stars in action figure poses and having a limited number of copies of each figure. In any collectible there has always been those two aspects. The product itself and the relative scarcity of the product. Sometimes it was regional scarcity and sometimes it was overall scarcity. Perhaps the most famous sports collectible of the last 75 years is the iconic Mickey Mantle rookie baseball card. A unique player and a small number of copies of the card made this item famous to the world in general.
Here’s a not so hypothetical question. If you read online or in the local newspaper that there’s an upcoming professional sports game that will be giving away 15,000 copies of a figurine of one of their players - would you go? Would you take a buddy or two and offer to pay their way in if they will give you the figurines they get?
Sure you would. I know I would. And that’s the seed that has been long planted inside all of us that’s just waiting to sprout. And not just in us, but in thousands of other people who never experienced the thrill of the hunt when Starting Lineups first were released.
Collecting Starting Lineups for many of us has been a labor of love. Before the rise of the internet, the only way to get regional SLUs was to barter for them. I distinctly remember offering up five local SLU figures from southern Ohio in the hopes of getting the scarce Nolan Ryan from a Texas collector. And then the SLU dealer community emerged - which allowed all of us to acquire rare figures if we were willing to pay a premium price for them.
We’ve hung on to those figures from 1988 or 1991 or 1999 for two or more decades. They’ve followed us in boxes or cases as we’ve moved from one home to another. As I write this, there are a dozen of them sitting on the top shelf of my desk looking down on me. My life has undergone massive changes since 1988, as it has for many of you reading this column. Yet the appeal of these four inch figurines has remained inside us all along.
Why is that? Seriously. Why?
My guess is that we all have a personal reason why Starting Lineups still resonate with us after all these years. For some, the challenge of collecting all the SLU figures for a particular team, or a particular sport is something we really enjoyed doing back in the day. For others, it was the acquisition of a few rare figures that we know were released in very small quantities. And for others, it is the great memories that flood back into our consciousness when we remember going to the stores with our child, or our parent in search of the elusive SLU figure.
That’s why the hobby is on the verge of a rebirth. Because those same opportunities still exist in 2019. And even as the regional and national toy stores have gone away, a new avenue has opened up for Starting Lineup figurines. Whether it be at a stadium giveaway or a special promotional release - the fact is there that Starting Lineups still are a sought after item and that the brand still has strong legs as the journey continues.
Welcome to the spring thaw of a wonderful hobby. Glad you are here to see the new buds poking through the surface. It was a heck of a ride in the past. And it is going to be a heck of a ride into the future.
(Jeff Clow was the first national columnist to write extensively about Starting Lineups. His monthly column in Tuff Stuff magazine ran from 1989 until 2006. The Wall Street Journal called him “The Voice of the Hobby” and he was a featured speaker at SLU conventions across the USA in the 1990’s. He now writes exclusively for the SLU Authority website)
The Passing of a Legendary Dealer - Dale Carlson
By Jeff Clow
February, 2019
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On Sunday night, December 30th the Starting Lineup hobby lost one of its most iconic and well known dealers. Dale Carlson - known for decades as “The Kenner Kid” - was killed in a one car accident in Akron, Ohio. He was a retired seventh grade school teacher and left behind two grown sons.
His passing at the relatively young age of 61 shocked collectors all over the nation since many of us had seen him as a young man who had helped many collectors find that missing piece for their collection.
Carlson - who I interviewed in August, 2001 for a Tuff Stuff article - was one of the first people to understand the collectibility of the Starting Lineup figurines. In fact, when I was getting started as a collector in 1989, I called him after seeing one of his classified ads. I was trying to put together a full run of the 1988 MLB baseball set with my then 8 year old son. I mentioned about a dozen regional pieces that I couldn’t find anywhere and asked him if he had any of them.
I will never forget his response. “I have them all”. We worked up a trade and cash sale and I we had many telephone conversations over the years. When I interviewed him for publication, one of the first things I asked him was how he got started as a SLU dealer.
“I bought my first piece in May, 1988 and was looking for a mail order business to supplement my teaching income. Starting Lineups were small and easily mailed. I found that people needed Indians and Reds across the United States - and its blossomed into a huge second profession since then.”
As part of that interview, I also asked him how many collectors he had dealt with in the four years he had been in business, he told me that he had sold to over 5,000 different people.
Think about that. That’s a staggering number of collectors that had an interaction with Dale Carlson. And that was early in the hobby. He occasionally would set up at the Kenner convention and his booth was often jammed. And he continued to buy and sell right up to the week of his death. By then his primary advertising vehicle was dozens of listing on Ebay.
The Kenner Kid also was a polarizing figure within the hobby. He not only possessed almost every Starting Lineup ever produced, he also had cornered the market on some rare figures. That caused him to be a tough negotiator and he definitely had an edge to him that many people found troubling. His tagline “If it was made, I have it” brought him hundreds of calls monthly. But he was known to be inflexible at times and his prices during the heyday of the hobby were usually the highest in the hobby.
Thus it’s probably fair to say that he was one of the most famous individuals within the Starting Lineup collecting world, and he had a large number of supporters and detractors. He wrote many SLU articles for the Beckett Collectibles magazine from 1996 to 2001 - and also for a handful of other periodicals. He had a comprehensive knowledge of the hobby and had many connections with Kenner and Hasbro personnel that brought him many insider tips.
So, whether you loved Dale Carlson, or hated him - you’d have to agree that he was a major contributor to the Starting Lineup hobby. He saw the potential of the figurines from the beginning and was perhaps the most recognizable dealer ever within the Starting Lineup universe.
His untimely death was a shock to so many of us. The hobby will unlikely see another dealer whose very name - The Kenner Kid - became synonymous with Starting Lineups.
