Card Sharks How Upper Deck Turned a Childs Hobby into a High-Stakes, Billion-Dollar Business

Sports cards, invented in the 1880s, originally served as free advertising space & premiums to boost sales. No longer a premium for another product, sports cards now are the product. More than 10 million Americans collect sports cards, hoping one day to reap their "investment" benefits. Williams takes us from the birth of trading cards to the present, when the buying & selling of cards has become everyman's stock market. At the center of the industry is the Upper Deck Co., with sales of 1 billion cards since 1990. Williams' account is the first solid investigative look at what goes on at Upper Deck. He reveals the tactics they use to dominate the trading card market.Williams, Pete is the author of 'Card Sharks How Upper Deck Turned a Childs Hobby into a High-Stakes, Billion-Dollar Business' with ISBN 9780788193811 and ISBN 0788193813.