How times have changed: racial discrimination in the market for sports memorabilia (baseball cards)

Abstract

Since the early days of racial integration in baseball, the issue of fan prejudice has been in question. Evidence of fan reaction to an individual players' race, however, has been nearly impossible to distinguish through means such as game attendance or ticket revenue. Looking at baseball card valuation, however, allows us to parse out effects of race from other variables that contribute to a card's value. We use the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition to explore an original data set consisting of all single-player, nonpitcher baseball cards issued in 1969 and 2 years of pricing data on those cards (1981 and 2008) to find evidence of a reduction in discriminatory preferences among card collectors.

Keywords:

• baseball cards
• racial discrimination
• Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition
• changes over time

JEL Classification:

• L83
• J70