Dan Vossler is considered one of the pioneers of the modern baseball card collecting hobby. While baseball cards had been around for over 100 years, it was Vossler who helped popularize the concept of collecting cards as investments in the 1970s and 1980s. He founded the Sportscard Investor newsletter in 1974 to educate collectors on the emerging market of vintage cards as financial assets. Through his newsletter, auctions, and seminars, Vossler played a major role in transitioning baseball cards from childhood novelty items to serious collectibles with tangible value.
Vossler was born in 1946 in Chicago, Illinois. He grew up collecting cards like many boys of his generation but had an entrepreneurial spirit even at a young age. In high school, he started a business buying and selling packs of cards to classmates, usually making a small profit on each transaction. After graduating from the University of Illinois in 1968 with a business degree, Vossler held a series of sales jobs but never lost his passion for his childhood hobby. He began to research the history of various baseball card issues and took note that some older vintage cards were starting to sell for significantly more than their original retail prices.
In the early 1970s, the market for pre-war tobacco cards like T206 Honus Wagner, 1909-11 T206 Eddie Plank and 1910 E90 Sherry Magee was still in its infancy. Only a small number of dedicated collectors recognized the value in these rare cards issued decades prior. Vossler saw an opportunity to educate the growing number of baby boomers getting into the hobby about investing in the high-end vintage market. In 1974, he launched the Sportscard Investor newsletter, published on a bimonthly basis.
The newsletter covered topics such as tracking population reports and price guide listings for key vintage cards, profiles of important collectors and dealers, analyses of current auction results, and educational articles explaining concepts like grading. Vossler also began buying and selling vintage cards himself through auctions. One of his first major coups was acquiring one of the few known 1909-11 T206 Eddie Plank cards in near-mint condition in 1975 for $1,000, a high price at the time. He soon resold it for a sizeable profit.
Word of Vossler’s newsletter and his success in the vintage market spread rapidly within the tight-knit community of serious collectors in the 1970s. Subscription numbers grew steadily through the rest of the decade. Along with magazines like Sports Collectors Digest, the Sportscard Investor helped foster a more sophisticated collecting culture focused on rarer vintage cardboard and card condition, as opposed to just accumulating runs of modern sets. Vossler’s market reports provided some of the earliest semi-official pricing guidance for collectors in the absence of formalized price guides.
In the late 1970s, Vossler began hosting educational seminars for collectors at the National Sports Collectors Convention in Cleveland. These multi-hour deep dives into specific card sets and investing case studies drew hundreds of attendees annually. He also organized “card shows” in Chicago where collectors could buy, sell and trade with each other. At the time, there were few organized opportunities for collectors to meet face-to-face outside of the national summer convention. Vossler’s events helped foster the social aspects of the growing hobby.
By the early 1980s, Vossler’s Sportscard Investor had over 5,000 subscribers, making it one of the most widely read hobby publications. He had also gained a reputation as one of the top vintage card dealers and auctioneers in the country. In 1982, Vossler brokered what was at the time the highest price ever paid for a single card – $25,000 for a 1909-11 T206 Walter Johnson in near-mint condition. Such headline-grabbing auction results and deals raised the profile of vintage cards as lucrative collectibles. They were no longer just toys from childhood but valuable assets comparable to art, coins, or other alternative investments.
Vossler continued publishing the Sportscard Investor and hosting shows and seminars through the 1980s as the collecting boom accelerated. Hundreds of thousands of new collectors entered the market chasing the speculative fervor around sports memorabilia that had taken hold. Production of modern cards skyrocketed to meet burgeoning demand. However, Vossler maintained his focus on the high-end vintage sector where he felt the best investment opportunities still existed, as opposed to the glut of mass-produced modern issues. He continued to personally acquire and re-sell important vintage cards to enhance their pricing histories.
In 1991, Vossler made the difficult decision to retire the Sportscard Investor after 17 years of continuous publication. By this stage, there were many competing hobby periodicals that had emerged and the information environment had become more crowded. His pioneering newsletter played a seminal role in the evolution of baseball cards from childhood pastime to serious financial asset class. Vossler remains active in the hobby to this day, occasionally conducting auctions and private signings with collectors through his website. He is universally acknowledged as one of the founding fathers who helped build the multi-billion dollar sports memorabilia industry and transform a quirky childhood fascination into a mainstream collecting phenomenon.