Baseball Cards and Race

When Topps recently issued a card of Dodgers rookie Hyun-Jin Ryu and couldn’t tell the difference between Japan and Korea, I thought it would be interesting to look at the issue of race and baseball cards.

It turns out this is a legitimate area of scholarly research.

Because baseball cards have one player with an easily identifiable race, and also have well-publicized prices that are driven by the consumer market, they have been a fruitful hunting ground for economists looking at the impact of race on consumer behavior.

There are even at least two scholarly articles on race and the placement of star players with "hero numbers" (100, 200, 300 etc) in Topps sets through the decades.

Check out my piece at the Hall of Very Good where I examine the existing research on race and baseball cards.