The baseball card geeks are at it again. Every year at about this time (well, actually, a little earlier than just now), baseball card hobbyists weigh in with their views on the latest Topps release. Through the ’80s and ’90s (when the market was absolutely flooded with cards), card collectors gave Topps (and Bowman, Fleer, Upper Deck — and all the rest) mostly “thumbs down” on their card designs. For good reason: card manufacturers were churning out slapdash relics, throwbacks, “legends,” “chrome,” “diamond cuts,” “heritage” and you-name-it “editions.” The card companies accomplished the impossible: they actually drove collectors away from collecting, pricing gum-chewing kids out of the hobby. The cards got expensive, the market offerings confusing.

To give card companies their due, Topps (and the rest of them) realized the problem and started to streamline their products. The result was that, while the market did not completely right itself, a way back has been charted. Then too, the kind of “Dow Jones” mentality that drove card values started to wane — collectors got fed up with over-50s guys with magnifying glasses telling them that their card was not the “10″ they thought it was, but “only a 9.5.” The purists have started to return to collecting, buying cards and opening packs for the pure joy of it.

Still, problems remain. This year, the hobby has been beset by a renewed discussion of the value of “game used” relics — like the Honus Wagner card above. The “relic” cards purport to include actual pieces of a jersey or bat (or whatever), used by a famous player. The problem, of course, is that in order to produce “relic” cards, card manufacturers have to break up actual relics — to get a piece of a Honus Wagner bat (or jersey), you have to cut up the actual bat or jersey. The other issue is that it’s nearly impossible to prove that a relic card includes an actual relic. The Honus Wagner “relic” card is a case in point. The “Mojo Beard” points out that the relic jersey included in the Wagner cards is polyester — which wasn’t around when Honus was playing. Mojo asks the obvious question: “This card comes from a pack that retails for right around $200. Would you pay $200 for a card like this?”

My answer is “no,” and I’m not alone. About twice a year I end up walking up-and-down the aisles of some card show with me droogies, eyeing the products and waiting for the show to end. That’s because the closer to closing a show gets, the faster card prices drop. I’ve done this half-a-dozen times, and it’s paid off — that special 1953 Satchel Paige card that I always wanted would have cost me $450 at 1 pm on a Sunday last year. At 4 pm I got it for $350. I’m not kidding myself: that Satchel Paige card wouldn’t be worth diddly if I wasn’t willing to buy it. The baseball card “industry” shouldn’t kid themselves either: it’s the collectors that give baseball cards their “value” — not the cards themselves. “This card is only an ’8′,” the dealer told me, when I bought the Paige card. “I don’t care,” I said. “For me, it’s a 10.”

Oh yeah, and here, for the record, is Topps’ 2011 card design. This one is a horizontal “David Wright,” with the standard sweeping arc common to all the cards. Not bad.

It’s bad enough that Baltimore Bird Billy Ripken had to play in the shadow of his brother (which seems to bother him not in the least) — but he has for some time been notorious as the subject of one of baseball’s great “error cards.” In 1989, Fleer’s trading card entry featured Billy Ripken standing innocently before a camera, bat in hand, in his home uniform. Nothing controversial there. But written on the knob end of his bat were two words: “F*ck F*ace” — an “error card” well worth keeping and of some, though minimal value: it now sells, in mint condition, for something close to $30. It’s still too much money, if you ask me, but such are the ways of collectors. The only question that remains is: was the card an “error?” Or did the photographer and Ripken (and Fleer, for that matter) know the words were there — and decided ‘well, what the hell,’ we’ll print the card anyway? It’s possible you know: error cards bring in big money, and there’s no question that some error printings are not “error” printings at all.

The story of the Ripken “error card” is an old story, but it’s worth repeating here: if for no other reason than to point the way to our once-in-a-while entry on baseball’s other pasttime — collecting pieces of cardboard. The inimitable “Snopes” — the website that spends its time separating fact from fiction — clears up the difficulty. According to Snopes, while Ripken initially claimed that the words on the end of the bat were scrawled there without his knowledge (and presumably by a teammate), the truth is that Ripken had put the words there himself. Ripken eventually fessed up: “I got a dozen bats in front of my locker during the 1988 season. I pulled the bats out, model R161, and noticed–because of the grain patterns–that they were too heavy. But I decided I’d use one of them, at the very least, for my batting practice bat,” Ripken remembers. “Now I had to write something on the bat. At Memorial Stadium, the bat room was not too close to the clubhouse, so I wanted to write something that I could find immediately if I looked up and it was 4:44 and I had to get out there on the field a minute later and not be late. There were five big grocery carts full of bats in there and if I wrote my number 3, it could be too confusing. So I wrote ‘F–k’ Face on it.”

Yoy.

That isn’t the end of the story, of course. When the card was printed (there might have been about 100,000 copies in all), Fleer noticed that something was amiss and used wite-out on its future printings, before simply reverting to that tried and true format: it blacked out the offending words on its future press runs (bringing down the price of the card, of course). It’s not as if no one noticed: in the months following the Fleer printing, collectors had spiked the error card’s price to some $500 (the price has now returned from orbit). Ripken continues the story: “After the season was over, in early January, I got a call from our PR guy Rick Vaughn. He said, ‘Billy, we have a problem.’ And he told me what was written on the bat and I couldn’t believe it. I went to a store and saw the card and it all came back to me. We were in Fenway Park and I had just taken my first round of BP. I threw my bat to the third base side and strolled around the bases. When I was coming back, right before I got up to hit again, I remember a guy tapping me on the shoulder asking if he could take my picture. Never once did I think about it. I posed for the shot and he took it.”

Pretty interesting, all in all. As these things go. “I can’t believe the people at Fleer couldn’t catch that,” Ripken says. “I mean, they certainly have to have enough proofreaders to see it. I think not only did they see it, they enhanced it. That writing on that bat is way too clear. I don’t write that neat. I think they knew that once they saw it, they could use the card to create an awful lot of stir.” Billy says he has no idea where the bat is today. ”If I were to guess, I would say it probably got lost after someone used it in a game. Probably a guy like Brady Anderson because he choked up so he could use a heavier bat.” And he finishes the story: ”Fleer sent me some of the cards out of the goodness of their heart. I autographed them and used them for my gifts to my groomsman in my wedding . . . I figured, at the time, it was better than giving them a set of cufflinks. I think I devalued the cards by signing them though.”

Those Are The Details and Now For The Headlines: The 2010 edition of Topps baseball set is out, and has been for some time. Last year’s entry was just so-so, though its Heritage cards (a reprint of the 1960 set — with current players) was a hit. The 1960 set must be the most popular — something that anyone old enough to remember will agree with. But this year’s set is a keeper — with an attractive full-color design, a killer font emblazoning the team names and a PR campaign intended to attract new fans. There’s a million card giveaway, with a promise of a mint 1952 set for the winner. Not surprisingly, Topps features its Albert Pujols card in its major promotions. And it’s a beaut . . .

Upper Deck has also released its 2010 edition (of course). Last August, the controversial company (with a history of lawsuits and internal wars) lost the right to produce MLB licensed cards. Major League Baseball gave Topps exclusive rights to use its logos as the “official” card of the MLB, which gave Topps a leg-up in their competition for the hearts of collectors. Upper Deck was undeterred: it signed an agreement with the Major League Baseball Players Association — producing a 2010 set that (in the humble opinion of those who follow these things) is near-beer compared to what Topps produces. MLB hit Upper Deck with a lawsuit in February, alleging trademark infringement.

And so the “Cardboard Wars” continue.