Anyone who hoarded away baseball cards as kids and grew up to realize the potential value of their collections can relate to such anguish, according to Gabe Sinicropi.

He should know.

He grew up as a baseball-loving kid in Seneca Falls, New York, watching his beloved Mets on WOR-TV, playing Little League and pickup ball games and reading everything he could about the national pastime.

And of course, he collected baseball cards.

Today, he serves as vice president of marketing for the Williamsport Crosscutters, a position he’s held for many years while keeping a keen eye on his large card collection.

As he told fellow SABR members recently, “Baseball cards have been a huge part of my life.”

Baseball cards for Sinicropi have not only brought him joy, but also have educated him.

As he joked, “Without baseball cards I’d never have known (Mets pitcher) Harry Parker liked to play handball.”

Such biographical tidbits found on the back of a player’s particular card enthralled him, and other collectors as well.

The favorites of his personal collection, he said, are the rookie Nolan Ryan and Tom Seaver cards.

Sinicropi shared his experiences collecting cards as well as the history of the card industry.

He recalled buying his first cards as a boy in the 1970s at a mom-and-pop market in his hometown well before the sports card industry boomed.

Sinicropi and other baseball fans could never have predicted that the 1952 Mickey Mantle card, perhaps the holy grail of cards, is valued at $12.6 million, or that the 1909 Honus Wagner card is worth $7.25 million.

They are among the much sought-after rare gems.

As Sinicropi noted, it’s highly unlikely to stumble upon one of these highly priced cards.

The first baseball cards arrived on the American scene in the mid-1800s, when the game was in its infancy.

Early on, cards and cigarettes were packaged together more to protect the tobacco products from damage than to promote the players’ images.

Who could have known that the T206 Honus Wagner card of 1909 would eventually become among the most valuable of all cards?

Wagner, a Hall Fame player and among the immortals of the early years of baseball, didn’t want his name to be linked with tobacco products, according to Sinicropi.

This led to a limited release of the Wagner cards, skyrocketing them in value years later.

Different companies have dominated the baseball card industry.

In 1914, Cracker Jack began to include baseball cards in its boxes of candy-covered popcorn. Others baseball card manufacturers appeared through the years.

The Fleer Company and the Goudey Gum Company in the 1930s began packing in baseball cards with their gum.

Through the efforts and imagination of Sy Berger, Topps emerged as the dominant leader in the baseball card industry in the early 1950s.

Berger, referred by Sinicropi as “the father of modern baseball cards,” was an executive at the Brooklyn-based Topps company, when he “conceived the prototype for the modern baseball cards, supplanting the unimaginative, smallish and often black-and-white offerings of the existing card companies,” according to the New York Times.

“From the 1950s to 1980s, Topps had the baseball card market,” Sinicropi said.

Topps bought out in 1956 for a reported $200,000 after battling the rival company in court over signing players to exclusive contracts to appear on cards.

No other serious challengers to Topps emerged until Fleer and Donruss entered the market in 1981.

Upper Deck appeared on the scene in 1989 with its own brand of cards to become another big player.

But as Sinicropi noted, baseball cards were massively over-produced beginning in the 1980s, and the period from 1986 to 1993 is now known as the “Junk Card Era.”

Cards hitting the market then carried little value because no one was buying, he noted.

The arrival of the internet changed the baseball card industry. Now, serious, and even casual card collectors can troll eBay to find what they want.

Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA), launched in 1991, is a third-party card grader that assesses the value and authenticity of cards.

PSA services are in such demand that the company grades one million cards every month, according to Sinicropi.

Today, baseball cards are available at retail stores such as Target.

However, more serious collectors tend to go online or to card shops to purchase the higher-end sports cards found in Hobby Boxes.